Blaming Tommy Moffit for Ciron Black's injury makes no sense to me. Ciron has been plenty big and strong for his whole career. If he was playing on a hurt knee that would be on the training staff, not the strength and conditioning staff. The trainers deal with injuries and the doctors are all over it. If the medical team cleared him to play then it was up to Ciron if he wanted to risk further injury or not. The guy stayed for his senior year and he wanted to play. Who can fault him for that?
This. I might add, that knee injury came later than everyone seems to think it did. It's not like it's something that happened his sophomore or junior year, and the staff ignored it and made him play. It happened in November 2009 and as Red said, he played through it and hoped for the best. I'm not sure if he even really knew the extent of his injury until after the season was done. Strength and conditioning had nothing to do with it.
Sounds like it is business as usual for Moffitt. As in, he is getting them ready... West Monroe's Allen thrown into LSU grind | thenewsstar.com | The News Star
I didn't mean to imply that strength and conditioning caused Black's injury I meant that the strength coach should have known the extent. Strength is almost always quantified numerically...Max weight, number of reps, number of sets, etc. Charts are kept of players' progress and they are referred to all year long. Whether it's pee wee football or NCAA division one. The coaching staff has the moral as well as ethical responsibility to safeguard the health and safety of the players. This is an over riding responsibility. The coaches played an injured Ciron Black and now he is injured so severely that he lost his opportunity to play pro ball. I'm sure that the coaching staff didn't foresee this result at all...but intent doesn't absolve the staff from responsibility. As an example, if I say something that accidentally hurts another person...The person is hurt whether I meant to hurt that person or not. The consequence is not changed, although non intent does ameliorate my action. The arguments that the injury happened later on last season and that Ciron wanted to play and was over 21 years old or that the coaching staff did not foresee the consequences of their decision does not absolve the entire coaching and medical staff of this very basic responsibility. Players play hurt all the time. Football is a rough game that can even cause death in very rare circumstances. Acute injury happens, but Black's injury was apparently chronic and that means it occurred over time and got progressively worse. There was plenty of time for the coaches to know what was going on and to play the backups if Ciron's performance dropped off. I'm sure coach Miles feels terrible about this. In the heirarchy of responsibility the medical staff is first in line because they cleared Black to play, but the other coaches like the position coaches and the conditioning coaches and the head coach should have known something was wrong despite the clearance. Swerved, you may be right about the staff not knowing the extent of the injury until later...but they should have because they were in a position to observe it.
I was just talking to my dad who is a doctor (and a Ciron Black fan) and he pointed out that Ciron may have a chronic medical condition like Rheumatoid Arthritis and not a chronic injury. He agrees that the staff should have been aware of an injury. My dad was a ringside doctor for boxing matches because one of our neighbors was a referee and even officiated a Mohammed Ali match one time during the "bum of the month" period when Ali came out of jail and resumed his boxing career. The Official hated to ask my dad to be the ringside doctor because he stopped a few fights in mid round. The health and safety of the boxers was his responsibility...more than the referee he said.
We are pointing out that all of these hypotheticals are not an accurate picture of what happened. :wink: Judgements are made above without knowing anything about what really happened with Black. One thing I do know is that Miles has never had any issues with anyone on the team about over playing them while hurt. If a family doctor or team doctor clears him, which must happen if injured no matter what player or the significance of the injury, and shouldn't that is the ethical responsibility of the doctor and I have plenty of doctors in my family who understand this. Also say he was injured during the end of the season, he would not being doing any reps during workouts to gauge anything while resting and getting clearance from doctors. Also we do not know if it was chronic at the time because it could have been all healed up and re-injured while getting ready for the draft. I still believe that something happened at this time because every NFL organization knew to stay away and he was allowed to participate at the Senior Bowl which I believe requires a physical.
I admit there's a lot of hypothesis in my posts...that may not be accurate. There's just been nothing in the public domain about what happened and that led to my speculation as to what happened, And to be fair to the coaching, training and medical staffs there's been no other indication about any problems before so I'll just hope that all this works out for the best in Ciron's life. I bet it will. :tigereye:. Anyway, I do believe the reports that the LSU players will be ready this year and that they'll be physically ready for anything the SEC throws at them. :thumb:.
I don't want to get into the debate of the coaching staffs responsibility to the players, the players well being, and the players health. I would agree though that the coaches do have a responsibility to the players. Unfortunately, as with everything in life, mistakes happen. In the case of Black, I'm pretty sure no one is happy with the way things turned out for him, not the coaches, not his fellow teammates, and not him. I do want to say that I am pretty excited about this type of news from the players. If the players are taking things seriously, taking pride, working hard at getting stronger, faster and tougher, and building their confidence this will translate to the play on the field. The players have been lacking that sense of pride, toughness, and confidence over the past 2 seasons. If regaining part of that swagger comes from the S & C program I would say the Moffitt is more than doing his job.:geaux: :milesmic: :LSU231:
