SEC Mandates Injury Reports For 3 Sports Effective Immediately

Ahead of Thursday's Week 1 college football action, the SEC announced new guidelines for a player availability injury report system for football, men's and women's basketball, and baseball that will take effect immediately.

As part of the new player availability system, SEC school personnel must report player availabilities three days before the next football game and submit daily updates leading to a final report no later than 90 minutes before the game's start. For basketball and baseball, the reports must be submitted the night before a scheduled matchup and are required to be updated on gameday.

According to the conference's press release, fines for inaccurate or late reports will range between $25,000 to $100,000 for football and $15,000 to $25,000 for basketball and baseball.

Similar to the system used in the NFL, players will be designated as "available," "probable," "doubtful" and "questionable" before game day. On game day reports, designations will transition to "available," "game-time decision" or "out."

A large reason for the system is to aid the growing sports betting industry by creating more up-to-date reports for betters, an idea that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey envisioned when crafting the new regulations.

“When you start to see the number of dollars being bet on legalized sports gambling around college sports, not just football, but men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and baseball and softball, all those catch your attention,” Sankey said during SEC media days in July. "We have to be thoughtful about how information is managed."

The Big Ten began enforcing such a system last season, where teams must provide availability reports to the league office no more than two hours before kickoff. Similarly, the MAC recently announced that their teams must provide availability reports to the league at least three hours before kickoff.

With the SEC joining the Big Ten and MAC with availability reports, only time will tell how it will impact sports betting and whether other conferences will soon follow suit.