How we got the story

Under the Georgia Open Records Act, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked every public college and university in Georgia with an NCAA Division I, II or III football program to provide totals they had collected of student-athlete concussions by sport for at least the five previous years.

The AJC also asked each school to turn over copies of its policies concerning how student-athlete concussions are handled and treated.

As the football programs across the state range from very large to very small, the newspaper sought a means of comparing each school to others its own size. To do that, the AJC identified the athletic conference to which each Georgia school belonged, and then sent requests to the competitor schools in those conferences. Requests made to the out-of-state schools were made citing the freedom of information laws of that state.

In all, the newspaper sent requests to 62 public and semi-private colleges and universities in 16 states. The schools belonged to seven athletic conferences: Southeastern, Atlantic Coast, Sun Belt, Atlantic Sun, South Intercollegiate, Gulf South and Mid-Eastern Athletic. Private schools were excluded because they are not legally obligated to disclose information.

Several schools did not provide access to the AJC’s requests. Five declined, saying their data was exempt from their state’s public information laws. Eight schools did not respond. A half-dozen acknowledged receipt of the request but then never turned over the requested information. A few schools provided data but turned over less than the requested five years without explanation.

Twenty schools provided data on concussions for their football programs. The AJC entered that information into a database to analyze the statistics for this story.