A former college football player has sued the NCAA, claiming that the repeated blows to the head he suffered while playing for Slippery Rock University from 1976-78 led to a recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.
“The NCAA failed to educate Mr. (Joel) Jarosz about the long-term, life-altering risks and consequences of head injuries that can result from participation in the game of football, despite its knowledge of those risks,” according to the lawsuit. Central to the allegation is that the NCAA has known for decades that football-related concussions put players at risk for serious long-term cognitive health issues.
Representing Jarosz is Jason Luckasevic, a Pittsburgh lawyer who is a veteran of concussion-related lawsuits. In fact, Luckasevic was part of the legal team that settled another lawsuit last year, which was brought by the widow of a University of Texas linebacker, who played between 1968 and 1971 and passed away in 2015. Luckasevic maintains in the Jarosz lawsuit that the NCAA has known since the 1930s about the risks of football and how it can cause permanent brain injuries.
Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that “years later, in 2010, the NCAA adopted a concussion management policy that delegated the concussion program to its member schools. This public relations maneuver, in the (face) of decades of knowledge coupled with inaction, was too little, too late for plaintiff.”
