Rules Trickle Down - Money in Settlement Won't - NYTimes.com Don Bosco Prep in 2010. Soon after rules changes in 2009, a player said of the N.F.L., "Everyone looks up to them, and we follow." When more than 4,000 retired players agreed to accept $765 million to settle their lawsuit with the N.F.L., the league was able to cling to its most valuable claim of all - that it never ignored or obscured the risks of concussions. Given that the league's annual revenue is pushing $10 billion, most experts viewed the settlement, to be paid over 20 years, as removing a burden for the N.F.L. rather than imposing one. Under the no-fault deal, the N.F.L. can forever deny that it could have mitigated its players" dementia or memory loss or that its focus ever strayed from the safety of football players, from professionals down to peewees. Even the mediator who brokered the settlement, Judge Layn Phillips, concluded, "Parents should know that the N.F.L. and the plaintiffs are committed to doing what's right for the game and making it safer at all levels." To those versed in the league's concussion history, invoking the N.F.L."s influence on the four million children who play youth and high school football was particularly curious. While both retired players and N.F.L. executives claimed victory over the settlement, which will cover future expenses related to on-the-job brain damage, invisible behind them was the legion of young players who have long been endangered by the league's actions - those same actions that the settlement effectively absolved. Only after intense news media and Congressional pressure from 2007 to 2009 did the N.F.L. even acknowledge that concussions could have long-term neurological effects. Before that, N.F.L. officials and the league's committee on brain injuries discredited any suggestion in the popular or scientific press that concussions were any more than the "dings" that players became accustomed to calling them. While international groups of doctors were beginning to emphasize the dangers of repeated brain trauma in sports, the N.F.L. waited. Some were more brazen than others. In 2000, the Cowboys" owner, Jerry Jones, told ESPN that he would push Troy Aikman, one of football's most popular players, to ignore concussion concerns during the playoffs "since all data that we have so far don't point to any lasting effects, long-term effects from the head trauma." The N.F.L. committee, dominated by team-employed physicians, was formed in 1994 to investigate why often-concussed stars like Steve Young were having such trouble staying in games. It soon published studies that claimed to put the matter to rest. Their primary messages, which directly conflicted with those of outside literature, were that repeated concussions had no long-term neurocognitive consequences and that a concussed player - even one knocked unconscious - could, in fact, safely return to a game. The group went so far as to claim that "it might be safe for college/high school players to be cleared on the same day" they sustained a concussion, despite wide knowledge that brain injuries among children carried considerably higher risks. The N.F.L."s message was heard. The bravado that so many young players wanted to adopt from their N.F.L. heroes - "It's not dangerous to play through a concussion," one high school player from Illinois insisted to The New York Times - was now available for download on a scientific journal's Web site. "That was a major disservice, and it continues to be an ongoing one in conversations I have with parents and coaches and players," a team physician for several high schools and colleges in New Jersey, Dr. Gerard Malanga, said in 2007. It creates confusion when there's increasing clarity on the subject. They say what I tell them about it not being safe to go back in the same game is totally wrong, and they're backed by the N.F.L. The seminal moment of the N.F.L."s concussion controversy came after the suicide in 2006 of the former N.F.L. defensive back Andre Waters, who was later found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative neurological disease caused by repeated brain trauma that has been tied to dementia, memory loss and depression. The Waters situation raised the question of the risks also faced by young players; the N.F.L. strained to reassure fans, players and parents that everything was fine. An outside study tying retired players" concussions to depression later in life was called "virtually worthless" by an N.F.L. committee member. Amid reports that N.F.L. retirees were increasingly found to have dementia, an N.F.L. spokesman denied any connection to football by saying dementia "affects many elderly people."