Three quarters of a billion dollars is almost always way too much money. But not this time.
This time, a $765-million settlement made by a league that rakes in nine of those billions annually is a miniscule price to pay. For the National Football League, the mediated agreement it reached Thursday with thousands of former players would be a bargain at twice the price.
You could call it hush money, and you’d be right — but it’s not the former players the league was trying to keep quiet. It’s the football fan’s conscience.
One week from today, when the first football of the regular season is booted in anger at Mile High in Denver, you probably won’t be thinking about this column. A couple of hours later, though, when the first concussion victim of the 2013 season is being led woozily from the field, you might well be thinking about brain injuries.
By reaching a settlement in the consolidated lawsuits brought against it by 4,500 former players, the NFL is giving you permission to give the league the benefit of the doubt. You know you want to.
If you need to feel like the league cares deeply about the health of the men who play its game, this deal allows you that luxury. If heartbreaking stories, interviews and videos of once-great gladiators now suffering from debilitating health conditions nag at you on Sunday mornings while you set your fantasy lineups, this deal allows you to push them away and focus on the newest injury report.
The league says that it is satisfied. The players say that they are satisfied. Former United States District Judge Layn Phillips — the court-appointed mediator — announced that everyone got a fair shake.
“A historic agreement,” Phillips called it. “One that will make sure that former NFL players who need and deserve compensation will receive it, and that will promote safety for players at all levels of football.”
Sounds fantastic — especially amidst a climate that has turned markedly against the league in the past few years, mostly due to its inept handling of the concussion crisis. This deal gives them another weight to use when they try to balance the scales of popular opinion.
Among the terms of the agreement are $75 million earmarked for baseline medical exams for players, a research and education fund of $10 million more and, most importantly, a fund of $675 million “to compensate former players who have suffered cognitive injury or their families.” That’s not enough to fix the problem. But it’s not nothing, either.
But, um, about those cognitive injuries, the NFL would like you to note one of the agreement’s principal terms, please:
“The settlement does not represent, and cannot be considered, an admission by the NFL of liability, or an admission that plaintiffs’ injuries were caused by football.”
So the 4,500 former players in dire need of medical care and help with their declining quality of life will get roughly $150,000 each. The NFL, meanwhile, will get this whole ugly mess out of the way a full week before its season opens, and without having to actually admit, on paper or in court, and set the precedent that it was to blame for the sad state of many of its former soldiers.
The national football media gets these few hours to opine one way or the other on the topic before Thursday night’s final round of pre-season games is followed shortly by the crunch of massive roster cuts — and make no mistake, that’s a win for the NFL as well.
And the fans? You get to decide how to take this. If you already feel that football is unsafe and unhealthy, then this settlement should do nothing to allay your concerns. If you don’t care — and as we detailed in a Sportsnet Magazine article last fall, there is ample evidence that most of you don’t — then you should be glad, because this settlement will put the issue on the back burner and allow your favourite talking heads to concentrate on the on-field action.
And if you’re on the fence? If you love football but worry about the toll it takes? You can now reason with yourself that at least something has been done. Baby steps, right? What time is kickoff again?
The NFL is the dashing scoundrel of the major sports leagues — the bad boy in the high school that all the girls fall for. It wants you to feel good enough about loving its product that you’ll overlook the ample evidence that it’s destroying the bodies and minds of your favourite athletes. It’s willing to pay a lot of money to help you do just that. And to that effect, it just got a hell of a bargain.