On The Looming Death of American Football

Death by tort lawyer in 3...2...1

A Colorado jury has awarded $11.5 million in a lawsuit originally brought against helmet maker Riddell and several high school administrators and football coaches over brain injuries suffered by a teenager in 2008.” While the jury rejected the plaintiff’s claim of design defect, it accepted the theory that the helmet maker should have done more to warn of concussions.

If the helmet makers are getting nailed, wait until every high school and college in the country is sued, not to mention the massive suit looming against the NFL.  Expect to see a debate soon, beginning in state legislatures, over tort protection for football.  Texas, for example, has several of the country's tort hellholes but if Friday night high school football is threatened, you can bet that the legislature will be moved to action.

7 Comments

  1. Andrew:

    I'm ok with football dying. Rugby is more fun to play anyway.

  2. Bram:

    Youth football is the most expensive sport you can sign your kids up for. The helmets cost $hundreds - more than half of which is just liability insurance.

  3. john mcginnis:

    NFL ball will die without being sued. So long as the HS and Collegiate games start to wither the NFL is doomed. Without the talent pool where to they get future players?
    Andrew, I played Rugby at collegiate level. Its fun, but I have seen busted teeth, arms, and an occasional leg. It happens generally in the second half after the halftime beer chug.

  4. bobby_b:

    For the longest time, no one wanted to become nationally famous as one of the jurors who was stupid enough to agree with a plaintiffs' lawyer who argued that every product, every experience, every tool, and every instance of life must be absolutely guaranteed as 100% safe, or someone has been very very evil and deserves to pay.

    Then we all watched as our country's voters twice elected a dishonest, racist, thieving, duplicitous mobster as our President.

    And so now, the jurors being selected for trials already know that they can do whatever stupid thing comes into their empty little heads, and they will suffer no loss of personal repute because of it.

    It's not just "low-information voters" who are heralding the end of our constitutionally-structured democratic republic. It's "low-information people." We simply cannot overcome their drag.

  5. Ted Rado:

    Getting rid of our overblown interest in "amateur" sports may not be a bad thing. I went to university to learn to use my head for something other than a battering ram. Maybe getting rid of football and attending to serious study will be a good idea (football fanatic fans notwithstanding).

  6. Mark Hargrave:

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  7. Josephine Martin:

    Le football n'est pas un jeu très facile à jouer et comme vous dites M. John football est presque un jeu mort. Mais la vérité est que ce sport a le plus amusant à regarder. C'est triste que les enfants reçoivent des blessures à jouer au football américain , mais cela fait partie du jeu.