In "The Bronx Zoo," Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock's irreverent tell-all book on the 1978 New York Yankees, Lyle observed a "P" fashioned from tape was stuck to a wall of the athletic trainers' room in the Yankees clubhouse. The Yankees' lefty relief pitcher casually wondered for weeks about the letter's meaning, not learning its origin until the team had rallied from 14 games behind to win the division.

Trainers Gene Monahan and Herman Schneider put it up in response to a midseason rant by Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

"It turns out the P stood for probation," Lyle wrote near the end of the book. "Right after the All-Star break, when (six players) got hurt, George called the trainers up to his office and said, 'These injuries have to cease. One more thing happens and you two guys are gone. Fired. You're on probation right now. One more injury and it's see ya.' So they put the P up on the wall to remind them of their status."

They got to take it down after the Yankees produced one of the most dramatic comebacks in Major League history.

The story came to mind this week with the revelation that a fourth Texas Tech football player had suffered a season-ending knee injury. Cam'Ron Valdez joined Dylan Spencer, Joseph Adedire and Vinny Sciury — two starters and two top backups — in being done for the year in the first month.

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Texas Tech is putting out a twice-weekly injury report this season, one on Monday and one 45 minutes before games. Tech coach Joey McGuire says he's being transparent in that regard, but won't comment otherwise.

This past Monday, 13 players were on it: the four who are out for the season, two who are out for Saturday's game against Arizona State and seven more listed as questionable.

Seeing them grouped together and categorized has triggered an unexpected development: It's caused people to freak out. When we screen-shotted and posted this week's injury report on X, the old Twitter, two dozen of you replied. Several had some variation of a response offered by Mark: "Is it a turf issue? Strength and conditioning?"

Comparing the number on Texas Tech football injury list to those of NFL teams

My thoughts in a nutshell: Football's a violent game; players get hurt. On Monday, I compared the 13 listed by Tech to the numbers currently reported by NFL teams. Only 12 of the 32 NFL teams had fewer than 10 players on an injured list. Nine had 13 or more, including the Patriots with 20, the Browns with 19, the Lions and the Dolphins with 17, the Rams with 15.

In that context, Tech's 13 players ranging from questionable to out is within a normal range. (We compared Tech's numbers to those of NFL teams, because outside of the Big Ten and the SEC, which have adopted mandatory reporting, disclosure elsewhere in college football is voluntary, as is the case with Tech, and not standardized.)

Through the first three weeks of the season, there were 16 instances in which Tech listed players as questionable, and in 12 of those instances the player played in that week's game. (Tech isn't categorizing anyone as doubtful or probable.) The Red Raiders have been relatively healthy, outside of the four season-ending knee injuries.

The change that made college football players bigger, better conditioned — and more vulnerable

Broadly speaking, the prevalence of injuries is a strength-and-conditioning issue, in a counterintuitive way. Even more dramatically in the case of college football players, they're better conditioned than ever, given they're on campus and under supervised training year-round.

That wasn't the case even one generation ago. Players went home for the summer, tucked away a workout plan provided by the strength coach, and spent June and July on the honor system when it came to adherence. Ask Spike Dykes' players about the long-distance run to see where everyone stood at the start of two-a-days.

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There's more emphasis than ever on, not just eating to gain weight, but on proper diet and nutrition.

College football players being ever more muscled up and never far from tip-top shape are producing higher-velocity collisions among bigger and faster men. Joints and soft tissue haven't evolved to keep up. That's the essence of it.

Artificial-turf manufacturers have come a long way from the primitive surfaces they put down in the 1970s. I suspect the surface's culpability for an injury, to the extent there is any, has more to do with upkeep than with artificial or natural. Studies are mixed.

One of the worst joint injuries we've seen involving a Red Raiders player involved offensive lineman Chris Whitney suffering a dislocated hip during a game on grass at TCU.

Maybe the solution is to tape up a letter P for every team's medical staff to see.

"I know it sounds absolutely insane," Sparky Lyle wrote in "The Bronx Zoo", "George blaming them for all the injuries, but after that, the injuries stopped."

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Putting Texas Tech football injury list into context | Don Williams