Skip to main content
NC State

NC State coach Dave Doeren ‘not in favor’ of ACC injury availability reports

image_6483441 (3)by:Noah Fleischman•07/25/25•

fleischman_noah

Dave Doeren
NC State coach Dave Doeren speaks at ACC Kickoff. (Photo credit: ACC)

CHARLOTTE — When it comes to injuries, NC State coach Dave Doeren isn’t one to share details. Unless it’s a season-ending injury to a Wolfpack player, the 13th-year coach tends to decline to comment on what their status might be going into a game.

But now, Doeren and the rest of the ACC won’t have a choice in that matter this fall. 

League commissioner Jim Phillips announced the conference was going to introduce availability reports ahead of ACC contests for the upcoming season in football, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball, earlier this week in Charlotte. 

For football, that means the first report would come out two days ahead of kickoff. It would then be updated the following day and once more two hours ahead of game time. For men’s and women’s basketball and baseball, the initial report would be released the day before the game and again two hours ahead of the scheduled game time.

“Coaches are hard to change, but when we told them that we were doing it, no one said anything on the call,” Phillips said. “I don’t know what that meant, other than they were accepting it. It’s the right thing. It’s the right thing. I understand, and every coach has to do what they have to do in order to get their team ready, and there’s always gamesmanship, always. That’s been around for a hundred years, and it’s going to continue, but it’s the right thing.”

Although the coaches might not have said anything on the conference call, it’s clear that Doeren isn’t a fan of the change going into the 2025 campaign.

“I’m not in favor of it, but it doesn’t matter,” Doeren said during a breakout room interview at ACC Kickoff on Thursday. “We’ve had them before. The reason I’m not in favor of it [is] I think the coaches don’t tell the truth on them anyway. We don’t want to put our players’ injuries out there.”

Doeren, for one, was concerned that if an opposing team wanted to target a player battling an injury they could since they’d know who on the other side is playing through something. 

The main reason why the ACC decided to join the likes of the Big Ten and the SEC, both of which had availability reports last season, was due to the growing sports betting landscape in the nation. Players have been targeted on social media by disgruntled bettors due to injuries that held them out of games and weren’t disclosed ahead of time.

While the ACC stressed it’s about player safety when it comes to being cyberbullied, Doeren felt as though it was only to help those wagering sums of money on the outcome of his team’s games this fall.

“I’m trying to protect my guys. I’m not trying to help bettors,” Doeren said. “That’s what that stuff’s all about. To me, I don’t get it. But they made that decision, so that’s what we’ll do and so be it.”

Phillips, however, remained confident that the move is the right decision in the current state of college athletics.

“It’s the right thing,” said Phillips, who noted there’s not currently a fine structure for “late or untruthful” reports at this time but could be developed in the event it’s needed. “It’s, again, the modernization of our conference, the modernization of college sports, and the expectations we should have to protect our student-athletes.”

You may also like