Colleges Swear by Football Knee Braces. Not All Players and Experts Do. (Published 2017) (2024)

TAMPA, Fla. — They are itchy. They are awkward. They are cumbersome and largely unattractive and, when used over a long period of time, can develop what has been generously described as “a disgusting crust.” Also, they frequently smell as bad as an unventilated horse stall, and it is debatable whether they work as intended.

“Yeah, but other than that, we love them,” Ross Pierschbacher, an offensive lineman for Alabama’s football team, said on Saturday. (He was kidding.)

Pierschbacher was talking about knee braces, and, despite the fact he is not actively recovering from an injury, he wears a pair in every practice and game for the Crimson Tide.

All of the Alabama linemen take part in what is known as prophylactic bracing. So do most of the linemen for Clemson, which will face Alabama here in the national championship game on Monday night. So do the big men at Louisiana State. And at Florida. And at Ohio State. Michigan made a rule about bracing just this past season. And, lest it seem like a top-tier-only phenomenon, the behemoths at North Texas do it, too.

Brian Moore, a longtime executive at DonJoy, which manufactures braces, said he believed the practice of prophylactic bracing began in the early 1990s, though it did not gain traction at the highest level of college football until later that decade. The premise is that the braces are needed to protect the vulnerable joints of linemen, who are often hit on the side or the back of a knee by other players who are falling in the so-called trenches, near the line of scrimmage.

In fact, according to Moore, just about every Division I team in the country now requires its linemen to wear knee braces in practice, if not in games, even if those players have never had a knee injury.