Pac-12 commissioner exploring idea of NFL-type injury reports

College football’s injury policy is a joke, the byproduct of no central leadership and paranoid, highly paid coaches who still think it’s 1980.

Last week’s debacle with USC and an L.A. Daily News reporter over the legitimate reporting of an injury to the Trojans’ kicker underscored how Draconian coaches have become in trying to protect their programs.

The irony with USC is that the issue, which was resolved, served as the kind of distraction during a “big-game” week that coaches so desperately try to avoid.

USC spent time away from Stanford preparation to deal with the injury-report fiasco. It was counterproductive to everything USC was trying to achieve in Palo Alto.

Alas, Commissioner Larry Scott, who has been out front on a lot of issues, suggested at halftime of the USC-Stanford game that the Pac-12 might consider an NFL-type injury report.

“We have an athletic director meeting coming up in October and I’m going to put this on the agenda,” Scott told reporters. “At least to discuss as to whether we ought to leave it with each school or whether there ought to be some standards or some conference policy.”

Coaches will hit the roof reading this, and well, that’s just too bad.

This is another one of Scott’s really good notions. He as already infused an NFL idea, home-field advantage for the playoffs, into the Pac-12 title game.

The NFL requires each team to provide injury updates during game week. More than a good idea, it takes some of the digging away from “insiders” in a billion-dollar gambling industry.

Alabama Coach Nick Saban, not a real media-concerned coach, issues an injury report. Saban spent time in the NFL. While other coaches were trying to plug injury leaks by reporters doing their jobs, Saban was busy winning three BCS titles since 2002.

The NFL also requires locker rooms to be open during the week. Maybe, after the injury issue, Larry Scott can start working on that?

ALSO:

It’s Week 2 but things are already out of place

Raiders get routed again by the Miami Dolphins

Chargers rout the Titans without Gates, Mathews