It’s always easy to blame a poor season on injury struggles, but Grinnell College really has a point. Its football team has so many injuries that it is calling an end to the season.
The Division III university in Iowa — which is nationally known for its unconventional basketball team — announced on Tuesday that it would forfeit the remaining seven games on the team’s schedule simply because too many players had suffered injuries. Through the first three games of the season, 11 players had suffered season-ending or multi-week injuries.
That left 28 healthy players out of the team’s 39-player roster, which provided no room to field a team with any semblance of a depth chart.
The school said in a statement:
This decision is in line with the Athletic Department’s mission, which states that student-athletes benefit from an integrated, co-curricular experience that upholds the academic mission of the College as the department provides individualized and group instruction in a safe environment, celebrates academic excellence, and emphasizes experiential learning. The current state of the football team precludes the College from providing a safe environment.
The College is unwilling to compromise the health and safety of its players, including the 11 players, who over the course of the first seven weeks of practice and play, will miss some or all of the season.
The suspended season will give Grinnell an 0-10 record on the year. The team is 3-30 since 2016.
