Four former collegiate athletes have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the NCAA, the governing body of all collegiate sports, ignored a growing concussion problem for decades. The lawsuit comes on the heels of a recent NFL lawsuit between the league and over 4,700 former players. The league agreed to pay $765 million to cover settlements, medical monitoring, and care for ex-players who suffered concussions and other brain injuries.
Lawsuit filed against NCAA
The complaint filed against the NCAA in an Illinois federal court, claims that the organization was negligent in protecting college players by failing to adopt any formal concussion policy until 2010. Even after the policy was implemented, the suit further alleges the NCCA failed to establish viable standards or timelines to prevent brain injured players from returning to play prematurely.
Joseph Siprut is a Chicago attorney currently representing two former football players, a former soccer player and a former hockey player at the heart of the suit, which was first filed in 2011. Siprut noted:
“Continuing to turn a blind eye and continuing to essentially pretend that the concussion issue isn’t as severe as it is, those are the things we say make the NCAA negligent,”
Mediation Developments
The first mediation session was held Friday, November 1st, in New York City. Attorneys for the former players and the NCAA both signed a confidentiality agreement. Both sides declined to comment after the session, and it’s presently unknown whether they have agreed to future talks.
“I think the vulnerability is higher than the NFL had,” said Travis Leach, a Phoenix sports attorney and member of the Arizona Governor’s Council on Spinal and Head Injuries.
He gave the example of NFL players who have collective bargaining agreements, under which their managers and agents help to look out for the players’ well-being.
Leach explained:
“In the NCAA case, you don’t have that bargaining unit, so the parties negotiating for the best interest of the players are taken out. I think you’ve also got a causation problem with the NCAA case. In the NFL, potentially they could have looked to injuries a player sustained in college as being the root cause. In college, I think it’s harder for the NCAA to point to high school and youth leagues.”
NCAA’s Mission to Protect Student Athletes
The NCAA’s mission is: “To protect young people from the dangerous and exploitive athletics practices of the time.” More than a century later since the organization’s creation in 1906, officials cite that as the core principle central to the NCAA’s work and existence.
Yet, former football players Adrian Arrington and Derek Owens, as well as former soccer player Angel Palacios and former hockey player Kyle Solomon, all allege in their federal lawsuit that the NCAA failed to live up to their own mission statement. Instead, they allege that the NCAA failed to properly educate competitors about the dangers of concussions. They also failed to create and implement comprehensive policies for the diagnosis and treatment of head injuries. Even after establishing the first standards in 2010, the NCAA failed to enforce any rules creating a minimum time frame for when an injured player could return to competition.
Statistics Fuel Concussion Lawsuit
According to information from the NCAA’s injury surveillance system, more than 29,000 concussions were reported in collegiate sports between 2004 and 2009. Over 50% of them came from football.
That study also found that the number of concussions was growing by about 7 percent each year and that a college athlete was three times more likely to experience a second concussion if he/she returned to competition within 10 days of sustaining a first concussion. However, no formal action was taken by the NCAA at that time. In addition, an NCAA survey of head trainers in 2010 found that more than half of the schools did not require a physician to evaluate student athletes who suffered a concussion.
References:
Fox Sports
