Is Scott Armstrong an athletic trainer with a legal background or is he a lawyer with medical knowledge?

The answer is "Yes".

He's also unique.

And valuable.

Bethune-Cookman University's Director of Sports Medicine recently graduated from Florida A&M's College of Law with a Juris Doctorate. To his knowledge, there are less than 10 athletic trainers who are credentialed in both athletic medicine and the law.

"It is a very rare credential combination," Armstrong said.

The decision to attend to law school came long before the issues of today's issue's and challenges hit a boiling point. Armstrong though, had an idea where his profession was heading.

"Athletic training is evolving becoming more sophisticated," Armstrong said. "There's now a synergy between training and the business side of the sport.  I took a progressive, proactive view of where things were going."

After all, isn't athletic training a variant of risk management?

"That was the mindset," Armstrong said. "A lot of what I did already was risk management.

"If a traumatic injury or incident occurs, some one has to pay for it," Armstrong continued. "In addition to suffering the injury, an athlete is going to lose that playing time and the institution has the direct cost of both losing its investment of scholarship and time developing that student-athlete as well as the recovery process. It's all tied together."

His colleagues in the field have followed his progress, and so did his boss. Lynn W. Thompson, B-CU's Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics could see the impact of his skill set as a certified athletic trainer, administrator and lawyer on the program.

"Scott was already a highly credentialed and respected athletic trainer with administrative experience, but his vision of the future of intercollegiate athletics with respect to sports medicine was spot on," Thompson said. His knowledge in risk management, awareness of Covid-19 protocols and its legal ramifications and experience in athletic facilities allowed us the advantage of expanding our expertise level on our athletic management team. At the college level, many departments of sports medicine actually operate as pseudo medical clinics with treatment, rehabilitation and billing responsibilities. The athletic trainer in charge must have a level of knowledge in each of those areas in order for the department to be effective and successful.
"They're glad I'm doing it," Armstrong said. "An athletic trainer is qualified to oversee the areas. Having a Juris Doctorate broadens my capabilities and helps create a more dynamic administrator."

It's an uncharted future for Armstrong with this skill set, so for now it's a matter of enjoying finishing a challenging time.

"There is a great satisfaction of accomplishing something that frankly was very difficult to do while maintaining the excessive demands of the day job," Armstrong said. "These have been long days.  Even on a football trip, you'd see me reading a casebook at the airport or on the plane."

Armstrong enters his seventh year at B-CU. Prior to his time at Lincoln University, Armstrong worked professional football, including a stop in nearby Orlando as an athletic trainer with the Florida Tuskers of the United Football League (UFL). He also worked in the National Football League (NFL) on athletic training staffs for the Washington Football Team (2009-2010) and Tennessee Titans (2007-2008 training camps and preseasons), in addition to the Austin Wranglers of the Arena Football League (2005-2006). In addition to his law degree, he has been licensed as an athletic trainer in four states.