The NFL concussion protocol and the legal issues surrounding how to compensate several generations of players who sustained cumulative neurological trauma continue to evolve, albeit at a slower pace than when the litigation was originally started 15 years ago.
The latest round involves a practice known as "race-norming," which is a methodology of assessing cognitive damage that is as mercenary as it is offensive. In a nutshell, a number of NFL players applying for benefits under the concussion protocol were not subject to the cognitive baseline assessments that are now performed on NFL players at the start of every season. And although these former players were now presenting with clear evidence of cognitive decline as a result of thousands of head impacts, without knowing the individual cognitive starting point, it's impossible to determine the extent of the overall injury and thus the NFL concussion benefit plan's liability.
To make up for this lack of baseline knowledge, the insurance plan administrators did what they always do-they used an average cognitive baseline for players given their demographic characteristics, which included race. These averages lowered the cognitive baseline for black players based on practices used in a variety of other medical specialties. The upshot of this was that black football players without the individual cognitive baseline assessment had to show a steeper decline in cognitive ability to get the same level of benefits that a white player would receive with a similar cognitive score.
This all came out in litigation over concussion benefits in 2020 and the picture wasn't a pretty one. The NFL formally stopped the practice in 2022. It looks like the last lawsuit over this issue is now about to be settled, which I'm sure is a very welcome result at the NFL's Park Avenue headquarters.
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