“Three quarters of a billion is certainly an eye-popping number,” said Geoffrey Rapp, Harold A. Anderson Professor of Law and Values at The University of Toledo.

“The settlement is a win for both sides. The NFL hopes to put concussions behind it and move back to the business on the field. And for the players, they obtain a sizable payout, resources for education, and a moral victory, even though the underlying legal claims asserted faced some very real and perhaps insurmountable obstacles,” Rapp said.

Rapp published a paper titled Suicide, Concussions and the NFL in March in the Florida International University Law Review.

About Rapp: With some estimates as high as half a trillion dollars worldwide, sports are a surging industry. At the intersection of the increasing number of legal battles among owners, players, networks and sponsors debating how the money should be divvied up is Geoffrey Rapp. An editor for the popular Sports Law Blog, Rapp is sought by national news organizations for his views on individual legal troubles such as those of Lance Armstrong, contract negotiations and lockouts between player unions and owners, NCAA violations and national sports scandals such as the example of Penn State.

Tags: College of Law