Deal is weak for retired NFL players, but any help is good
Football is a dangerous sport. For the National Football League, it also happens to be a $10 billion a year business. So how much should be paid to those who suffer from long-term brain injuries because they endured the league’s captivating but debilitating violence?
In a legal settlement reached last week with retired players, the NFL has agreed to spend $1 billion over the next 65 years to resolve lawsuits brought by players who say frequent concussions damaged their health. After years of denials, the NFL admits a link. The league’s actuaries project that more than a fourth of nearly 20,000 retired players could develop Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia over the span of the agreement. The settlement ends a four-year legal struggle in which ailing retired players were running out of time to hold out for a better deal.
The NFL is patting itself on the back for agreeing to pay those players for their suffering. This, after years of dodging responsibility if not outright claiming the post-playing problems with memory loss and dementia weren’t related to the brutal hits these men took on the field, Sunday after Sunday.
To the degree that the settlement gives some players financial relief and makes better care for their problems possible, it’s good. But caps on individual settlements, though there’s no limit on the total payout, aren’t really fair, and the families of players who died before 2006 aren’t eligible for settlements. Current and future players also aren’t part of the arrangement.
It’s estimated the average settlement will be about $190,000, although a retired player with Alzheimer’s could get in the millions of dollars.
And the NFL has agreed to fund medical research on concussions.
If anything, the NFL – an exclusive club of the super rich made richer by TV deals and publicly assisted stadiums and almost endless profits from all the products associated with the league – got off easy. And some players and their families may still sue on their own.
The serious consequences of concussions, particularly multiple concussions that may not even have been diagnosed, now are well-known and documented. And polls show parents these days are less and less enthusiastic about their kids playing football.
Players are bigger than ever, and the crush of a 350-pound lineman on a quarterback can do permanent damage. And the linemen don’t get away from risk, as they’re hit by people as big as they are.
The NFL’s sluggish response as the spotlight landed on many veteran players who were permanently handicapped by football-related injuries has been disgraceful and transparently related to protecting a financial interest of epic proportions. But what about the argument that professional players, having moved through the high school and college ranks, know what they’re getting into and have accepted a degree of risk for the glory and paycheck?
That’s true enough on some level, but there has long been an unhealthy mentality about “playing through pain” and being tough in order to prove oneself.
And some older players took risks they shouldn’t have taken to protect their jobs from being taken by younger ones.
Improvements in equipment have been made, but the very nature of the game makes it impossible to protect players from serious injury, though that research must continue.
Perhaps this settlement, inadequate though it is, will at least get the attention of team owners where it hurts (a little) and push them to look at rule changes and other steps to protect players from a lifetime of hardship for a few years of money and glory.
This story was originally published April 26, 2015 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Deal is weak for retired NFL players, but any help is good."