We have no idea if football players are faking injuries, so let’s shut up

Saturday night, Baylor safety Terrell Burt appeared to fake an injury. He was walking, and then a teammate told him to get to the ground, and he fell, and the game was stopped. People laughed and laughed and laughed at Baylor faking an injury, and many retweets were had.

One problem, though. Burt was actually hurt, with a sprained ankle. Monday morning, it was still reportedly wrapped in a huge bandage. A senior backup, he had been forced into the game due to injuries to two starters. What looked like a player faking an injury was actually a hobbled player attempting to fight through an injury until teammates and coaches convinced him he had to leave the game.

Even before trainers confirmed Burt was hurt and Kirk Herbstreit apologized for saying Burt wasn’t hurt, I was wary to accuse Burt of faking. Because what I saw Saturday night reminded me of an incident from Week 3. Texas was playing Cal, Longhorns linebacker Edwin Freeman was walking perfectly normally, and then he looked to the sideline, and he fell over.

To pretty much everybody watching the game, it appeared he was faking an injury. People laughed and laughed and laughed at Texas faking an injury, and many retweets were had. Somebody even took the effort to mash it up with American Sniper.

One problem, though. Freeman wasn’t faking his injury. He had a badly injured shoulder, and only returned to action this past Saturday night against West Virginia, eight weeks after everybody made fun of him.

I, personally, am included in the group of people who made fun of Freeman. I wrote a post whose headline accused Freeman of “egregiously faking” an injury. Later, we changed the headline to “wildly exaggerating,” because we thought he might have actually tweaked something, but chose to go over-the-top to make sure the refs saw his injury. It was a bad mistake, and I regret it quite a lot.

What I learned from that mistake is that accusing a player faking an injury has no potential positive benefit. We have no way of knowing whether or not players are faking injuries, and to assume they are -- and make fun of them for it -- stands only to make football a dumber, less safe sport.

Football is a sport where our strongest, fastest young men run into each other. They will get hurt, and they will get hurt a lot. Sometimes these injuries will obviously cripple them. Sometimes they won’t. Just because a player isn’t obviously crippled does not mean they haven’t suffered an injury.

Football doesn’t have a lot of good rules regarding player safety, but here’s one: When a player is down on the field, play is stopped. No questions asked.

When a player has an injury that doesn’t actively cripple them, the player in question should get on the ground, in spite of the fact that they are perfectly capable of walking. Not only is this good for their team -- teams are better when they have 11 healthy players than 10 guys and one nursing a painful injury -- it’s good for their bodies. There is a bone or muscle or tendon coming apart, and every hit they take could potentially make that worse.

But then when a player actually does that, we idiots chirp in from the stands or from home to mock them. And by doing so, we’re telling them that the good thing they’re doing is bad, and maybe preventing other players from doing the same thing in the future.

Somewhere out there, there are probably football players faking injuries. It’s happened before, and it will probably continue happening so long as injuries exist.

I wish that wasn’t the case. It’s an incredibly cynical tactic, taking advantage of everybody’s instincts to protect players. Refs have to stop play to prevent bad injuries from worsening, and occasionally, this will mean they accommodate cheaters.

So yes, it’s certainly possible that the player writhing on the ground in the game you’re watching is acting. But it’s also possible he actually is in severe pain. Make fun of him if you want, but as smart as you think you are, you have no way of knowing whether you’re right or not unless you’re hooked into that player’s pain sensors. And you’re not.

So before you criticize that player, think. Maybe you’re right, and that player is acting and is a cheater and bad.

But is laughing at a player you think is “faking” an injury worth possibly laughing at someone who actually is hurt? Are you so confident in your belief, one which you have no way of possibly confirming, that you’re willing to risk mocking an unpaid 19-year-old frightened they’ve just permanently damaged the one and only body they’ll ever have?

Burt and Freeman were smart enough to get down and get their bodies out of harm’s way they were breaking, and for this, they were mocked. Let’s all be smarter going forward.