Thank you for sharing this excerpt, I am looking forward to reading this book. This may seem like an odd tangent, but during your research did you uncover any good information about the upcoming $75 Million NCAA Concussion Class Action Settlement? As a former athlete I received my notice last week and am researching everything I can before the 3/10/17 Opt Out deadline. Some of my fellow former athletes received their notice, but many others did not. Or if they did, it was likely thrown out as junk mail.
This settlement is just one of 42 cases against them. It seems pretty clear the NCAA would love to sweep this under the rug and I am a bit surprised that this head injury suit has not garnered more public attention. The NFL seems to grab the majority of the concussion headlines, but the number of people who participated in NCAA sports is such a larger population. I’d like to get a more precise number of how many people the NCAA’s settlement is hoping to include, considering the NFL’s $1 Billion case includes only 20,000! Seems like the NCAA will be off the hook for pennies on the dollar.
On top of that, the more I read about this proposed NCAA settlement it sounds like the money will be for medical monitoring and not really helping with treatment expenses. Even if it did allocate money for treatment, would $75M be enough when so many more participated in NCAA sports with concussion rates estimated at 5–10% chance per season of play? With such large revenues and lopsided distributions, it is clear that benefiting all athletes hasn’t been a priority for years. If they really wanted to help athletes they would set aside money from these giant revenues each year to help those who unknowingly risked their health for the love of the game.
Either way, keep up the good work. I hope to better educate myself and other former athletes before March so that I can make a well informed decision and ensure that my rights are protected. I think there is strength in numbers, so any help to increase awareness would be greatly appreciated. I haven’t written anything outside of work since Grad School, so I can use all the help I can get. I plan on posting some more thoughts / highlights from my limited research tomorrow.
