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The NCAA is no stranger to appearing in court, and its legal team ended up with another case on its plate after being sued by a former South Carolina State football player who asserted the governing body covered up evidence concerning the long-term impact of concussions. Now, it could be facing even more headaches after it was ordered to pay him $18 million.
In 1905, Teddy Roosevelt organized a summit at the White House where people representing the college football teams at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were summoned to address the safety issues surrounding a game that had claimed the lives of 18 players the previous year.
That led to the formation of what would eventually be dubbed the NCAA (which was originally branded the “Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States”), which was initially established to formalize rules in an attempt to protect the health of student-athletes before slowly but surely transforming into the regulatory behemoth it is today.
College football has come a long way on the safety front since then, but there’s only so much that can be done to minimize the risk of injuries in an inherently dangerous game where most players will end up having to deal with at least one concussion during their career.
The NFL infamously suppressed evidence concerning the impact of the brain trauma that the vast majority of its players are subjected to before taking steps to address its CTE epidemic, but one former player who accused the NCAA of doing the same has won a staggering amount of money in a case that has the potential to open the door for similar lawsuits.
The NCAA was ordered to pay former South Carolina State football player Robert Geathers $18 million for failing to disclose concussion risks
Robert Geathers played defensive lineman at South Carolina State from 1977 to 1980 (his son of the same name was a defensive end at Georgia who spent 11 seasons with the Bengals). He was selected by the Bills in the third round of the 1981 NFL Draft, but never appeared in an NFL game due to an injury that ended his career.
According to The Times and Democrat, the 68-year-old was diagnosed with dementia in 2017 and also showcases signs of CTE that have resulted in his wife becoming his primary caretaker while struggling to dress himself and perform other “mundane” tasks.
In 2019, Geathers filed a lawsuit against the NCAA that alleged the organization has been aware of the risks of concussions for close to a century. His lawyers pointed to a medical handbook it published in 1933 that contained a “concussion management plan” as well as advice concerning the treatment of “punch drunk syndrome,” the term that was initially used to describe what we now refer to as CTE.
Those attorneys argued the NCAA bore responsibility for Geathers’ current condition by failing to disclose those risks to players. Its legal team argued there was no concrete evidence linking his medical issues with his college football career, and they attempted to pass the buck to the schools that contributed to the medical handbook while distancing itself from the document it nonetheless claimed the copyright to.
The jury that was seated for the civil trial only needed two hours to return a verdict last Thursday, and the NCAA was ordered to pay $18 million in damages (Geathers was awarded $10 million, while his wife, Debra, got $8 million for “loss of consortium”).
The NCAA was given 21 days to appeal the verdict, and it seems safe to assume it will be doing exactly that when you consider the ruling will seemingly open the door for plenty of other former college football players to go the same route if they’re ultimately held culpable.