NCAA to pay out $75M over concussions. Nothing for players.

Patrick Hruby in Sports on Earth:

Zilch. Nada. Bupkus. If you’re a former college athlete with brain damage and/or a neurodegenerative disease, guess what: The proposed NCAA settlement will pay for your diagnosis. And that’s it. Not a nickel for treatment. Not a dime for pain and suffering. The deal’s medical monitoring fund isn’t matched by an award fund, which means the truly injured are on their own — including name plaintiffs Adrian Arrington and Derek Owens, who both suffered concussions and sub-concussive hits playing college football and currently suffer from chronic headaches, short-term memory problems, depression, trouble concentrating and other issues.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has more:

The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced on Tuesday that it would pay $75-million to settle a class-action lawsuit over concussions in college sports.

Rather than paying damages to former players who have suffered concussions, as the NFL has done, the NCAA will devote most of the money to brain screenings for current and former NCAA athletes and to set up preventive measures for future players. Of the total, $5-million will pay for research on concussions.

The $75-million is:

Less than what General Motors alone spent on advertising during the NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament (“March Madness”) in 2013 ($80.7-million). About 10 percent of the NCAA’s total revenue for television and marketing rights in 2013 ($726.4-million). Slightly more than the NCAA spent to put on just the Division I championships in 2011-12 ($73.4-million).

…spread out over several years (the settlement calls for four payments to be made over the course of 20 years) and divided among potentially hundreds of thousands of current and former athletes (there were more than 450,000 athletes in 2011-12 alone), it starts to seem somewhat meager.