You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
The eight head football coaches in the Ivy League voted last week to no longer allow tackling during regular season practices. The institutions' presidents and athletic directors still have to approve the change before it is formally adopted. Dartmouth College, a member of the league, already eliminated tackling during practices in 2010, and the following year the league reduced the number of full-contact practices that teams could hold.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association does not have rules on how many full-contact practices football teams may have, though its guidelines recommend allowing no more than two per week during the season and no more than four during the preseason.
According to a report released last year by the Institute of Medicine, most concussions in college sports occur during practice, not during games. The study examined the 262 concussions recorded by the NCAA's Injury Surveillance Program during the 2012 and 2013 seasons. The researchers found that 57.6 percent of those concussions happened during practice.
