Ray Hudson said he'd do things differently now if he was playing football.
A 34-year-old former running back at Alabama, Hudson is one of a myriad of players now suing the NCAA for the way that concussions were treated during their careers. After one play, he said that he remembers constantly asking Brodie Croyle, then Alabama's quarterback, about its details.
"I should have taken myself out of the play because I didn't understand nothing," Hudson says. "Sometimes with me everything would go black, like your eyes would be open but it would go black. You'd be in the huddle and the quarterback would be calling the play out and it just sounds like hmmmm. But it comes back in a few seconds and it starts becoming clearer. I think that happens a lot. Some people just don't acknowledge it. Sometimes that's why you've messed up on the football field."
How would he change things now?
"Instead of lowering my head knowing I'm not going to get more yards, I'd probably go out of bounds or slide," he told AL.com. "My mentality was at the end of the play, I had to make somebody pay for me going down and not scoring a touchdown."
In his lawsuit, Hudson details two diagnosed concussions, however he feels he suffered more than two.
He finished his degree online in 2009, but is currently unemployed and caring for his father in hospice care. Hudson says he forgets things, like the names of friends or even the end of the song about the alphabet and has headaches. He also told AL.com that he is becoming more and more depressed and been to anger management multiple times.
Unfortunately, as more and more players detail their lives as awareness about concussions increases, Hudson's story isn't uncommon. It's why many college football players joined the All Players United movement by marking their equipment in September. The APU effort is targeted towards NCAA reform and supports those currently involved in concussion lawsuits against the sanctioning body.
Including Hudson, there are currently over 60 players involved in those lawsuits. After a hearing in December, nearly a dozen lawsuits were consolidated into one by a panel of judges. In January, the proposed $760 million concussion settlement between players and the NFL was rejected by a judge who said she was concerned about the sufficiency of funds for the payout.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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