This past week, UC Berkeley settled with the family of Ted Agu over the football player’s death in 2014, a case in which negligence by Cal officials was a “substantial factor.” Agu collapsed during a strenuous off-season workout, perhaps due to his carrying sickle cell trait, of which Cal officials were aware and experts believe can lead to death under extreme exertion.
The family was rewarded $4.75 million, but according to Steve Yerrid, one of the attorneys who represented the Agu family, “we were never going to accept just money.” As a result, there are a number of non-monetary elements to the Cal/Agu settlement, including screening for sickle cell and preventing coaches from using “high-risk physical activity” as a punishment.
While reading about the settlement, this last provision caught my eye as I assumed such a requirement was already in place in collegiate athletics. While the NCAA has been outspoken in defining and condemning hazing, the Agu settlement made me realize I wasn’t clear about where the NCAA stands on physical activity as punishment for an individual or a team, perhaps an area that needs to be more clearly defined and recognized by athletic department officials.
There seems to be a substantial gray area between hazing, which is generally viewed as student-on-student, and conditioning and discipline imposed by a coach or team official. For example, does making student-athletes perform challenging physical tasks under the threat of reduced playing time or dismissal from the team qualify as hazing? If punishing a team with physical activity is off-limits, how is the “intention” of an activity determined? Is using negative consequences to motivate performance in a drill considered punishment?
Although fellow student-athletes testified “they’d never before done the workout,” that led to Agu’s death, the circumstances surrounding the activity (he was running hills with teammates) seem to be relatively routine for offseason football training. More damning was their testimony that trainers and coaches didn’t immediately assist Agu as he continually fell to his knees before finally collapsing, especially as Agu’s sickle cell trait was known by school officials after his redshirt freshman year.
It seems for some the lines are unclear between hazing, corporal punishment, and the strenuous training required to perform in elite college athletics. The mental intimidation imposed on a student-athlete of having to do more sprints or pushups if she fails could be construed as hazing. Forcing a team to do a harder workout because it lost a competition could fit a loose definition of corporal punishment.
The Cal/Agu settlement forbade “high-risk physical activity” as punishment, something that should have gone without saying but required a tragedy to be made explicit. While putting this in writing is invaluable, hopefully athletic department officials realize the larger mistake made by the Cal staff and recognize that regardless of the circumstances under which rigorous physical activity is being performed, caution, expertise, and compassion must be at the forefront in order to protect those in the school’s charge.
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