It is the time of year to think of fallen fall leaves, great turkey dinner and football,  The big games are always this time of year.  I must be weird because I think of the fallen heroes on the football field who have fallen and were in deep trouble from concussions and bad health plans,It is a very dangerous sport that I have written about a number of times in the past.

Well, this is good news for those injured warriors of the football fields of America.  The Class Action suit against the National Football League on behalf of injured players has been settled.  The League will be making payouts over twenty years but must pay 50% per cent of the money awarded within the first three years.

There were about 4,500  seriously injured players that were part of the lawsuit.  The guys can opt out of it and pursue litigation on their own but for most of the players, they want in on this settlement.  There is actually a pool of about 19,000 American football players that if all of them can prove that they have health related issues due to football injuries can also get some of this money given to them from this lawsuit.

The injured players will have to go to a medical board and will have to document their health issues and have to prove that they had a concussion that is connected to football.  The NFL will still try to back out of giving out money and try to say the injuries were not from football.  They settled.  Both sides settled and the mediator settled.  Now pay up National Football League.

This is the biggest law suit in sports history and I don’t know why more people aren’t talking about it.  Thousands of football players finally banded together to sue their former employers.  I guess people can argue that the players knew it was a dangerous sport and they should expect serious injuries.  Could the public be against this sort of thing?

The players won on the basis that the league officials hid what they knew about the long term effects of head trauma thereby exposing the players to needless and harmful risks.  The players thought they had a strong case to go before the courts since there are so many guys in a vegetated state now who once were handsome warriors of the field.  But last month before their case could go to trial, the NFL struck an out of court settlement agreeing to pay $ 765 Million dollars .  Boy are ticket prices going to go up now to support that huge amount of money.

That amount of money is nothing compared to what the NFL could have lost in terms of negative publicity once they drag these players in the public to see some of them who can only communicate now by a Morse code of blinking their eyes. $700 Million dollars is only a fraction of what their TV contracts alone are worth per year.  Actually I think the League got off with a pretty easy settlement even though that amount of money should provide a lot of comfort to some players.

Will money ever be a substitute for health? No.  Give these guys all the money in the world and they will still need some divine intervention from God to make a miracle in their lives.  Meanwhile, the sport goes on and we look forward to the big game on Thanksgiving as we give thanks to our healthy families sitting around us.