ATHENS, Ga. — The scars are still visible on Ron Courson’s knee. An incision about four inches down the side. Another one below it. Courson, Georgia’s longtime head athletic trainer, remembers well his first ACL injury, surgery and aftermath, because it was his own, 36 years ago, the product of a college soccer injury. It left him unable to play again for …

“A while,” Courson said, chuckling. “Back then, you were looking at a year to come back.”

That was a different time. But when it comes to ACL injuries, even a few years ago is also now a different time.

Courson spoke this week while standing in a UGA athletic training room full of new-age equipment, used by the likes of Todd Gurley, Aaron Murray, Nick Chubb and other athletes to return in remarkable time from knee injuries.

In the past, when you heard ACL, or almost any knee injury, it was almost a career death sentence. Or at least it was “see you in a year.”

But the other day at Georgia’s open practice, it looked like this:

Zamir White, eight months removed from an ACL tear, practicing without limits.

Azeez Ojulari, also eight months since tearing his ACL, participating almost fully in practice.

Divaad Wilson, who tore his ACL less than five months ago, running and cutting on the side.

When Georgia head coach Kirby Smart announced Wilson’s ACL tear on March 31, he added: “We still think he’s going to play this year.” It might have seemed fanciful. But that was working on the old ACL timetable. As it turns out, Wilson, a freshman cornerback, might indeed play this season.

“Back when I played, it was a 12- to 18-month injury,” Courson said. “From an NFL standpoint, it would really lower you in the draft, if you were even draftable. Now you’re seeing the great example of Todd, coming off an ACL he was a first-round draft pick. It’s just a common procedure now.”

This all happened without much ado or one “huzzah” medical miracle announcement. Instead, it’s the result of medical and training advancements on three fronts.

Immediate post-injury treatment

In the past, surgery was immediate. If a football player tore his ACL on a Saturday, he probably would have been operated on by Sunday. But that proved detrimental on two fronts: The surgery itself, being invasive, was a second quick injury to the knee and to the confidence of the athlete. Adding insult to the injury, as Courson put it.

They now tend to wait 10 days for surgery, putting players on a “pre-op” program, which is part-medical and part-psychological: It gives the athlete some confidence in their ability to do things despite the very recent ACL injury and a comparison for what more they can do after the surgery and during the rehab process. It also gives time for the swelling in the knee to go down and for the player to work on range of motion and other things.

The surgery itself

The ACL is the small, almost Band-Aid like ligament that is threaded across the inside of the knee. So when it tears, it needs to be rebuilt. The most common way is to take part of the patella tendon, along with a piece of the tibia bone, make a graft and put it back where the ACL should be. The body’s response is to lock it down like an anchor and, in about six to eight weeks, it sets in place by itself.

One change is that the new surgery is less invasive — about a two-inch incision and two small portals — so there is less tissue trauma, allowing for quicker recovery. When Courson had his ACL surgery in the early 1980s, he had two big incisions.

Courson and his staff watch every surgery, as well, and the surgeon connects before and after with the athletic training staff and the player for more of a collaborative team approach.

Then comes perhaps the most important set of advancements:

Post-surgery rehab

The more players who suffered knee injuries, and the bigger deal it became in athletics, the more creative that athletic trainers became in finding ways to help the athlete come back. Hence the attention on players like Chubb participating in karate and mixed martial arts exercises. (Chubb’s injury was actually to everything but the ACL, but the same principles apply when it comes to his rehabilitation process.)

MMA might get the headlines, but it’s modern devices that actually drive the rehab process now.

Courson gave The Athletic a tour of the UGA training room, which is full of cutting-edge devices that help in the rehabilitation process:

• Eccentron training: Gurley utilized this during his rehab process. An athlete sits down and slowly pushes his legs, simulating walking and planting his leg. This begins about two weeks after the operation, whereas years ago it used to be utilized months later. Gurley credited Eccentron in particular, saying in an online video: “I knew I would come back from the injury because I saw multiple other guys come back from it, and they were using the machine. It helped them. Obviously, Mr. Ron put me through the rehab process when I worked with him. … I don’t think I would have recovered as well without Eccentron.”

UGA athletic training staffer Connor Norman shows off the Eccentron machine. (Seth Emerson / The Athletic)

• Blood Flow Restriction (BFR): Essentially a tourniquet around an athlete’s leg, which purposefully restricts blood flow while you rehab. Proponents say it helps ultimately lead to muscle recovery.

• Hydrotherapy: When you’re in a pool, including one with a treadmill in it, you can do exercises at a slower speed, and thus pain-free, but be working the same muscles as if you were on dry land: “It allows us to be aggressive and safe at the same time,” Courson said. They can also customize the hydrotherapy to the position: Quarterbacks, for instance, can work on drop-backs.

There is also a jumping mat to work on landing techniques. There is a mat, connected to an iPad, which measures weight distribution. (An athlete is closer to full recovery when there is an even balance between both feet.) And there is the GPS “Catapult” system, which is used to measure practice performance by healthy players but also measures how much progress rehabbing players have made.

Courson, whose father was a carpenter, compares the training room to a toolbox: “We know we have a lot of tools. We don’t have to use every one of them. … What we try to do is identify problems and then what kind of tools can we use to solve them.”

Another important change: Getting athletes into the rehab process as quickly as possible after the surgery.

“Back then, you’d be in a plaster case from your hip to your foot for eight weeks. Then, it would get off and we’d wonder why their knee’s stiff and all their muscles are gone,” Courson said. “Now, we get them moving right off the bat.”

Connor Norman is now at Courson’s side, working on the UGA athletic training staff. But he used to be a Georgia safety, and his senior year of 2013 was unofficially the ACL year: Murray, Malcolm Mitchell, Justin Scott-Wesley and Keith Marshall all tore theirs.

Those serve as an interesting case study: The latter three took longer to return from their injuries, and all eventually were re-injured. Scott-Wesley gave up football in 2015 because of his knee problems.

Murray, however, went from tearing his ACL on Nov. 23, 2013, to running around and throwing at UGA’s pro day the following April. He was the first player to rehab with the Eccentron machine, the same one Gurley credits so much in his recovery.

(To be fair, Mitchell, Scott-Wesley and Marshall also had more than ACL tears, while Murray and Gurley had clean ACL tears, making it easy to return.)

Indeed, so much else goes into how quickly players return, whether it’s other devices or just the psychological part of it. Rehabbing is a laborious process, with players in the training room perhaps seven days a week, 20-30 hours per week. So the athletes have to believe in the process.

“Showing them small steps,” Norman said. “Being able to show them progress that they’re making and then saying, ‘We know the big picture, we know where we want to get, but we also have to accomplish these things every week, every day to get to that point.’ ”

Dr. James Andrews, the renowned surgeon whom Courson learned under, gives the analogy of rehab as baking a cake: You can’t turn the oven too high and bake it faster.

White, the five-star signee from North Carolina, tore his ACL in a high school playoff game in November. There was no question that he would still enroll early at UGA, in large part so he could rehab in Athens. On Saturday, as Georgia prepared to scrimmage, White was scampering around, looking healthy and confident.

It seemed incredible, but only on the old ACL timetable.

“I don’t know in this day and age you would say it’s quickly,” Smart said. “It’s not a miracle he’s back going.”

(Top photo of Ron Courson and Todd Gurley: John Kelley / UGA Athletics)