Harty: No bad intentions in rhabdo-gate

If we’ve learned anything about the rhabdo ordeal and the investigation that came after, it’s that some things happen without explanation.

I would’ve been shocked if the five-person committee had found a specific cause for why 13 Iowa football players were hospitalized with the rare muscle disorder rhabdomyolysis in January.

We’ll probably never know the exact reason why just those 13 players were stricken with it or why it happened this time and not in previous times under the same circumstances at Iowa.

But since rhabdomyolsis is caused by exercising beyond the body’s ability to handle the stress, and since the Iowa team was in the midst of a strenuous offseason workout regime when the outbreak happened, the committed basically confirmed what we already knew.

This was an unfortunate thing that happened, but without anybody being at fault. The report cleared all UI football players, coaches, physicians and trainers from any wrongdoing.

That also came as no surprise, because did you really think the Iowa coaches would willingly do anything to jeopardize the health of the players or do anything to bully them?

Football is a brutal and nasty sport that often pushes players to the limit physically and mentally. There is a thin line between pushing your body to the extreme and pushing your body over the limit.

Unfortunately, that line was crossed in January at Iowa, but there was no evil intent, nor was it a case of the coaches punishing the players for failing to meet expectations.

It was more a case of the Iowa coaches being naïve, and it finally caught up to them.

“Quite frankly, I don’t think I knew about (rhabdomyolysis) before this occurrence,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz told reporters Wednesday at a news conference to mark the start of spring practice. “So we’ve learned a little bit more about that. I still think there is a lot to be learned from what I know.

“One thing about our sports medicine staff; I think they’ll take this as an opportunity to learn more.”

A heightened awareness is one of the positives to come from this situation.

The committee recommended that the Iowa coaches should abandon the squat-lifting workout that it believes contributed to the hospitalizations.

That’s about the closest the committee came to finding a specific cause.

UI officials will be more proactive from this point on. Or in other words, things will never be the same again, especially for the 13 players.

Rhabdo will forever be a concern in the future, which isn’t a bad thing.

The challenge for Ferentz and his staff will be to avoid becoming paranoid and soft because that can be dangerous, too.

“You have to do your job,” Ferentz said. “You have to be smart.

“And the most positive thing out of the report was I think they’re convinced, five smart people are convinced, that nobody was negligent here. So you have to learn from what happened, and we can’t discard what happened even though we don’t have a traceable link to this thing. So let’s move forward.”

Hopefully, UI officials also learned something about public relations because it looked bad when neither Ferentz nor Iowa  athletics director Gary Barta attended the news conference that was held shortly after the players were hospitalized.

Some of the national media took Ferentz’s absence as him not caring about his players, and they swooped in and let him have it.

The problem is that some of the stuff written about Ferentz and about his training staff was shortsighted, unfair and foolish, especially the report saying that someone on Ferentz’s staff ultimately should be fired over the rhabdo outbreak.

It was fair to criticize Ferentz for not attending the first news conference because it was a public relations disaster. And it was fair to question why there was an outbreak of rhabdo at Iowa because the condition is so rare and because it can cause serious health problems.

But it was unfair that some journalists, even some highly respected ones, immediately blamed Ferentz and his staff for something they knew very little about at the time.

But like Ferentz said to reporters Wednesday, that’s the world we now live in. Everybody has an opinion, but not everybody is willing to wait for the facts before expressing them.

Mistakes were made at Iowa, and 13 young men paid a heavy price for it.

But to suggest that something sinister was involved or to question Ferentz’s motivation or his character is ridiculous.

He’s the same humble guy whom everybody and their mother loved when he first rebuilt the Iowa program a decade ago.

It hasn’t always been easy on the field or off it, with the investigative report by Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports on athlete arrests the latest distraction.

But that story also had another side to it in that most of the 18 offenses were alcohol-related and considered minor in the big scheme of things.

Ferentz brought up that point Wednesday by using his son, junior center James Ferentz, as an example.

James Ferentz had an alcohol charge that contributed to Iowa’s total in the report.

“I would encourage people to know our players,” Ferentz said. “In fact, I’ve got one that lives in our house, one of the 18 kids. And he’s a pretty good kid.”

It basically comes down to whether you trust and believe in Ferentz. The rhabdo case and the SI report certainly can’t be ignored.

But you also can’t ignore all the good things that Ferentz does on a regular basis.

He might make mistakes, but at least nobody is accusing him of lying about it.

You can’t say that about all Big Ten football coaches.

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Tags: football, Kirk Ferentz, rhabdomyolysis

Category: Iowa Hawkeyes Football