High School football is a contact sport and such can result
in injuries. So can many other sports, however head trauma is serious and every
effort should be made to avoid it happening. There will be technologies that
emerge and some programs will be early adopters at a heavy cost. Some of these
technologies will become the norm and some will be scrapped. A danger looms for
those programs who take a wait and see approach, that decide before investing
they want to see a track record. They are heroes if the technology does not
deliver on the safety that is promises, but if it does and becomes the norm,
they can now be found liable for negligence. By definition being negligent,
either willfully or unknowingly has been deemed to be punishable in our civil
court system. These lawsuits will name schools, coaches and administrators as
co-defendants along with the VHSL or the other state groups and this will
simply make the choice easy for the schools. They will be forced to abandon
high school affiliated football and quite possibly many other sports. I come to
this opinion that it is matter of time before one of these programs does do
something negligent, and the plaintiff is awarded money. Then the standard for
negligent has been set, and each time it will take less proof to prove
negligence. School board attorneys will advise their boards that there is big
unknown liability out there that looms and the only way to ensure reproach is
to dismantle football. It is a sad fact, but our schools are burdened with
academics, staffing & teacher retention, drugs & violence and the
family issues of students that sports in the grand scheme of things become less
important. It is a solid argument that sports and extracurricular activities
make these things more manageable by providing a more cohesive experience for
our students and communities, but million dollar lawsuits will mute these
benefits. Let me step off my perch and
lets enjoy the football that we have today and hope it last a long time!