From what I've seen, the most likely answer is payoffs for injured athletes (I forget what sport these guys played) to prevent damage to the league. It sounds like there may have been some shady shit happening; maybe they specifically recruited guys with anger issues and encouraged extreme violence?
ITL (the sport that you've mentioned) is no longer part of the series. Feel free to re-read chapters 1-4 where we have made, and announced, changes that were made during the early 2019. Part of small tweaks was also taking out any mentions of ITL.
Also from what we've seen so far, with experience Corelle will be a far better prosthetist than Rex, she's already pretty impressive.