Michigan to implement enhanced athlete safety measures

Michigan announced Thursday plans to implement enhanced player-safety measures beginning Saturday with the Wolverines' game at Rutgers.

The measures were announced by athletic director Dave Brandon, who, along with coach Brady Hoke, has been under fire this week following an incident in last week's loss to Minnesota involving an injury to quarterback Shane Morris.

Among the measures:

•A certified athletic trainer will be positioned in the press box to have a better view of the full field and to better spot injuries.

•The football program will add two-way radio communications to replace hand signals for communicating injuries.

•Taking helmets from a player once he has been evaluated by a member of the medical team and is declared unable to continue playing.

Hoke has been criticized for not immediately sitting Morris for the rest of the game after the sophomore took a hard hit in the fourth quarter of Saturday's 30-14 loss to Minnesota. Hoke said Monday he didn't see the hit on Morris, and that as far as he knew, that quarterback still hadn't been diagnosed with a concussion. Brandon released a statement about 12 hours later saying Morris had in fact been diagnosed with a probable concussion ... as of Sunday.

On Thursday, Brandon reiterated that communication was a problem — both during the game when Morris was hit, and over the next couple days.

Brandon said the new measures were developed by Darryl Conway, associate athletic director for student-athlete health and welfare, in collaboration with the team's certified athletic training staff and team physicians from the University of Michigan Health System.

"We place the utmost importance on the safety and welfare of our student-athletes," Conway said. "Our system failed quarterback Shane Morris last week. We never want that to happen again for a student-athlete. We are confident in the new measures."

Contributing: The Associated Press