Never stop learning – that’s my motto, and I continually preach it to my sport management and sport marketing students. In concern to the field your in, read as much as possible and if it helps, watch as much as possible; for you never know when a good idea can hit you. Let’s face it, neither my fellow co-writers nor me are that original (well…kinda) – we read a lot about sports and watch as much as we can, and its our job to reiterate what we hear and/or see – only its from our perspective (that’s why our blog is the best! 
). So, with this all being said, I have to give Baseball Tonight credit for providing me with the idea for these next two ‘injury bug’ articles.
While we discuss a lot of marketing at The Academy, we love veering off the topic and touching on other issues as much as possible; in fact, we plan to do a lot more in the near future. Today seems like a good day to stop working on the marketing machine and start working on the MLB injury bug. In concern to this, the last several years have been mind-blowing! Jayson Stark has a great piece you should check out. In it he says the following,
But time spent on the DL is up dramatically. Total days spent on the disabled list this year: more than 7,900 (an average of 32 days per stay). Last year at this time, it was only 7,400 (an average of 28 days). What that clearly tells us, Conte says, is that we’ve seen a wave of more severe injuries this season than in the past
That’s ridiculous! And what’s more surprising is what its costing MLB teams. Stark says it has costs teams around $1.9 Billion to pay players just for their DL time over the last four seasons!
In concern to this year, Buster Olney and Baseball tonight put together an interesting “all-injury team” (note: this version may be a tad bit off) – Check it out.
Can you believe that? That’s an all-star team! This whole entire issue leaves me wondering – what has become so different in recent years that injuries seem to be at an all time high? Are players working harder than they used to? I doubt it – see pitching counts, and players having a set amount of days off, etc. So, what else is there? Well, for starters, there has been a recent ban on certain supplements. Forget HGH, what about Androstenedione, Clostebol, Danazol, Desoxy-methyltestosterone? In total there are 30 banned substances, and as we see more bans, it seems we are seeing more injuries.
Now, I’m not arguing for the reinstatement of such supplements – no way. I’m hinting at the fact that these bans are fairly recent, and a good amount of players are most likely having a hard time recovering from their lack of supplement usage. They need their fix, as Dave Chappelle’s Tyrone would say. Some say we are witnessing an entire generation of players who had initially started using certain supplements, and have now stopped – their bodies were used to it. Some say the notion of being all-natural has been out the window, and a lot of these players’ bodies are not used to being without their goods. These bodies are therefore relying on something not there , and when these supplements are not there, injuries occur.
Whether they are right or not, that’s what they say. All of this stuff is interesting for sport management students to learn. For this seems to be a clear definition of managing a sports issue, and its something I’ll be sure to bring up in my classes. Plus, I thought it was just flat out interesting. If your a future student and reading this – start studying up!
