Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

The New York Times reports on four former student-athletes, including a football player who played for Central Arkansas and a soccer player from Ouachita Baptist University, who are part of a class-action lawsuit taking the NCAA to task over a perceived negligence to prevent and treat concussions suffered in the realm of college sports.

Derek Owens is a Russellville native who says he can recall having suffered five concussions since leaving high school and playing for the UCA Bears beginning in 2008. Though he was used sparingly, Owens did suffer a big enough hit in 2010 to a Tulsa snapper that his head went "wom-wom-wom" and the Tulsa snapper got headline coverage as a "headhunter" in the local paper.

Since that hit, Owens has quit playing. His grades are down, his drug usage went up and some days, he can't even bring himself to get out of bed:

Owens does not want to tear down football. With a loving smile, he recalled somebody defining it as “a violent sport, played by jerks” — including himself, of course. For now, he is a man in the shadows, dealing with the migraines and dark impulses that sometimes cause him to lock the door and stay in bed.

Before the concussions, he was an A student and a three-sport star and the lead trumpeter in his high school band, who could do mathematics in his head without a calculator or writing down the intermediate steps. After the concussions, his grades fell drastically. He dropped out for this semester because he could not memorize material for tests.

Owens continues to study at UCA and emphasizes that the lawsuit is against the NCAA, not UCA. Angela Palacios is also a part of the suit, having suffered concussions as a soccer player at Ouachita Baptist.

Concussions have been the subject of a very public debate, most notbably in the NFL's efforts to combat the injuries. But where former pros have gone to file worker's compensation claims, college athletes have had no avenues, due to their status as unpaid volunteers on the field.

The NCAA's general consul and vice-president of legal affairs describes the suit as "wholly without merit."