2,000 Ex-NFL Players File Lawsuit Against the League

Earlier today 2,000 ex-NFL players joined together to file a unified lawsuit in federal court claiming that the NFL did not make the risks of head trauma clear to them and also withheld information about the dangers associated with many small blows to the head during the course of a career.

Let’s just call this the “I’m deferring responsibility lawsuit.”

After all, this is America, nothing is ever our fault, we’re always the victim.

Borrow money you can’t afford to pay back and it’s not your fault, it’s the bank’s fault.

Take out a mortgage that you could only afford if you happened to win the lottery sometime within the next five years, and once again, not your fault, it’s the mortgage broker’s fault.

You have a degree in art history and have been out of a job for two years, it must be the government’s fault, it has nothing to do with the fact that aside from being a teacher or museum tour guide there’s nothing else you can really do with a degree in art history. You essentially just spent $160K for a degree that will give you a return of nothing more than $30k per year.  

It shouldn’t take a team of neurologists or years of research to tell you that if you play NFL football for a living, there’s an excellent chance you may suffer permanent physical damage.

Just like if you are a NASCAR driver, you may suffer serious injury or even death during the course of a race.

If you’re an airline pilot, your job is obviously a little more risky than if you were a kindergarten teacher.

If you’re a professional boxer, you know very well that each blow to the head is doing you harm, some of which will be irreversible.

Claiming that you didn’t know the risks associated with something like NFL football is simply another attempt to push the blame onto someone else.

Come on now, did you think it was perfectly healthy for a 285 pound linebacker to run full speed right smack into your head, after which you can’t walk or even see for the next five minutes?

Did you think it was perfectly healthy to take your helmet and smack it against another player’s helmet 35 times per week, plus the additional hits to the head in practice?

If you sat in your kitchen and hit your head against the table 35 times per day for 10 years, would you really be surprised when the doctor told you that you had permanent brain damage?

TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY.

NFL players know full well what they are getting into, but they do it anyway because they are either chasing fame and fortune, or they love the game so much that they don’t really care about the obvious risks involved.

What we have now is a group of NFL players that took on all of the risks associated with, as Hyman Roth might say, “the business they had chosen” and now want monetary compensation for the outcome of those risks.

Essentially they want their own little version of a TARP fund; only they are turning to the NFL instead of the federal government.

The sad part is that this is America, where it’s never our fault, and these 2,000 individuals will likely get some form of a pay out because, well, that’s what happens in a society where the blame game has become as much a part of American culture as cheeseburgers, apple pie and Fourth of July fireworks.