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Football Concussion Lawsuits Start To Hit High Schools
HughPickens.com writes Michael Tarm reports that a former high school quarterback has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois High School Association saying it didn't do enough to protect him from concussions when he played and still doesn't do enough to protect current players. This is the first instance in which legal action has been taken for former high school players as a whole against a group responsible for prep sports in a state. Such litigation could snowball, as similar suits targeting associations in other states are planned. "In Illinois high school football, responsibility — and, ultimately, fault — for the historically poor management of concussions begins with the IHSA," the lawsuit states. It calls high school concussions "an epidemic" and says the "most important battle being waged on high school football fields ... is the battle for the health and lives of" young players. The lawsuit calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its head-injury protocols. It doesn't seek damages. "This is not a threat or attack on football," says attorney Joseph Siprut, who reached a $75 million settlement in a similar lawsuit against the NCAA in 2011. "Football is in danger in Illinois and other states — especially at the high school level — because of how dangerous it is. If football does not change internally, it will die. The talent well will dry up as parents keep kids out of the sport— and that's how a sport dies."
Previous research has shown that far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. Individuals with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) may show symptoms of dementia, such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression, which generally appear years or many decades after the trauma. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," says Chris Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."
1. Fully socialised healthcare and comprehensive welfare state like all the most advanced countries in the world do it, then there'd be no need to have this sort of inefficient, risk-avoisive bullshit just because people fear being fucked for life over a moderate injury;
2. Acknowledgment then that lottery-win money is a ridiculous way to compensate anyone for an injury sustained while doing something risky. It fucks things over for everyone.
I know it's being tried at some colleges and high schools, but it would not surprise me if mandatory sensors that communicate to central monitoring station at games and practices are required in the future.
I'd imagine that a threshold of G's and number of times during play time or practice will require the player to sit out for a period of time or for the game/practice.
Only a matter of time.
Concussions are caused by sudden forces applied to the brain, right?
Well then, let's get rid of the helmets. No, really. It's not like there's hard game pieces flying towards your head at 90+ MPH (hockey, baseball, lacrosse). The only long-term damage that a helmet can protect against is skull fractures. Other than that, they reduce the pain associated with hitting your head, making it easier to damage your brain.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Even if people are inclined to let bygones be bygones, and not poke the touchy question of whether certain authority figures chose to stick with the 'eh, just rub some dirt on it, wimp' theory of sports medicine for sake of convenience even after medical evidence demanded otherwise; this seems like one that isn't going to go well.
Mitigating shocks with helmets that don't make you look like you've been engulfed by a marshmallow python just isn't an easy problem; and there isn't an obvious 'floor' value below which shocks(especially when repeated, often, and often in relatively quick succession) are entirely harmless. Even if you can push the 'eh, they knew the risks and chose to play' at the pro level, that isn't going to go so well with children, who are typically treated as unsuitable for contract-grade decision making.
Those brain cells are gone for good -- and we're talking about minors who are acting under the care of an adult in authority.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Take the motion sensor from a iPhone and put it in the helmet next to a WiFi chip.... that's the solution they're using in the NFL.
Let me guess - you played a LOT of football without a helmet?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
> If football does not change internally, it will die.
Good.
Then schools and colleges can get back to academic disciplines.
If people want group sports, go to the local sports center and sign up.
Sports fuck up the priorities of schools and colleges to their detriment.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
1. Fully socialised healthcare and comprehensive welfare state like all the most advanced countries in the world do it, then there'd be no need to have this sort of inefficient, risk-avoisive bullshit just because people fear being fucked for life over a moderate injury;
Wrong.
The purpose of the tort system is to incentivize people to act reasonably. It has big costs--a bunch of jerks trying to get money--but that's what it's all about.
Socialized healthcare takes care of the cost to the individual who is harmed--it does not incentivize the high school to act reasonably.
Then don't play football.
Avoidable brain damage is stupid. Avoidable mechanical brain damage twice so.
The talent well will dry up as parents keep kids out of the sport--- and that's how a sport dies.
Let it die. The trend for every decade I've been alive is that more brains are needed to survive in the workplace, not less. Not only are the jobs more skilled, there are more rules to follow--- you have to have the mental wherewithal to know when you can and cannot say "fucked her right in the pussy", to use one famous example. We don't need otherwise healthy people starting at a deficit because they placed some game during their developmental years.
All downside. No upside.
Why does the helmet only have padding on the inside? Padding on the inside makes it like a construction workers helmet that is meant to protect you from hard objects like girders and falling buckets of nails. Padding on the outside of the helmet would (slightly more) cushion the repeated sudden shocks that can damage the brain. The hard candy shell should be in the middle to distribute the shock over a larger area, which in football doesn't help much because that area is your braincase, but the shell will help the helmet keep its shape. Of course padding outside the helmet would also eliminate the loud hit sounds that the spectators enjoy and make the players look like little cream puffs that can't play rough. We should just give the players weapons and release lions during the game.
As we get ever more data about the danger of even mild concussions, it's pretty obvious Football is never going to be "safe". It's a sport focused on big, meaty impacts between dozens of large men running at each other full tilt. But the idea Football is going to die is laughable. We've know boxing was destroying young men's minds since the 1920s, and it's still alive and....punching. There will always be someone desperate and poor enough to want to "fight their way out of poverty".
But football as the sport of the everyman is probably over. The team captain who bullies all the nerds in 2020 will be captain of the school basketball team or something. Hell, maybe not suffering cranial trauma every week for years on end will mean these jocks won't even be dumb!
The lawsuit calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its head-injury protocols. It doesn't seek damages.
A lawsuit seeking no damages is clearly the ultimate path to cashing in.
"Sports" like boxing and football will never be safe because they involve repeated blows to the head. Single blows are bad enough if they are of high force, but research has shown that repeated blows to the head, even moderate ones, are more than additive. The window of vulnerability has been found to be between 3 and 5 days, meaning that you need to avoid any additional impacts for that long after you have an initial impact. Because boxing and football involve hitting the head repeatedly over the course of a single day, it is apparent why football players and boxers have the worst cases of post traumatic encephalopathy (PTE). The only way to prevent this is to stop after the first blow to the head, which would make both of these "sports" unplayable by human beings. If you want to help out with this problem, invent robots that can engage in these activities. They too will sustain damage over time, but unlike human brains, they will be repairable. They also won't file lawsuits.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
I like Australian football and I respect the game but things are a bit different here. The few Australians that play in the U.S. are either place kickers or punters. Both would get knocked around like rag dolls if they decided to try to tackle anybody here. It's a completely different game.
A little dose of reality: Colleges do FAR more to recruit and court sports talent than academic talent.
My niece has some talent with soccer and decent grades. She was offered full rides at a lot of schools (tuition and living expense). She was offered special dorms, special tutoring, super nice facilities reserved for sports people. The coaches flew her out to their schools for sales pitches and gave her the red-carpet treatment, expensive dinners, etc.
Me with my paltry top-1/2 percent test scores, straight A's in hard classes won with hard work, and extracurriculars, (but NOT outstanding in sports)? No heavy recruitment, no full free rides offered, though I too got offered some priority dorm access and some money.
It dismays me how much more *kicking a ball* is worth to colleges than my big brain and hard academic work was!
And no, you can't just "study harder". Innate talent is NOT distributed equally and people who studied and worked harder than I achieved less simply because they weren't lucky enough to be born with a first class brain as I was. And there is NO way I could physically compete with the typical football player without heavy chemical enhancement no matter how hard I tried. So much for *choice*. You must play the cards you are dealt!