I enjoyed the first big weekend of college and NFL football as much as anyone, but the probable concussion that star University of Houston QB Case Keenum suffered in the Cougars’ Friday night romp over UTEP reminded me of this Skip Rozin/Wall Street Journal article from awhile back:
Protecting football players from serious head injuries is making news again. Accused for years by outside critics and even Congress of dismissing the danger of concussions, the National Football League has finally installed measures to safeguard players during games and, when they are injured, to treat them more effectively.
The latest effort, a locker-room poster being sent to all NFL teams this month, alerts players to signs of concussion-such as nausea, dizziness and double vision-and urges anyone exhibiting these symptoms to be examined by a doctor. The initiative is supported by both the NFL and the players union.
The message embraces caution in what, for players, is a high-risk environment. Football is a collision sport. At the professional level, collisions occur between the biggest and fastest players and can wreak havoc. A vivid reminder of this came last week when safety Jack Tatum, nicknamed "The Assassin," was back in the news. Tatum, who passed away July 27, made a devastating hit on Darryl Stingley during a 1978 preseason game. The hit turned Stingley into a quadriplegic; no penalty was assessed.
One new rule enacted last season penalizes hits against defenseless players such as quarterbacks and wide receivers. In December, the league banned players who show symptoms of a concussion from returning to play or practice on the same day; they must also be cleared by the team physician and an independent neurologist. The biggest change came this March when the NFL replaced the doctors leading its brain- injury committee-who discredited mounting evidence linking concussions to serious brain damage-with doctors alarmed by the danger.
Welcome changes all, yet the glorification of violence remains a well-entrenched part of football.
In watching a weekend of hard-hitting football, I suspect that there are many more concussions resulting from the games than we even know about from evident injuries such as Keenum’s. As I’ve noted many times in regard to the misdirected governmental criminalization of performance-enhancing drug use, we have promoted a culture that encourages players to take these enormous health risks, but demonize them when they attempt to hedge the risk of the injuries that almost always result from engaging in such high-risk endeavors. What happens to the game of football when players start requiring the owners of that risk to compensate them for their injuries?
My sense is that the games that we watched over this past weekend may be played in a substantially different way in the not- to-distant future.
I would argue that the high salaries of football players are in part compensation for risk.
Are professional sports teams exempt from worker’s comp rules? I’ve never seen employment regulations that allow a “he knew it was dangerous when he signed up” defense.
I’m not sure about your premise that football players are paid high salaries, at least relative to other professional athletes. But putting that issue aside for a moment, my sense is that the potential legal case by the players against the NFL and other professional football owners (i.e., universities with football programs) relates to non-disclosure and treatment of latent health problems arising from brain injuries.
Football players are highly paid relative to the likely alternative, a regular office job. Given the attendant status benefits of being a professional football player, I doubt the extra compensation is needed to get players to sign up.
As far as I can tell, in the prevailing legal environment an employer is liable even if they did disclose, so why does non-disclosure matter?