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Sports should provide for accident victims

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By Frank LoGiudice, Geneseo | Monday, May 14, 2007 12:37 AM CDT | () comments

Fortunately, catastrophic accidents to athletes in action are rare, but when they occur it can devastate the family. The Hearn case in Rock Island is a good case in point. The local response for help, and particularly Mike Ditka, admirable, but is it enough? The young man will need continuous help for the next 50/60 years. Obviously, local help will not continue for that length of time, so, from where can it be expected? Something permanent is needed!

In my humble opinion, the answer is simple. Professional sports, particularly football, hockey, and basketball, multi-billion dollar operations, must accept the fact that their source of players is developed at the high school and college level, and it is to their advantage that this source continue to be viable and to pay for expenses, inherent to accidents that may occur at that level. How to do this? Again the answer is as simple as follows:

Establish a catastrophic accident fund, with a board of directors of three members from each league.

Contribute an initial $100,000 each (a drop in the bucket).

For subsequent funding, establish an initial salary deduction, on each player, of .01 percent (again, a drop in the bucket), to be subsequently adjusted, dependent upon the insurance premium that is negotiated.

In fact, it could very well be that the fund would not need to have an insurance policy — it could itself finance the accident payments.

Could anything be simpler? But what a peace of mind that it would establish!

Frank LoGiudice

Geneseo