Carl Prine arrived at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2000. He has written award-winning investigations into the state of America's chemical plant security, Title IX gender discrimination against high school athletes, the heroin trade in Western Pennsylvania and the 2002 Quecreek mine disaster.
He collaborated with Trib business writer Michael Yeomans on a 2003 probe into the financial stability of the National Hockey League. It published while Prine covered the invasion of Iraq as a reporter embedded with the U.S. Marine Corps.
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Bloody Sundays
On any given Sunday, 90 men will mummy themselves in tape, pads and plastic armor. (2005-01-09) Jerome Bettis, the NFL's King of Pain
The snaps, groans and creaks sound more like a log in a fire than the knees of an NFL tailback. (2005-01-09) Defensive backs face highest rates of injury
In an NFL filled with Lions, Bengals and Bears, the most endangered species might be the defensive back. (2005-01-09) NFL equipment causes controversy
Clothes might make the man, but in the NFL it's the helmets and pads that keep players alive. (2005-01-09) Rules don't force players to use pads
For the past decade, NFL players -- especially those who rely on speed, like wideouts and cornerbacks -- have increasingly chucked pads that protect their thighs, tailbones, elbows and hips. (2005-01-09) Effects of blows to brain linger a lifetime
In the milliseconds it takes for a player's head to recoil from a sledgehammer tackle, his brain swishes like a fat olive in the cocktail glass of his skull. (2005-01-09) Extra pounds cause trouble later in life
If you think yinz is fat, check out the Steelers' locker room. While the NFL prides itself on fit and trim athletes, all but three of the 53 Pittsburgh players are clinically overweight. (2005-01-09) Finances worsen woes, critics say
When it comes to NFL injuries, players and their agents say money is the root of all evil. (2005-01-09)
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The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review began this project on professional football injuries by analyzing the last four years of weekly injury reports compiled by the NFL.
Today's report is the culmination of that effort — trips to training camps and locker rooms, more than 200 interviews with active and former players, coaches, historians, union officials, NFL front office executives, agents, physicians, trainers, mechanical engineers and equipment managers and manufacturers.
Rather than a simple story on wins and losses, the Trib decided to follow the insiders' advice on the forces that truly influence the league's high injury rates: NFL rules changes, finances, equipment designs and the rapidly increasing size, strength and speed of the modern athlete.
Data came from numerous sources, including the weekly injury reports generated by the franchises themselves and decimated nationwide.
Other key pieces of information came from archives at the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, which safeguards rare game reports, rosters, training camp weigh-ins and workplace investigations conducted by private and governmental agencies. The oldest data sets used by the Trib were Ivy League medical charts dating back to the 1920s.
From all that came series of databases focusing on 27 of the most common non-disease ailments suffered by professional athletes every season. The Trib then correlated those numbers with NFL rosters to determine which positions were likely to absorb certain kinds of injuries, and which weren't.
Players and medical experts filled in the blanks on why various sorts of players got "nicked," "dinged" or "thunged," and others didn't. From there, statistical analyses of the databases, controlling for factors ranging from the season to whether a team played a particular game on artificial turf helped supplement the reporting.
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