NFL Concussion-gate: Admission of Guilt or Token Concession?

The NFL decision to pay over 4200 retired players, who are suffering from concussion related brain injuries, $765 million over 20 years will go down in history with other monumental settlements; monumental in terms of the lost to the plaintiffs and gain to the defendants. They will go down in history with major corporations like the Wall Street bailout, British Petroleum (BP), and Exxon Mobil; companies that paid relatively small settlements in terms of their overall financial worth and the damages they were accused of or caused.

In the case of the NFL, which consists of 32 teams with values averaging around $1.17 billion, it generates $10 billion annually.  Thus, $765 million over 20 years, a mere $38.25 million per year, is a very small percentage of its annual revenue.  Even if the NFL matched the plaintiffs’ request for $2 billion, their lost would have been minimal.  This settlement is also minimal with the increasing number of retired players who are reporting complications from brain injuries associated with concussions.

This was an opportunity for the NFL to take a stance and be a leader in being more concerned about the health and well being of the employees and former employees than their brand and bottom line.  This was an opportunity for the NFL to use their popularity and profits to contribute to the research on traumatic brain injuries and make a statement about its stance on corporate healthcare. 

Yet again, we have another multibillion-dollar corporation that misses an opportunity to express corporate responsibility. Instead, their token concessions admit their quilt and demonstrate their corporate irresponsibility and greed.

High School Football: To Televise or Not to Televise?

Debate increases on the ethical dilemma of televising high school football games.  Though not a recent occurrence, local, regional, and national coverage has increased significantly in the past 10 years.  For example, since 2005, ESPN and its family of networks (ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3) have provided national coverage for nationally ranked high school football programs. In 2013, the ESPN and its family of networks are scheduled to televise 26 teams from 15 states.  Similarly, FOX Sport South and Sport South have both increased their coverage of high school football.

Clearly, high school football is a product, and there is a demand for this product.  The sponsorship by corporations like Gieco and Under Armour provides evidence of the commercial viability of high school football.  There are advantages and disadvantages in this venture, which I will highlight a few of both.

First, televising high school football nationally provides some compensation to schools and school districts where funding for interscholastic sports have been dwindling with the cut in state funding.  Additionally, televising high school football games provides national exposure for schools, teams, key players, and coaches.  Athletes are able to display their talents and abilities before a national audience.  It also provides opportunities for athletes who are “under the radar” of college recruiters the chance to get display their abilities under the pressure of the national limelight.

One disadvantage is that, when teams have to travel from 500 – 2500 miles to compete for a national televised audience, it removes the event from the communities that bare the cost of supporting the schools and school districts.  Needless to say that interscholastic sports is a unifying factor for communities.  It also assists in instilling school and civic pride.  Furthermore, local vendors, who use these events as a means of livelihood, also lose out when these games are displaced.  But, all of this is lost to the team traveling thousands of miles to compete for a national audience.  A final disadvantage associated with the travel distance is that it creates a disruption in the academic life of athletes.  For the long distant trips, Fridays are lost to travel. Therefore, whatever classes and academic work required on Fridays will have to take a back-seat to the team’s travel schedule.

As it relates to the academic life, the increased commercialization of high school football, as a result of televised games, lends itself to further fueling the anti-intellectualism that is pervasive in the athletic culture.  This is the result of the increased athletic demand that is required for athletes to perform at optimal levels for a national audience.  This demand is socializing a group of students to focus more on athletics than academics.  Couple this with how we tend to encourage athletes to think that education is something to “fall back on,” we are informing young athletes to prioritize athletics over education; or that education is simply secondary and athletics is their primary ticket to a better life.  This is a grave mis-education of the “student” athlete.

Whether interscholastic sports will go the way of intercollegiate sports is yet to be seen.  Clearly interscholastic football and boys’ basketball are evolving as highly commercialized entertainment sports.  Reaching a healthy balance, where youth athletes are grounded in their academic experience and “value” academic excellence as the primary means of obtaining social mobility and being productive citizens, is imperative for this marriage between corporate America and public school districts and private school associations.

Therefore, beyond stressing the value of education for young athletes, establishing criteria to reduce the travel distance of teams for these televised games is important.  Also, academic criteria (team GPA’s, graduation rates, etc.) should be a part of the selection process for televising these games.  Ultimately and most importantly, reassessing the mission of interscholastic sports in the context of a challenging public educational system is vitally important.