Over the past few years the NFL has been doing as much as they can to keep players safe. Courtesy of Topnews360.tmcnet.com

This past week the NFL and more than 4,500 former athletes have come to an agreement of $765 million to help diagnose and compensate potentially hundred of retired players who may be suffering from dementia and other brain disorders they blame from the hard-hitting and bone-crushing action that we all have known and come to love.

These athletes that have sued the NFL have been suffering from dementia, depression, or have signs of Alzheimer’s such a short term memory.

Past NFL greats like Jamal Lewis and Jim McMahon have been seen interviews these past couple of years where they don’t even remember the question that was asked a few seconds ago.

Them and many other players have felt that these symptoms have come from playing in the NFL for a number of years and that the NFL was hiding these long-term dangers of concussions and players who were concussed were rushed back on the field to quickly without making sure they were fully recovered.

The settlement would cover all 18,000 former NFL players with most of the money going to help athletes with certain neurological aliments.

Those who have Alzheimer’s disease could get up to $5 million, $4 million for those diagnosed after their deaths with a brain condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy and $3 million for players with dementia.

To most people, almost $800 million may seem like a lot of money, but when you look into where the money is actually going and how it is being used, it makes a lot more sense.

It has only been just recently when the NFL starting making more rules and handing out fines for dangerous plays and hits to the head.

Depending on how bad the hit is, the price will go up and if it’s really bad, that player may be suspended for a game or two.

But as many people will say, “that’s part of the game, the players know what they’re getting into, they’re getting paid to hit and get hit hard,” and the list goes on.

However, knowing that it’s such a dangerous sport, the NFL should have taken precautions from the very beginning.

Of course over time there have been improvements from better equipment to protect bodies from each other and many rules that make sure the players can be safe.

As everyone knows, when you have big, strong men running at each other as fast as they can, someone is bound to get hurt almost every play and it’s hard to make sure that each player doesn’t do something wrong and hurt someone.

But will settlements like these just stop at the professional level, or will they move to the college level.

There is a huge difference from college sports to professional sports, but concussions are common at every level, even high school, so does that mean player’s should start suing their high schools and colleges because they may have some short-term memory or other concussion symptoms.

It should be the goal of high school and college’s to make sure each athlete is using the correct form and does everything they can to make sure none of these accidents happen, but every once in a while a player puts his head to low or players heads collide and someone ends up with a concussion.

And not every player will report it because they don’t want to be taken out of their game, so it will not be looked at, and then if they receive another in a higher level in that sport it may create more problems because the first one was never looked at.

And now that Hartford has a football team this year, who is in charge of making sure that they don’t get hurt and end up with concussions. Who teaches them how to tackle properly, is their equipment up to date, do they have a doctor on staff, or do they use the school doctor?

These and other questions should always be asked when a full contact sport is starting up.

I’m sure the majority of the team has played some level of football in their past and have had proper training on how to hit and tackle.

It’s not just football that has to be worried about concussions, the lacrosse, rugby and even basketball teams at Hartford all have to worry about hits to the head and what could happen in their later years if they don’t take care of themselves.

So to all of the current Hartford athletes who put their bodies on the line for the school, we thank you, but we also want to make sure you stay safe and protect yourself.

If you think you have some kind of headache or don’t feel like you normally do, go get checked out and make sure everything’s ok because the last thing you need is to have problems past your playing career.