Opinion: UNC should study life outcome of its athletes

Earlier this month, The New York Times published a feature on former UNC football player Ryan Hoffman, detailing his struggles with homelessness and probable mental illness following the end of his athletic career at UNC.

The article rightfully prompted active responses from Hoffman’s former teammates, who set up a fund for Hoffman, according to reporting by The (Raleigh) News & Observer.

On Wednesday, Hoffman was pictured at UNC, but UNC officials declined to confirm if he had been brought to campus for evaluation and treatment.

The compassionate reactions of Hoffman’s teammates and coaches should be applauded. It is an example of UNC at its best.

Yet it would be shortsighted to reduce Hoffman’s story to a tale of bad luck. Hoffman’s case is illustrative of how easy it is to lose track of the many athletes who pass through UNC.

If UNC is to hold up the example of “The Carolina Way” through its athletic teams with moral authority, it must find out more about how athletes’ lives unfold after they leave UNC.

Hoffman has struggled with employment, and he and his family believe his mental health issues could be a result of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a kind of brain injury caused by repeated hits to the head — which can cause depression, aggression and memory loss, among other symptoms. CTE has been shown to occur at high rates in football players.

UNC’s Kevin Guskiewicz has led national research on CTE and closely monitors the hits the UNC football team’s players receive in practice and in games. This work is valuable, but UNC should find out more about the health of its graduated athletes. Football is hardly the only sport that can cause serious head injury — women’s soccer has been shown to be highly dangerous in this regard.

And that an athlete could struggle finding a place in the workforce after school is not surprising given the incredible difficulty of juggling the equivalent of a full-time job with UNC’s demanding academic standards. It is not hard to imagine situations where academics take a backseat to athletic performance.

As long as UNC holds up its athletics program as a model for balancing academic and athletic excellence, it should offer comprehensive, publicly available data on athletes’ employment and health outcomes after graduation. Reporting graduation rates alone does not give a full picture.

A few positive anecdotes are not representative of the life outcomes for all athletes who pass through the University.

Too little is known to jump to sure conclusions. Hopefully, Hoffman’s case is an isolated one.

But if it is not, this community must know and then do more to make sure its athletes are prepared for life after school.

UNC’s athletics once had a reputation for promoting outstanding ethical behavior and intense loyalty for all the many people who passed through its programs. To carry on this tradition, UNC should look seriously at whether it is offering a square deal to the athletes who give so much for their school.