Parents are worried about their children playing football, but most haven't decided to keep their kids from putting on a helmet and stepping onto the field. 
 
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 According to an Associated Press-GfK poll, nearly half of parents said they're not comfortable letting their child play football amid growing uncertainty about the long-term impact of concussions. 
 
 In the poll, 44 percent of parents weren't comfortable with their child playing football. The same percentage was uncomfortable with ice hockey, and 45 percent were uncomfortable with participation in wrestling. Only five percent, though, said they have discouraged their child from playing in the last two years as concern over head injuries has increased at all levels of the game. 
 
 The majority of parents said they are comfortable with participation in a host of other sports — including swimming, track and field, basketball, soccer, baseball and softball, among others. 
 
 The AP-GfK poll was conducted from July 24-28. It included interviews with 1,044 adults and has a sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. 
 
 The parents' concern comes as several high-profile lawsuits have challenged how concussions have been addressed in pro and college sports. Thousands of pro players sued the NFL and a $675 million settlement that would compensate them for concussion-related claims is pending. A tentative settlement with the NCAA, meanwhile, would create a $70 million fund to test thousands of current and former college athletes for brain trauma. 
 
 Youth and high school programs have increased training available for coaches, and helmet companies are releasing new designs with the hope that they reduce the force of impact. But research is murky about whether or not they will be effective. 
 
 Participation statistics also show only a slight decline in the overall number of high school students playing football. 
 
 According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, nearly 1.1 million students played 11-man football during the 2012-13 school year. The number was down approximately 10,000 from the year before and more than 20,000 since 2009-08. 
 
 Cathy Curtin, a high school rifle coach in northeast Pennsylvania, is one parent who has discouraged her children from playing football in recent years. 
 
 Curtin, 52, has gone through concussion-related training for her job, but one issue that concerns her is how much of identifying a head injury relies on the student's input following a collision. She said her 21-year-old son "would have said anything" to remain in the game while in high school, including hiding symptoms such as dizziness from a trainer or coach. 
 
 "Our training staff is good, but you can't always know," Curtin said. "You're basing whether they can play on their say. And they are 16-year-old kids, 17-year-old kids who want more than anything to get out there and play." 
 
 Curtin said her younger son broke his collarbone and leg while playing football as a freshman. 
 
 "Nowhere in that time did they check him for a concussion," Curtin said. "So, if he got hit hard enough to break his collar bone and his leg, then how hard did he hit the ground, too?" 
 
 Football wasn't the only sport Curtin said she was uncomfortable with. She also worries about hockey, wrestling and other high-impact competitions such as gymnastics and cheerleading. She's encouraged by new advances — such as chin straps that change color when a player may have suffered a concussion — aimed at reducing and identifying head injuries, but she is also skeptical about school districts' ability to afford new helmets. 
 
 JeMare Williams, 43, is no stranger to the possibility of getting a concussion while playing football. He thinks he "probably" suffered from one while in high school in St. Louis. 
 
 "I don't really know, but I remember being hurt, being dizzy," Williams said. "But during that time, there wasn't a specific diagnosis like now." 
 
 Now living in Henderson, Nevada, and with 17- and 11-year-old sons who play the game, Williams — an auto mechanic — has the same injury concerns as many parents. That said, he's comfortable with his sons playing football — or any other sport they choose. 
 
 One of the primary reasons for Williams' comfort level is because of the increased attention paid to head injuries over the last few years. He said coaches are trained more closely now to teach proper tackling techniques, as well as watch players for signs of concussions. 
 
 "There's a lot of publicity on (concussions) now, and I think that makes it better," Williams said. "So, I'm not as worried now." ||||| FILE - In this Sept. 1, 2005 file photo, South Carolina's Stanley Doughty (55) celebrates with his teammates after stopping Central Florida from scoring during an NCAA college football game in Columbia,... (Associated Press) 
 
 CHICAGO (AP) — The NCAA has agreed to settle a class-action head injury lawsuit by creating a $70 million fund to diagnose thousands of current and former college athletes to determine if they suffered brain trauma playing football, hockey, soccer and other contact sports, The Associated Press has learned. 
 
 College sports' governing body also agreed to implement a single return-to-play policy spelling out how all teams must treat players who received head blows, according to a Tuesday filing in U.S. District Court in Chicago obtained by the AP. Critics have accused the NCAA of giving too much discretion to hundreds of individual schools about when athletes can go back into games, putting them at risk. 
 
 Unlike a proposed settlement in a similar lawsuit against the NFL, this deal stops short of setting aside money to pay players who suffered brain trauma. Instead, athletes can sue individually for damages and the NCAA-funded tests to gauge the extent of neurological injuries could establish grounds for doing that. 
 
 The filing serves as notice to the federal judge overseeing the class-action case that the parties struck a deal after nearly a year of negotiations. In addition to football, ice hockey and soccer, the settlement also applies to all men and women who participated in basketball, wrestling, field hockey and lacrosse. 
 
 There is no cutoff date for when athletes must have played a designated sport at one of the more than 1,000 NCAA member schools to qualify for the medical exams. That means all athletes currently playing and those who participated decades ago could undergo the tests and potentially follow up with damage claims. 
 
 To keep the NCAA from having to hold unwieldy talks with multiple plaintiffs, 10 lawsuits filed from Georgia and South Carolina to Minnesota and Missouri were consolidated into the one case in Chicago, where the first lawsuit was filed in 2011. Combined, the suits identified several dozen athletes by name as having suffered brain trauma. 
 
 The lead plaintiff is Adrian Arrington, a former safety at Eastern Illinois. He said he endured five concussions while playing, some so severe he has said he couldn't recognize his parents afterward. Subsequent headaches, memory loss, seizures and depression made it difficult to work or even care for his children, filings said. 
 
 Another named plaintiff is former Central Arkansas wide receiver Derek K. Owens. After several concussions, he said he found he could no longer retain what he had just studied. His symptoms became so severe he dropped out of school in 2011, telling his mother: "I feel like a 22-year-old with Alzheimer's." 
 
 Among other settlement terms, all athletes will take baseline neurological tests to start each year to help doctors determine the severity of any concussion during the season; concussion education will be mandated for coaches and athletes; and a new, independent Medical Science Committee will oversee the medical testing. 
 
 The NCAA admits no wrongdoing in the settlement and has denied understating the dangers of concussions. As proof it has tried to mitigate the risks, it has cited recent changes in equipment, medical practices and playing rules, including ones prohibiting football players from targeting an opponent's head or neck. 
 
 The NCAA also announced in May a three-year, $30 million concussion study co-funded by the U.S. Defense Department. Plans call for initial data collection on about 7,200 athletes from 12 colleges, increasing to 37,000 athletes at 30 sites, with the aim of better understanding concussions and developing better prevention methods. 
 
 The settlement is still subject to approval by U.S. District Judge John Lee, in a process that could take months. He must grant preliminary approval and then, after affected athletes weigh in, give a final OK. 
 
 Plaintiffs' filings say the number of athletes who may require testing to learn if they suffered long-term damage runs into the tens of thousands. They cite NCAA figures that from 2004 to 2009 alone, 29,225 NCAA athletes suffered concussions — about 16,000 in football, 5,751 in women's soccer and 3,374 in men's soccer. 
 
 Internal emails unsealed in the lawsuit illustrate how pressure mounted on the NCAA over the issue. 
 
 In a Feb. 23, 2010, email, the NCAA's director of government relations, Abe Frank, wondered about debates elsewhere, including in Congress, about recommended new safeguards for young children playing contact sports. 
 
 "Do you think this renewed emphasis on youth sports will increase the pressure on the NCAA to do more at the college level?" he asks in the email sent to the NCAA's then-director of health and safety. 
 
 David Klossner responded bluntly a few hours later. "Well since we don't currently require anything all steps are higher than ours," he wrote. 
 
 Later that year, the NCAA did establish a new head-injury policy that requires each school to have a concussion management plan on hand and it states that athletes should be kept from play for at least a day after a concussion; it also requires players to sign a statement "accepting responsibility for reporting their injuries." 
 
 But plaintiffs argued schools put too much of the onus on athletes with little understanding of concussions to self-report injuries. And they blamed a tendency of some teams to hurry concussed players back into games according to patchy, uneven plans and the NCAA's lax enforcement of the concussions policy. 
 
 In a 2012 deposition, Klossner conceded the NCAA provides virtually no oversight of concussion management plans and that schools aren't required to submit them to the NCAA. Asked if any schools had been disciplined for having subpar plans, Klossner said, "Not to my knowledge." 
 
 Prior to the settlement, plaintiffs were scathing about how the NCAA handled the head injury issue for decades. 
 
 Instead of adopting stricter protections for athletes, the lawsuit said the NCAA chose "to sacrifice them on an altar of money and profits," an approach that occurred even though the NCAA had known for at least a decade "of the correlation between concussions and depression, dementia and early onset Alzheimer's disease." 
 
 The plaintiffs cited a 2010 internal NCAA survey that found almost half of college trainers put athletes with signs of a concussion back into the same game. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mtarm ||||| The family of a football player who committed suicide and was later found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease, has sued the youth league Pop Warner, claiming that it failed to warn players about, and protect them from, the dangers of head trauma. 
 
 The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Wisconsin, seeks at least $5 million in punitive damages for the death of the player, Joseph Chernach, who killed himself in 2012 at age 25. In a 27-page complaint, Chernach’s estate said Pop Warner “knew or should have known that tackle football was dangerous for children and exposed children to head injuries, including dementia pugilistica,” a variant of C.T.E. 
 
 Pop Warner, the complaint said, failed to train coaches properly, did not use the safest helmets, did not teach players how to wear their helmets properly and did not limit the amount of hitting in practice. The organization also failed to follow concussion protocols published by medical professionals as early as 1997, according to the complaint. 
 
 The lawsuit claims that Pop Warner’s conduct “was deliberate, an actual disregard of the plaintiff’s right to safety, health, or life, and sufficiently aggravated to warrant punishment by punitive damages.” 
 
 The case has the potential to upend the economics of youth football leagues. If a court ruled against Pop Warner in Chernach’s death, insurers could potentially increase their premiums to offset legal risks. While Pop Warner is the largest and most established youth football organization in the country, smaller leagues could have a harder time paying for more expensive coverage. 
 
 “The most significant thing we’re doing is telling the courts that strict liability should apply,” said Gordon Johnson, a lawyer at the Brain Injury Law Group, which is representing Chernach’s estate. “It would establish remarkable precedent that would change youth football, because I don’t think anyone would insure you if strict liability applied.” 
 
 A spokesman for Pop Warner declined to comment on the lawsuit. 
 
 Other youth organizations and schools are also grappling with legislative and legal hurdles related to head injury protocols. The New York City Council is considering a bill that would require a doctor to be present at every youth football game, a potentially expensive mandate. And on Tuesday, the mother of a teenage water polo player sued USA Water Polo in federal court in California, claiming that the organization had failed to properly protect players from the dangers of concussions. 
 
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 The Chernachs’ case against Pop Warner has its challenges, some of them similar to those that confronted the suit against the N.F.L. brought by more than 5,000 former players. The Chernachs’ legal team will probably have to document that the head trauma Chernach sustained in Pop Warner led to his death, but his parents said they did not recall him ever receiving a diagnosis of a concussion. 
 
 Chernach, however, was found posthumously to have C.T.E., which doctors have said is evidence of repeated head trauma. 
 
 In addition to his four years in Pop Warner, Chernach played football in high school, wrestled for 12 years and was a pole-vaulter on the track team, activities that could have contributed to his C.T.E. The plaintiffs will also have to prove that C.T.E. was the cause of the suicide, said Michael Kaplen, a lawyer who specializes in lawsuits involving traumatic brain injuries. 
 
 Chernach played Pop Warner football in Wisconsin and Michigan starting at age 11, and was a running back and linebacker who sometimes took part in every play of the game. His father, Jeffrey, was a volunteer football coach and also coached his son’s wrestling team. He is not part of the lawsuit. 
 
 At Central Michigan University, Chernach stopped going to class and later dropped out. He returned to live with his father and became depressed and reclusive. He told one of his two brothers that he needed alcohol to face people, his father said, adding that Joseph left his room only at night. 
 
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 “He was burrowed in his bedroom and turned into a vampire,” Jeffrey Chernach said. “It was obvious to all of us that he wasn’t happy and there was something very wrong, but no matter what tactic we took, we couldn’t get him to get any help.” 
 
 After Joseph Chernach committed suicide in June 2012, tissue samples from his brain were sent to Boston University. The next year, Dr. Ann McKee, chief of neuropathology at the V.A. Boston Healthcare System and a professor of neurology and pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine, released the results of an autopsy that found “considerable pathological tau deposits” and “very severe changes in the brain stem.” Some of the changes “were the most severe I’ve seen in a person this age,” McKee wrote in her pathology report. 
 
 “Really, it’s the worst example of this in someone this young,” McKee said in a telephone interview, adding that some of the worst pathology was found in the parts of the brain normally associated with depression. She said that C.T.E. was evidence of repetitive brain trauma, not necessarily concussions. 
 
 C.T.E. can be diagnosed only posthumously, and most of the documented cases have been in people in their 40s or older who played football over a longer period of time than Chernach did. 
 
 Debra Pyka, Joseph’s mother and a licensed practical nurse, said that her son never complained about head injuries and that he was popular and active in his college years and afterward. But he was very depressed and angry in his last few months, she said, something she would never wish on another parent. 
 
 “I don’t want to see this happen again, but I think it will,” she said.
– Almost half of parents have concerns about their kids playing football, but according to a new AP-GfK poll, they're not exactly yanking their offspring off the field in the kind of droves that will "kill pro football." Some 44% of parents were "not comfortable" letting their child punt and pass the pigskin, but only 5% said they had actually "discouraged" their kids from playing over the last two years, reports the AP. The majority of the 1,044 adults interviewed for the poll said they didn't have a problem with their kids playing most other sports, including baseball, basketball, and soccer—though the New York Times reports that FIFA was sued yesterday by a group of soccer parents and players over its handling of concussions. Feeding into parents' fears are high-profile deaths of pros like Junior Seau and a pending class-action settlement that would pay "thousands of former NFL players for concussion-related claims," notes NFL.com. But the National Federation of State High School Associations says that participation in high school football actually rose last year, after four straight years of losses. One possible explanation: With the NFL and NCAA finally acknowledging the seriousness of head injuries in the league, and college teams testing the next generation of head protection, some parents are feeling better about their kids on the field. "There's a lot of publicity on [concussions] now … I'm not as worried," one parent tells the AP.