If you want to be sickened by what happens, at times, inside big-time college football, then read Jason Batacao’s account of former players at Utah who say they were being pressured to play when they were injured and still recovering.

It’s ridiculous what these players — six of them in The Salt Lake Tribune’s report — were pushed to endure, according to their accounts. They said they were authentically hurt, and yet coaches allegedly threatened them that if they did not suit up for practice and games, they would either lose their starting positions or their scholarships.

The players were at Utah from 2019 to 2024.

I won’t get into the specifics because you can read the story — and maybe you already have — and make your own call. Nobody’s being naive here.

My call is this: No matter how much a coach is desperate for wins, if he directly or indirectly behaves in such a manner, he should be severely disciplined.

Through the years, I, too, have been made aware of situations at other schools where this kind of treatment was put upon athletes, especially in football. It’s a violent game, and those who play it get hurt. It happens, obviously. And a coach sometimes gets weary of hearing about a player he and his program are depending on to compete at their best on the field. Such a player is labeled as “soft.” It’s just about the worst designation a player can be assigned. I get it: some players actually do milk their injuries to get out of practice. That also happens. But that doesn’t give coaches license to assume every injured player is doing so.

Coaches will say publicly that they have no say in medical decisions. Those are left between team doctors and the players themselves. And while that may usually be the case, there are consequences within a coach’s control that sway those decisions in favor of whatever the coach wants.

I’ve seen that with physical ailments, and also, in a few situations, with mental health. It might be that the latter, while less frequent, is handled even worse by supposedly tough men who run programs but don’t fully understand the complexities of the human mind — particularly when the person struggling is an athlete who is expected to be big, strong and fast.

Most players want to play. They sacrifice greatly to do so. But when they severely twist an ankle or a knee or a shoulder or break a bone and feel the accompanying pain, they should not practice or play.

No duh, right?

Gone with the bend.

Many athletes get dinged hard and play through their pain, but just because they are willing to do so doesn’t mean they should.

Team doctors or outside physicians must be empowered over coaches to block the aforementioned pressure, without any fear for their own standing if they anger a head coach. And coaches should be forced to listen when it comes to medical evaluations. Not infrequently, there’s gray area in such opinions, but that’s where the player’s independent voice must be heard.

Sure, there are some instances where a player thinks only about his long-term prospects — what effect an injury now will have on his chances of going on to play in the NFL later. Some of those athletes are overly cautious. In other words, they want their cake and they want to eat it — when and where and how they choose. That can be troublesome, especially when said player is having the Brink’s truck backed to his apartment door, filled with NIL money.

That possibility, while rare, increases the importance of capable and responsible team physicians who must be free to make independent assessments, completely clear of a coach’s influence. That influence cannot be overstated. A head football coach is the CEO of his program and, at some schools, is as powerful as the university president.

He might know exactly what his program needs better than any outsider to succeed off and on the field. But that power stops cold — must stop cold — when it comes to the physical and mental welfare of the athletes who play for him — or cannot, over periods of time, play for him. That’s wholly outside his area of expertise.

Whether it’s outside his moral judgment — his sense of decency toward his players — depends on how corrupt, how out of whack that judgment is.

What’s allegedly happened at Utah has happened — and happens still — at other schools, too. That doesn’t excuse it. Any coach — no matter how established or powerful — caught up in that recklessness, caught up in evaluating the medical fitness of his players, needs an evaluation done on him, measuring just how fit he is to go on having the privilege of doing his job.