Clarification: Medical Scholarships

Coach Saban announced earlier today that four players had been placed on medical scholarship: Tyrone Prothro, Byron Walton, Jake Jones, and Aaron McDaniel.

But exactly what does "medical scholarship" mean in real terms? Essentially it means their football days are over.

Coach Saban specifically said:

[W]hen we put guys in these situations, the medical staff is 99.9 percent sure that this is a long-term issue that we are dealing with and it would be unusual that a guy could ever come back.

So, basically, as said earlier, it means in real terms that neither Prothro, Walton, Jones, or McDaniel will ever play football at Alabama again.

Jones had re-occurring leg injuries (no specifics), and McDaniel apparently blew out his knee very badly in the 2006 Arkansas game (missed that one). Prothro has the obvious leg injury, and apparently Byron Walton had some very serious heat-related issues. Saban had this to say:

"This is the one that I really don’t want to get involved with because I don’t know the technical names of this. I think you should ask the medical staff about that one. But this was a heat-related issue that has been reoccurring for him since high school. When he exerted himself at the level that he would have to to condition and do the things that you need to do here, he put himself at tremendous risk. And he actually had issues in the summer conditioning program, went through some tremendous lab work and there is a name for this. It’s not an unusual thing but he would have been in danger of having a heat-related problem or a physical exertion related problem moving forward. And it has something to do with how your muscles break down and how your body dissipates that and how it affects your kidneys and liver with serious issue."

Sounds like very scary stuff. Though I cannot help but wonder why the medical staff didn't notice this when he came out of high school.