Full-contact practice and injuries in college football

BACKGROUND: Despite recent restrictions being placed on practice in college football, there are little data to correlate such changes with injuries. HYPOTHESIS: American football injuries will correlate with a team's exposure to full-contact practice, total practice, and total games. STUDY DESIGN: Descriptive epidemiological study. METHODS: All injuries and athlete injury exposures (AE × Min = athletes exposed × activity duration in minutes) were recorded for an intercollegiate football team over 4 consecutive fall seasons. Weekly injuries and injury rates (injuries per athletic injury exposure) were correlated with the weekly exposures to full-contact practices, total practices, formal scrimmages, and games. RESULTS: The preseason practice injury rate was over twice the in-season practice injury rate (P CONCLUSION: Decreased exposure to full-contact practice may decrease the incidence of practice injuries and practice concussions. However, the game injury rate was over 6 times greater than the practice injury rate and had an inverse correlation with full-contact practice. Language: en