Browns left tackle Joe Thomas doesn’t say much. So when he does, people pay attention.
On Tuesday, Thomas had something to say about offseason workouts at the University of Oregon sufficiently intense to put three players in the hospital.
“Whoever is behind this should be fired, nothing to do with football. Where’s NCAA? How about protecting athletes instead of your paychecks!” Thomas said on Twitter. “These are the petty games ‘coaches’ play when they are clueless about actually coaching the game and developing the kids. Gives [football a] bad name. . . . If NCAA won’t protect these student athletes, maybe they need to form some type of coalition that has power to stand up to the ‘coaches’.”
Thomas is right. It’s bad enough that these kids are exploited, getting compensation that pales in comparison to the revenue they generate. They also have no real protection against abusive practices, whether it’s unsafe workouts in January or unlimited padded practices during the season or grown men coming back to school and practicing against kids who supposedly are kept out of the NFL due in part to the goofy notion that they need to be protected against grown men.
Apparently, college players do need protection against grown men. And if the grown men into whose care they are charged can’t be trusted to take proper care of them, hopefully there are other grown men and women in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of the government who will.