NCAA, Big 12 Class Action Alleges Negligence Over Concussion Safety

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A class action lawsuit brought by a former college football player alleges that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Big 12 Conference did not do enough to protect student athletes from the dangers of multiple concussions.

The complaint contends that these organizations knew of the risks concussions can pose to athletes since at least the mid-1980s, but did not implement proper safety gear or protocol to minimize these dangers.

“Defendants engaged in a long-established pattern of negligence and inaction with respect to concussions and concussion-related maladies sustained by its student-athletes, all the while profiting immensely from those same student-athletes,” the complaint asserts.

The NCAA and Big 12 class action states that the NCAA has long considered the health of student athletes as its top priority. The complaint quotes a college chancellor from an NCAA convention in 1909 that, “the lives of students must not be sacrificed to a sport.” Indeed, the NCAA website states that it was founded “to protect young people from the dangerous and exploitive athletics practices of the time.”

However, the class action claims that “the NCAA has focused on the small and picayune rules violations, ignoring the larger problems that would endanger the profit-making machine that is its dominance of college athletics, like concussions.” The complaint asserts that the NCAA knew collegiate concussions were increasing by the early 1990s, but failed to warn players of the risk of getting multiple concussions, or properly investigate and choose safety equipment.

In the 2000s, the defendants knew of “over twenty (20) scientific studies documenting the relationship between concussions and long-term brain injury,” according to the class action. Most of those studies recommended safety and screening protocol that the complaint contends were “ignored” or that the NCAA and Big 12 Conference “actively tried to discredit.”

In addition, the NCAA class action notes that student athletes are typically 18 to 23 years old; these young people are not able to stand up for themselves through unions like professional players, and the dangers of multiple concussions on developing minds are especially acute.

Plaintiff Joseph Walker states that he was a former football player at the University of Texas—which is in the Big 12 Conference—from 1997 through 2000. Walker claims that he suffered many concussions from playing football, “and is now suffering from several symptoms indicative of long-term brain and neurocognitive injuries.”

The concussion risk lawsuit requests certification of a Class of all people who were college football players at any Big 12 Conference school between 1990 and 2016, “who are now suffering from long-term brain or neurocognitive injuries or disabilities, or who will develop such injuries or disabilities in the future, resulting from their play as collegiate football players.”

The complaint asserts violations of contract law and negligence. The NCAA class action seeks damages for all present and future injuries.

Walker is represented by Vincent P. Circelli of Circelli Walter & Young PLLC.

The NCAA, Big 12 Concussion Risk Negligence Class Action Lawsuit is Joseph Walker v. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-03949, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.