A PRICE TO PLAY | Stories like Curtis Williams' spur fight for more coverage for players
Curtis Williams was paralyzed from the neck down in a football game against Stanford in October 2000.
The University of Washington safety died 18 months after the injury, but NCAA death benefits mandate that a potential recipient must die within 12 months of an injury for the family to get any money. His survivors did not qualify.
Williams’ family (if eligible) would have been paid only $10,000 by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, an organization that recently signed a $10.8 billion, 14-year contract for the media rights to its basketball tournament games and earned $10.6 billion from its athletic programs in 2008-09.
Today, the death benefit is $25,000, but the athlete still must die within 12 months of the injury for survivors to qualify.
Before his death, Williams’ family wanted him to have home health care, but the NCAA’s insurance company, Mutual of Omaha, did not provide enough coverage to make that possible without untrained family members becoming virtual primary care-givers for a large percentage of the time.
The family members felt being home instead of in a nursing facility would be more conducive to Williams’ recovery, they said.
After HBO aired a special on Williams’ situation and public pressure mounted, the NCAA and its insurance company upgraded the policy, which allowed Williams to be eligible for enough money to cover his in-home care.
One of the organizations that helped Williams was the National College Players Association.
The NCPA is an advocacy organization for college football players and other collegiate athletes who are waging a battle against the NCAA to gain more rights and benefits.
A key part of that war is medical benefits.
NCPA President and founder Ramogi Huma said his organization has about 14,000 members, including 7,000 current college players. The membership includes student-athletes from the University of Florida, Florida State, South Florida and Central Florida.
He won’t give members’ names, in part, because he said they are afraid of reprisals from their respective universities.
“Student-athletes have no idea what they are covered by with medical insurance in college. It depends on the school, and usually the players don’t know until they get injured,” Huma said.
Huma said he sent questionnaires to all Division I programs asking them to explain their medical insurance policies, and 90 percent refused. He said FSU, Miami, South Florida and Central Florida did not respond, while Florida answered some questions.
Florida said it provides year-round, 24-7 medical coverage to its athletes for injuries unrelated to athletics, and its athletes do not have to pay any out-of-pocket medical expenses, according to Huma.
“NCAA bylaws require schools to certify that a student-athlete has insurance coverage for athletically related injuries, up to the deductible of the NCAA Catastrophic Injury Insurance program (currently $90,000). I do not have numbers on how many schools do not provide additional coverage,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said.
The NCAA has never established rules for the coverage in its new policy, which was introduced four years ago, leaving it up to each individual college. That led to a wide disparity even within a state university system.
The NCAA pays 100 percent of the insurance premium for its Catastrophic Injury Insurance Program, but the plan does not kick in any money until a $90,000 deductible is met.
NCAA schools must certify that their student-athletes have insurance to cover the layer below the deductible. Some institutions pay for those policies, while others require student-athletes to be covered under their parents’ plan.
“We want to make sure schools making all this money don’t leave players with medical bills,” Huma said. “The NCAA tries to convince us that we have little, if anything, to complain about because we are getting a ‘free ride’ through college. This is not true. Our scholarships are not free -- we work for them.”
New laws passed in California and Connecticut require schools to disclose to all recruits the policies concerning the standards for scholarship renewals, sports-related medical expenses, and out-of-pocket expenses that students on athletic scholarships are expected to pay. Schools must post these details on the Internet and make that link available to recruits.
Huma went through his own personal turmoil with the NCAA that started with his UCLA teammate, Donnie Edwards, a 12-year NFL veteran and two-time All-Pro who retired in 2008.
Edwards was a senior linebacker at UCLA when he went on a local radio show and talked about how tough it was to make it on an athletic scholarship. He said he didn’t have any food in his refrigerator and that his scholarship check didn’t come for another week.
Huma said when he got home that day, Edwards found groceries sitting on his door step, took them in and ate some food. Somehow the NCAA found out and suspended him.
Huma, the freshman backup to Edwards at the time, had already lost 15 pounds because he didn’t have enough food to eat and was down to two meals a day.
With an empty stomach, but fed up with what he perceived as an exploitation of college football players, Huma decided to fight back and began organizing players.
“Everybody could relate to how tough it was to get by and we just didn’t have a voice,” Huma said. “We asked how can we generate all this money and we are sitting here struggling to get by.”
When he was being recruited, Huma said, he was promised by every college football coach that if he were injured they would take care of all the expenses regardless of the situation.
“You go on recruiting trips and there is nothing but buffets everywhere. I felt as players we need a voice, and I started a student group,” he said.
He said players should be allowed to endorse products the same as Olympic athletes were permitted to do before they started allowing professionals to compete.
“You can have the open market or the black market. It (the NCAA) has chosen the black market,” he said. “They’ll put up with the scandals along the way. ... But at some point it becomes ridiculous. We’re teetering on that point right now.”
This story was originally published August 15, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "A PRICE TO PLAY | Stories like Curtis Williams' spur fight for more coverage for players."