Do Former College Football Players Really Want to Sue Their Schools Over Concussions?

In November of 1993, a Penn State football player named Eric Ravotti suffered a grand mal seizure on the field during a game against Indiana. I know this because after Ravotti's name was included in one of several class-action suits filed by a lawyer this week against the National Collegiate Athletic Association, major athletic conferences, and individual schools related to the treatment of head injuries and concussions, I Googled "Eric Ravotti" and "Penn State." But I guess I knew this long ago, because that search led me to a story written for the Penn State student newspaper, The Daily Collegian, back in 1993.

As it turns out, I was the one who wrote that story.

The seizure, Ravotti was told at the time, was likely a side effect from a flu virus he'd been carrying, along with a low blood-sugar count. And maybe that was the reason; I have no concrete evidence to suspect otherwise, but I have to imagine that if this happened today, even a naïve reporter like myself would have at least raised the question as to whether Ravotti's seizure had something to do with head trauma.

Chicago attorney Jay Edelson included three former Penn State players in a lawsuit on Tuesday that named the NCAA, the Big Ten conference, and Penn State—one of six suits seeking damages, with a promise of more to come. The next day, two of those players, Ravotti and former safety James Boyd, asked to have their names removed. Boyd said he had no idea that Penn State as an institution would be named in the lawsuit, and that his experience there was not "anything other than first class." Meanwhile, Ravotti issued a statement to PennLive.com saying that he "had never agreed to join (the suit) in the first place," that it "misrepresented" his Penn State experience, and that while he is concerned about the potential effect of concussions he endured during his football career, he does not currently suffer from any of the cognitive symptoms named in the suit. A third plaintiff, Eric Samuels, said he would keep his name in the lawsuit, telling PennLive that he is dealing with "a lot of what I call mental issues."

A cynic might assume that Ravotti and Boyd backed out of suing their alma mater because they didn't want to deal with the scrutiny from overzealous fans, but the situation is more complicated than that. First, the case against college football is not as clear-cut as the case against the National Football League. The NFL tentatively has settled its concussion cases for hundreds of millions of dollars after it was alleged to have engaged in an active cover-up and Big Tobacco–like manipulation of medical science, evidence of which has come out via League of Denial and other media reports and without the benefit of actual legal discovery. As of now, at least, there are no indications that the NCAA or college football programs did anything close to the same thing.

And this is why the lead attorney in another concussion case against the NCAA, the one brought by former Eastern Illinois running back Adrian Arrington, has expressed skepticism over Edelson's class-action lawsuits and defended the settlement in his own case. That settlement mandated the NCAA launch a $70 million fund to test current and former athletes for brain trauma, and put aside $5 million for concussion research. The court in that case also allowed for athletes to sue the NCAA, their conferences, and their universities as a class, which is the avenue Edelson is pursuing—he feels that the Arrington lawsuit changed from one about personal injuries into one about medical monitoring, according to Jon Solomon of CBS Sports—but that's the strategy that Arrington attorney Steve Berman is skeptical about.

(For his part, Arrington last year announced that he opposed the proposed settlement, believing that individual athletes should receive compensation).

"The NCAA doesn't have the revenues," Berman told

CBS Sports last summer

. "They don't make profits and the schools don't profit to the extent the NFL does, and I don't think they're as worried about the PR harm because I think the NFL was worried there were going to be tons of documents that showed they hid it. I don't think the NCAA was worried about that. We didn't find scores of documents saying, 'Wow, look at all these players walking around concussed. We need to keep it from them.'"

I can't really blame athletes like Boyd and Ravotti, then, for wanting to distance themselves from such a suit as it stands. There is a loyalism in college football, a very real, very tribal sense of school spirit that goes far beyond anything in professional football. This is what makes the sport great, but also can make it terrifying and abusive. As a Penn State graduate who grew up in a town that was recently impugned by an otherwise reputable sports columnist as a "spooky little place," I've witnessed first-hand both sides of this dichotomy over the past several years. Certain elements of what took place at Penn State (and what's alleged to have taken place at Baylor) are reasons to believe that the institutions themselves—like any powerful bureaucracy—can be capable of massive negligence. But I just don't know if that's the case here.

Here is what I can tell you: I knew virtually nothing about the impact of concussions back in 1993. There's still a lot I don't know. I think athletes who are suffering should be compensated for that suffering, but I think, at least on the college level, we're a long way from figuring out the best way to do that, and we're a long way from knowing whose fault—if anyone's—all of this really is. Did the NCAA, the conferences, or their member schools disregard the known dangers of concussions and brain trauma, sticking their heads in the sand? Did they, like the NFL, fund and create cooked scientific papers making dubious claims like concussions are not serious injuries? Did they conspire with the NFL to downplay and deny the problem, limiting their financial liability, or perhaps just follow the league's all-too-convenient lead?

There is some evidence that, at least in recent years, the schools may be responsible. According to Solomon at CBS, a 2010 NCAA survey revealed that 50 percent of responding schools didn't require a concussed athlete to see a physician. Maybe, if Edelson's lawsuits wind up uncovering more evidence and exposing that a lack of concussion curiosity and care was both widespread and purposeful, there will be more reason for athletes to turn on the schools to which they possess such fealty. But this is college football, and that attachment is strong; maybe, just maybe, the NCAA and its member schools are banking on that. For now, it all feels like murky territory.