The 2008 NCAA Scholarly Colloquium on College Sports affirmed that intercollegiate athletics is worthy of academic study. Now the 2009 session will reflect the result of that commitment.

This 2009 Colloquium theme “Paying the Price: Is Excellence in Sport Compatible with Good Health” is precisely what the Colloquium’s advisory board is seeking – a cross-disciplinary approach on a topic that affects athletics departments and the campus at-large.

“Last year’s theme (‘Is College Sport a Legitimate Focus for Scholarly Inquiry?’) was more of a stage-setter, talking about scholarship on intercollegiate athletics in general and trying to energize faculty and researchers to take that on,” said Scott Kretchmar, chair of the advisory board and a philosophy of sport professor at Penn State. “This year is much more specific and in some ways much more attractive to individuals interested in how scholarship and sport intersect.”

The Colloquium, to be conducted January 13-14 in conjunction with the NCAA Convention at the Gaylord National Hotel in Washington, D.C., will feature four keynote speakers:

•         Dan Gould, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports and professor in the kinesiology department at Michigan State.

•         Ronald Zernicke, director of Michigan’s Bone and Joint Injury and Prevention and Rehabilitation Center.

•         Mariah Burton Nelson, executive director of the American Association for Physical Activity and Recreation and former basketball student-athlete at Stanford.

•         Matthew Mitten, director of the National Sports Law Institute and the LL.M. in Sports Law program for foreign lawyers at Marquette University Law School. 

As was the case last year, the presenters will be joined by a number of reactors (two per keynote speaker) who follow the keynote with their own observations and, at times, counterpoints. The speakers and reactors were selected by a program committee composed of selected advisory board members.

New this year are three “free paper” sessions, during which a refereed pool of researchers will present their findings. A “call for papers” for those free-paper sessions is being conducted online. Submissions are due later this fall.

Kretchmar said the health-related theme for this year provides an ideal platform for research in an area that is relevant to all levels of athletics, from student-athletes and coaches to athletics directors and sports-medicine personnel. The focus also fits with a greater national emphasis on exercise. “We’re telling everyone to get out of their chair and get moving, but if we move too much or too much in a certain way, we can actually harm our health,” he said.

He said the four keynote speakers have approached human health holistically rather than just through the lens of one research discipline.

“For example,” Kretchmar said, “Dan Gould will talk about the subjective side of overtraining and burnout – the psychology of high-level training. Ron Zernicke will examine the issue from a cellular biological perspective – what happens to joints and muscles.”

He also credits the board for selecting a mix of university researchers and in-the-field practitioners. Mariah Burton Nelson, for example, brings a key perspective as a former basketball student-athlete at Stanford.

“This is another goal we have as a board to get the practitioners and theorists talking – both have a wealth of information and they need to hear from each other,” Kretchmar said.

Among the issues to be addressed is the high frequency of knee injuries in women’s soccer. “For young females in soccer who go from junior high through college and beyond, there is a fairly high probability of knee surgery, and there are ethical questions that go along with that,” Kretchmar said.

Gould will present first at 1:15 p.m. January 13. Kirk Cureton, head of Georgia’s kinesiology department, and Jay Coakley, professor emeritus of sociology at Colorado-Colorado Springs, will serve as reactors to Gould’s presentation.

Zernicke follows at 3 p.m., with reactors Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, an associate professor of kinesiology at Minnesota, and Holly Silvers, a physical therapist at the Santa Monica Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Research Foundation.

On January 14, Mitten presents his findings at 10 a.m., followed by reactions from Jan Boxhill, a senior lecturer and director of the Parr Center for Ethics at North Carolina, and Steven Stovitz, an assistant professor and primary-care physician at Minnesota.

Burton Nelson is the final keynote speaker at 1:45 p.m., with reactions from Ketra Armstrong, a kinesiology professor and director of the graduate program in sport management at Long Beach State (she also is president of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport), and Don Sabo, a professor of health policy at D’Youville College.

Following are abstracts from the keynote speakers, along with biographical information. For more information about the NCAA Convention, click here.

Daniel Gould, Michigan State University

Title: “Sources and Consequences of Athletic Burnout among College Athletes”

Abstract: It has been shown that it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to develop one’s talent in any field, including athletics. Given the amount of time, sacrifice and effort needed to become an expert athlete, it is not surprising that researchers have been interested in examining excessive stress and burnout in competitive athletes. Burnout has been defined as a physical, social and emotional withdrawal from a formerly enjoyable activity as a result of chronic stress. In this presentation, empirical research and theories on stress and burnout in athletes will be reviewed for the purpose of identifying sources of and consequences of stress and burnout in collegiate athletes. Implications for protecting the health of student-athletes will also be discussed.

Bio: Dan Gould is the director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports and professor in the department of kinesiology at Michigan State. His current research focuses on the role parents play in junior tennis, how coaches teach life skills to young athletes, and an assessment of the most pressing issues involved in high school sports. He has over 100 scholarly publications and over 50 applied sport psychology research dissemination-service publications. He has been invited to speak on sport psychology topics in more than 25 countries and has made more than 150 regional, national and international scholarly presentations. He currently serves as vice chair of the USTA Sport Science and Coaching Committee.

Ronald F. Zernicke, University of Michigan

Title: “Play at Your Own Risk: Sport and the Injury Epidemic”

Abstract: Each year, more than 30 million U.S. children and adolescents participate in organized sports. But also each year, more than 4.3 million nonfatal sports- and recreation-related injuries are treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments. We highlight the importance of physical activity and sport for health, but the prevention of injury, appropriate treatment and effective rehabilitation are key for achieving optimal health. In particular, ACL injuries are occurring in epidemic-like proportions. In the U.S. alone there are about 200,000 new ACL injuries at a total cost of over $1 billion per year. ACL patients are also at a significant risk of developing early-onset osteoarthritis. Exacerbating this concern is the increase in ACL injury rates in children and adolescents; particularly girls can experience ACL injury rates from two to five times greater than boys in the same sport. Additionally, 3.8 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occur in the U.S. each year. Significantly more research is needed, but intriguing findings are surfacing. For example, high school athletes’ recovery times for a sports concussion are longer than college athletes’ recovery times. Moreover, high school athletes who sustain a concussion are three times more likely to sustain a second concussion. Without a better understanding of injury mechanisms and complex causes, the risks may escalate in the coming years.

Bio: Ron Zernicke is the director of the University of Michigan Bone and Joint Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation Center, and he also is a professor in the department of orthopedic surgery. Previously, he was executive director of the Alberta Bone and Joint Health Institute. At the University of Calgary, he was Wood Professor in Joint Injury Research in the Faculty of Medicine, professor and dean of the Faculty of Kinesiology and professor in the Schulich School of Engineering. He was also professor and chair of the UCLA department of kinesiology. His research, focusing on adaptation of bone to exercise, diet, and injury; and joint injury and post-traumatic osteoarthritis, has been funded by peer-review agencies in both the United States and Canada. His BA was from Concordia University Chicago, and MSc and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Mariah Burton Nelson, executive director, American Association for Physical Activity and Recreation

Title: “The Damage I Have Done to Myself: Physical Intelligence and Lack of Same among College Athletes”

Abstract: Thirty years after graduating from Stanford, Mariah Burton Nelson looks back on her experience as a star college basketball player and asks, “Why and how did I damage both knees so severely that it is now impossible to walk downstairs without limping?” Is that sort of “collateral damage” an inevitable consequence of college sports success? Whose responsibility is it to ensure that college athletes not only learn how to stretch and push their bodies, but also how to care for them? Nelson describes what she calls physical intelligence: the ability to listen to the body’s subtle signals and respond wisely to them. She calls on coaches to learn about, model, and promote physical intelligence, maintaining that in an educational setting, coaches have a responsibility to teach strategies for long-term health as well as short-term victory. She also challenges college athletes to stand up for their rights to a healthy, safe athletics culture.

Bio: A former Stanford University and professional basketball player, Burton Nelson is a nationally recognized authority on gender, sports and competition. At Stanford, she was the leading scorer and rebounder all four years; one rebounding record was unbroken for 24 years. She has served as executive director of the American Association for Physical Activity and Recreation since 2006. Nelson is the author of six books, and has been published by Harper, Morrow, Random House, and Harcourt Brace. Her most recent book (2008) is “Making Money on the Sidelines: A Game Plan for Getting Started.” She has appeared on ESPN, Today, Good Morning America, Dateline, Nightline and Larry King Live, among others. Known for her provocative and humorous keynotes, she has spoken to hundreds of college, corporate, association and government audiences.

Matthew J. Mitten, Marquette University Law School

Title: “Rules Limiting Athletic Performance or Prohibiting Athletic Participation for Health Reasons: Legal and Ethical Considerations”

Abstract: This presentation will analyze the paradox between intercollegiate sport’s objectives of maximizing athletics performance and providing athletics participation opportunities to those possessing the requisite physical ability and skills to compete effectively, and NCAA or university rules that limit athletics performance or prohibit individual student-athletes from participating in intercollegiate sports for health reasons. Even if doing so creates potential future adverse health effects, some student-athletes seek to maximize athletics performance by taking performance-enhancing substances. Others may want to participate in intercollegiate sports with a physical abnormality and are willing to assume an increased risk or severity of injury beyond that inherent in the sport. My conclusion is that the NCAA and its member universities, as producers and regulators of intercollegiate sports, have valid legal and ethical authority to promulgate and enforce health and competition rules that limit the autonomy interests of adult student-athletes.

Bio: Mitten is the director of the National Sports Law Institute and the LL.M. in Sports Law program for foreign lawyers at Marquette University Law School. He earned a B.A. in economics from Ohio State University and his JD from the University of Toledo College of Law.  A leading sports law scholar whose work has been published in several law reviews and medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Mitten has co-authored a textbook titled “Sports Law and Regulation: Cases, Materials, and Problems” (Aspen Publishers, Inc. 2005).  He has given lectures and presentations on sports law at numerous conferences and seminars throughout the United States as well as in Australia and in China. Mitten formerly chaired the American Association of Law Schools’ Section on Law and Sports and the NCAA's Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports.