Football is a brutal game. Just ask Grinnell College.
The Division III school in Iowa announced Tuesday it was forfeiting the rest of its season due to injuries. Eleven Grinnell players have sustained injuries that ended their season or kept them out of multiple games, leaving just 28 healthy players.
“The current state of the football team precludes the College from providing a safe environment,” the school said in a news release.
Grinnell lost its first three games by a combined score of 114-3. It will forfeit its final seven games, making its record 0-10 for the season, and 3-37 since 2016, according to the Des Moines Register.
The Pioneers’ game on Saturday would have been against St. Norbert College, which beat Grinnell last season by a score of 91-0. (See clips from that game above.)
A school spokesperson told HuffPost that the decision would not affect next season.
College football accounted for an estimated 47,199 injuries annually and the highest competition injury rate (39.9 per 1,000 “athlete-exposures”), according to a study posted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015. The findings were based on injuries reported by NCAA schools from the academic year 2009-10 to 2013-14.
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