Weekend Debate - The Injury Bug

Results from last week: My apologies to Jeff Tedford, but according to the Dawg Pound faithful, you have been voted off the island are the most likely to be fired in 2012. The real winners of last weeks poll are Lane Kiffin (only 1 vote), David Shaw (only 5 votes, probably one from Gekko) and Kyle Whittingham (9 votes). Those are the three coaches we think are least likely to be fired.

This Weekend's Debate: What is the main cause of the injury bug at the UW? This has been a rough week for injury news, it seems like every practice a few more players get dinged up. Most of the injuries are somewhat minor and the players will be back on the field for the first game. But others, aren't so minor and will require missing multiple games. My question to you, the Dawg Pound faithful, why in the world are we seeing so many injuries? Is it bad luck? Is it just the game of football? Have we played too many true freshmen? Could it be a lack of conditioning or stretching? Or does it just seem like a lot of injuries because it's the team we are focused on?

After the jump is a break down of these different categories and how it could (or could not) be the cause of the injury epidemic on Montlake.

Bad Luck - Some times you just get dealt a bad hand, at least know we have more depth to help us deal with the injuries. On the other side of the coin, luck is an excuse that losers use. You create your own "luck" with proper strength and conditioning.

It's just football - This is not a girly sport, when you wind up a bunch of 200 - 300 pound college athletes, then send them colliding into each other, injuries are going to happen. The million dollar question is: are we suffering more injuries than the average college team?

Playing True Freshmen - How often have we seen guys play as true freshmen, then end up getting hurt a few games into the season. It' asking a lot of a guy who graduated high school just a few months ago, to go head to head with somebody like Alameda Ta'amu. It takes a very rare athlete, probably trained by a former pro athlete (see Shane Brostek), to be strong enough as a true freshmen to handle the physical nature of college football.

Lack of good conditioning - How many more years of the injury bug before we start asking question of Ivan the Terrible? I have no doubt in his abilities to develop strong players, but to be honest, I'm starting to wonder if the injury epidemic isn't caused by poor conditioning. Some of you will think I'm off my rocker, but it's a well document fact that if you over train one muscle, without properly training its counter muscle, it can set you up for problems. For instance, if you get your quad built up big and strong, but don't spend enough time on your hamstring, you are bound to pull that hamstring! I don't know enough about knees, but it sure seems like we have had more than our fair share of ACL issues during Ivan's tenure at the UW.

It's just because we are focused on our team - Do we really have an abnormally high amount of injuries? It's rather difficult to document how many players on each team get injured over the course of a season. Do we really have an epidemic, or are we blowing things out of proportion?

Let's hear it Dawg fans? Do we have an injury epidemic? If we do, what is causing this epidemic? More importantly, is there anything we can do to change the trend and become a healthier team? If you think I've missed something that factors into the equation, let me know in the comment section, it can always be added to the poll.