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| Photo by Paula R. Lively. CC-BY-2.0 |
Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett allegedly suffered an injury after being hit in the knee by a cameraman during pregame warm-ups. Barrett went on to play during the first-half of the game, but left during the second-half due to the knee injury.
The claim that an unidentified cameraman was responsible was initially made by OSU coach Urban Meyer during the post-game press conference. “A guy with a camera hit [Barrett] in the knee…” explained a visibly angry Meyer, going on to call for an “all-out” investigation into who was responsible, though ESPN later reported that OSU Athletic Director Gene Smith said such a probe wouldn’t happen.
“We’re not doing a full-blown investigation to find the photographer,” Smith said. “We’re looking at what things led up to that.”
Details about how the incident happened are unclear, and despite there being a stadium full of cameras, no footage of the actual ‘collision’ has been released. TMZ has obtained some footage of the immediate aftermath from a fan who pulled out his smartphone to record what was happening, which shows Barrett limping off and gives you an idea of just how crowded the sidelines were during warm-up:
Despite Meyer’s anger at the specific cameraman, the incident will probably have a broader impact rather than individual punishment. Smith stresses that the focus will be on making changes so that something like this doesn’t ever happen again.
According to ESPN, Smith said:
The conference office is gathering data. That’s the extent of it. The outcome of it will ultimately be improved operations. There’s no attempt to try and find a person. The attempt is to find out what happened, what corrective measures we need to put in place.
So it sounds like the individual cameraman is off the hook… unless of course this ‘collision’ translates into strict new rules and limited access for sports photographers. Then he’ll have have some very upset colleagues to answer to.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
