Former New York Jets great Marty Lyons says retired players need health benefits now
THURSDAY, 19 MAY 2011 07:43
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/former-new-york-jets-great-marty-lyons-says-retired-players-need-health-benefits-now
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
NEW YORK. N.Y. — In October 1987, New York Jets defensive lineman Marty Lyons decided to cross a picket line and play football because he didn't like the way National Football League Players Association Executive Director Gene Upshaw was conducting the association's business. The NFLPA went on strike looking for a liberalized form of free agency and more money. The NFLPA didn't bother asking for after-career lifetime health benefits.
Lyons has never looked back at his decision to cross the picket line and in hindsight thinks the 1987 four week strike was a waste of time.
"I don't worry about it, I got more important things to do than worry about a labor dispute, worry about a lockout" said Lyons on Tuesday at the announcement that he was elected into the College Football Hall of Fame. "I got four kids, I try to be the best father, best husband that I can to them. Whatever happens in this dispute, they will settle it.
"If it is going to help the league, if it is going to help the players, if it is going to subsidize our retirement a little bit better. Great. If it doesn't, I can't worry about things I can't control. I am interested. I am still an NFL alumnus, I still believe in what the players are trying to accomplish but I cannot control it. If you can't control it, why get stressed out about it. I support (former Giants defensive lineman) George Martin and the NFL alumni. I was just at the NFL Draft with (Commissioner) Roger Goodell. I do a lot of work for the Jets. I see the issues on both sides of the fence. But I can't control any of it, so you know what, I get every morning and I go to work."
But Lyons is interested in the welfare of his former teammates and others who played in the NFL and thinks the old players need some help.
"Eighty-seven, it was very difficult," he said the of labor action. "I think there was a lot of dissension between the players and the leadership we had in Gene Upshaw. When the replacement teams can in, some of us made the decision that it was in our best interests and our families best interests allow to let these people to come in and take our jobs."
Neither the 1982 nor the 1987 NFLPA strikes, in the long term, helped the membership. The "Money Now" mantra of the players should have been replaced by “what will your life at the age of 45, 50, 55 and 60 be like?” The players seem to have the same problems today as they did in 1982 with the exception of having more money than those who played 29 and 24 years ago.
"Probably not," said Lyons of whether the two strikes helped those players involved in the long run. "You know, I think the issues from 87 to where we are now maybe get magnified a little bit more because there is more money involved. Anytime that there is money involved and the issues are back and forth, I don't know who wins. Because you got the owners, because they want a little more money, you got the players...I see guys like Kevin Turner, a good friend of mine who played at the University of Alabama suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.
"A lot of head injuries.
"He is 41 years old, 42 years old with three kids. What's the NFL going to do for him? What's his pension going to do for him and his family? He's just fighting every day to stay alive.
“There's another head injury. "
The National Football League does not acknowledge that head injuries may cause health problems down the line. In 2010, the league posted a warning about head injuries in each of the 32 team's locker rooms but other than a few words and some other forms of communications, players still are getting their bells rung and returning to the field as quickly as possible.
"You didn't worry about them (head injuries), you really didn't worry about injuries," said Lyons of his attitude and the attitude of his NFL playing peers during his time in the league in the 1980s. "Because the bottom line is, if you allowed somebody to come in and take your position, you may not get it back. So there was a big difference, everybody played hurt. If you were injured, it was a different story."
Lyons former coach Walt Michaels and former Sack Exchange teammate Joe Klecko are hurting like many others who played in the NFL.
"If you see Walt now and walks around, if you see Joe Klecko, he just had a shoulder replacement. The game does have a price to pay if you play it long enough. And I think man for man, the individuals that are playing the price now, myself I had eight operations, I would have gone through a few more if I had an opportunity to lace them up and play one more game. It is well worth the price now to get out of bed."
Lyons is doing well. He is a senior vice president of operations for a Long Island construction company, the Marty Lyons Foundation is still going strong after 27 years helping terminally ill children, he is a motivational speaker and has 20 years of broadcasting on his resume.
But Lyons knows that former NFL players need help.
"I would love to see the league and the committee (the players association or more correctly what is the decertified players association) to come to some sort of agreement that if you are a vested player (three or more years experience) and you leave the game, you have a lifetime benefit of health benefits. When you retire, you benefits stop (the post 1993 players get health benefits for five years and then it ends, Lyons career was done in 1989 after 11 years). You better hope you get a good job or have enough money to go on COBRA. So I think health benefits are the number one priority that we should be looking at to get retired players once they leave the NFL.
"If you are vested and you make a contribution to helping the league and the players then you and your family should have lifetime health benefits. When I left the game in 1991, I had to get my health benefits. In hindsight, I think it was a mistake (that the NFLPA did not fight for lifetime health care) because some of the players who are financially stressed or some of the players now who don't have health benefits maybe they would not be in this situation in their life and the time of the life if they had better benefits, better health care. Maybe they would have gotten the proper help needed."
Lyons, despite an 11 year career, never made big money that could last a lifetime. The "billionaires versus millionaires" slogan that sportswriters have attached to this lockout doesn't work. Very few players make huge sums of cash. Most careers are brief and players need to find other employment after their careers. But the problem is that NFL players might have short careers but their aches and pains last a lifetime and some become disabled and cannot work. Those players eventually end up on social security insurance and Medicare and are looked after by taxpayers.
That is where Upshaw and his associates which include members of the NFLPA executive board and player agents failed their constituency in 1982, 1987 and 1993. They took short term gains and didn't see the future.
Lyons looks at the dispute as a former player but notes that other people are getting hurt. NFL teams have been laying off or reducing employee’s salaries. Coaches are taking a pay cut and if games are missed per diem employees will be left out in the cold.
"Everybody wants a little bit more of the pie," he said. "And the bottom line is that the people at the bottom end of the food chain that are going to pay the price if they don't play the game of football. You got a lot of people that are relying on that added income every single Saturday or Sunday whether they are parking cars or working concessions or working the stadium. For them not to have an opportunity to feed their family when there is a lockout or labor dispute, it is a shame."
NFL owners and players go to court on June 3 to argue over whatever they are fighting for. Collective bargaining agreement negotiations pick up on June 8. The players want status quo and keep 59 percent of football revenues, the owners want the players to give back revenues, cut their salaries (contracts are not guaranteed) and help build stadiums in Minnesota and Santa Clara, California by kicking in part of their revenues. Meanwhile former players are still out in the cold with meager pensions and no health benefits and for many football players, getting health insurance is almost impossible because of pre-existing conditions.
This is the NFL, with the initials NFL standing for, "Not For Long."
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble
Showing posts with label Gene Upshaw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gene Upshaw. Show all posts
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Matson to players and owners: Help retired NFL players
By Evan Weiner
March 23, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/matson-to-players-and-owners-help-retired-nfl-players
(New York, N. Y.) -- Pat Matson has a very clear interest in the National Football League owners-National Football League Players Association or correctly the former National Football League Players Association as the players have decertified as a "union." Matson was a player in both the American Football League with Denver and Cincinnati and when the American Football League-National Football League completed their merger in 1970, Matson moved to the NFL with Cincinnati.
Matson was the Cincinnati Bengals player representative in the brief 1974 NFL strike. Matson is one of the players who have been left behind by the very players association and Matson once was a players representative and walked a picket line in 1974.
Matson is facing his 32nd operation from injuries sustained during his ten year career between 1966 and 1975 with Denver, Cincinnati and Green Bay. He needs his ankle fixed. He has had knee replacements and hip replacements. In 1975 when he was a member of the Green Bay Packers he had a trifecta---elbow, knee and ankle. Matson laughed that procedure made it tough for him to go to the backroom. Matson's first surgery came after he tore up his knee at the University of Oregon.
Matson seems to be fine mentally even after having four of five concussions during his career. He said he walks a little funny though. He admits he is fortunate despite the surgeries as he played 10 years and had a business career after football. He probably should be getting more than $1.064 a month in pension but that is considerably more than many who played for roughly the same amount of time during the same time period that Matson was employed in the AFL and NFL.
Matson is not a big fan of the late Gene Upshaw, the former Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association and New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees.
Last year Brees seemed to dismiss complaints by former players who were looking for more benefits from the NFL.
“There’s some guys out there that have made bad business decisions,” Brees said. “They took their pensions early because they never went out and got a job. They've had a couple divorces and they’re making payments to this place and that place. And that’s why they don’t have money. And they’re coming to us to basically say, ‘Please make up for my bad judgment.’ In that case, that’s not our fault as players.”
Brees sounded an awful lot like Upshaw who once said that his association couldn't take care of everyone.
Brees should have spoken to someone like Matson who did get a job after his career. In fact Matson had a job during his playing days. After his career Matson worked for Roger Penske and was able to get health insurance even though just about every player who leaves the game has a pre-existing condition which makes it extremely difficult for former players to get health coverage. Players who have been in the NFL since 1993 and become vested veterans have health benefits for five years following their careers. In Matson's day they was no post career safety net. The five years is probably not enough for present day players as their bodies seem to give out in six or seven years after a career and they need constant medical care.
Brees seems to be totally out of touch with working conditions of past players (pre-1993ers) and that is pretty sad as Brees has his name on the antitrust lawsuit that the former players association planned in the event of a lockout in an effort to torpedo the NFL's labor scheme.
The football culture is suck it up and be a man. You tear a knee up, put some tape on it and play.
Matson doesn't have too much regard for either the owners or the players association in this battle.
"The owners only care about getting all of the money," Matson said of the 2011 lockout. "I don't know what (Brees) is talking about or helping the pre-1993 players. Rookies are making $50 million. (We) got no payment for training camp; they furnished your meals and put you up. We got 50 bucks for an exhibition game (six in 1968) and Paul Brown used to have three-a-days (practices) in heat and humidity that was terrible. I never gave it a second thought to have an off season job, we always had jobs in the off season."
The football culture seems to not have evolved very much since the days when the NFL was a part time occupation for both owners and players. In the 1950s, Chicago Bears owner George Halas ran the football operations from July until December and was a sporting goods store owner in Chicago the rest of the year. Football was just a stepping stone to another career but the players from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and later have found out that football whether they like it or not is a lifelong profession as they suffer with football related ailments that include depression, mood swings, brain trauma, neck, shoulder, elbow, hip, knee and ankle injuries. There are also family issues and documented bankruptcies and business failures.
Thoughts of suicide and actually suicides haunt former players.
There apparently is no real count of how many players who never qualified for NFL post career benefits available who are on the government dole before the age of 65 with social security disability or Medicare. There is no way of knowing how many high school, college, Arena Football Leaguers, USFLers, World Football League players who are also being cared for by the United States government although taxpayers may be on the hook for billions to provide care from football injuries.
Matson tried to sue the NFL/NFLPA for addition benefits in 1998 and failed. He blames both sides for the problems that retired and discarded players have and are facing.
"Upshaw had his good old boys network with (Harold) Henderson (NFL Executive Vice President for Labor Relations and Chairman of the National Football League Management Council Executive Committee). They denied everybody's claims (for disability). They wished you would go away and die. The NFL is boot hill. If you ignore it long enough. Upshaw was paying $150-200,000 for yes men and got a $6 million a year salary. We (the former players) are walking dead and can't do anything.
In 1969, Matson broke his tibia as a member of the Bengals against Denver. He told the Bengals trainer that he was hurt but no one wanted to tell Bengals coach Paul Brown that Matson was hurt.
"(The trainer) was scared of Paul," said Matson. "He said you're okay. If you can walk, you play, not like an NBA player if his toe hurts, he is out for two weeks. After the game I told my wife as I walked up the steps at Nippert Stadium. Four days later they X-rayed it."
The Bengals franchise moved to Riverfront Stadium in 1970 and the players had to contend with an Astroturf surface.
"It was pretty damaging. The (baseball's) Reds didn't like it. It was like an asphalt surface," he said.
Matson played just six games in 1969 but he was a valuable member of Paul Brown Bengals and had the respect of his teammates. He was the team's player representative. In 1974, the NFLPA went on strike which forced the cancellation of the annual College All-Stars versus NFL Champion Charity Game in Chicago. There was a 44 day strike that year but the NFLPA could not keep the membership on the same page.
The players' mantra in 1974 was "No Freedom, No Football" which was a shot at the owners who were not giving players a right to sell their services after they played out their contract. If a player decided to sign with another team, the "Rozelle Rule" named after NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle kicked in. The commissioner would review the signing and figure out what "compensation" was owed to a team who lost a free agent to another team. The players struck on July 1. NFLPA Executive Director Ed Garvey and his membership could not get the owners do not agree on even a single demand. The players association called off the strike on August 10 and decided to sue the NFL. In 1975, members of the New York Jets and the New England Patriots struck on the final weekend of the pre-season in an effort to get the talks moving. Eventually the NFL was found guilty of violating federal labor and antitrust laws.
In 1977 after the NFL owners were found guilty of violating federal labor and antitrust laws, the owners and players came up with a new collective bargaining agreement. The players did received improved benefits, an impartial arbitration of all grievances were implemented, there were some changes in the waiver system and option clauses and some free- agent restrictions were ended.
Interestingly enough, according to Matson, the NFLPA also sort better disability, insurance along with widow's and health benefits in 1974. Matson said Paul Brown told him. "You tried to ruin the NFL but you are going to stay," after he picketed in front of the Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio.
"(There is) a lot of wear and tear on the human anatomy," said Matson of playing football and he played two of the toughest positions physically---the offensive line and on the wedge on special teams.
If you were hit in the head and were knocked out, the trainer would come out and see if a player was okay.
"If you could see two out of three fingers," said Matson of an on-field check up, "you went back in. I was in the middle of the wedge. Nobody cares about a wedge. I was at the point of attack in the wedge."
In Matson's day, defensive linemen were allowed to slap the heads of offensive players to gain an advantage.
"Deacon Jones, Tom Jackson, he was really good at it. I studied the Oakland Raiders who were really good at that," he said. "Today they are wrestling with each other."
Matson does wonder about the icons of the 1990s, a guy like Steve Young or a guy like Troy Aikman. Both suffered a number of concussions during their days as quarterbacks although Aikman has said that a back problem not concussions ultimately led him to retirement.
Matson is hoping the NFLPA will look after the old players as part of the collective bargaining process which will eventually resume once the court proceedings wind down, but he doesn't hold much hope. Matson is 66 years old and qualifies for social security and Medicare. His body is a wreck and he needs some work on his shoulders as well as his ankles. The NFLPA failed him and his peers by not collectively bargained a post career benefit package with the owners.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble 's xplana.com, kobo's literati or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
March 23, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/matson-to-players-and-owners-help-retired-nfl-players
(New York, N. Y.) -- Pat Matson has a very clear interest in the National Football League owners-National Football League Players Association or correctly the former National Football League Players Association as the players have decertified as a "union." Matson was a player in both the American Football League with Denver and Cincinnati and when the American Football League-National Football League completed their merger in 1970, Matson moved to the NFL with Cincinnati.
Matson was the Cincinnati Bengals player representative in the brief 1974 NFL strike. Matson is one of the players who have been left behind by the very players association and Matson once was a players representative and walked a picket line in 1974.
Matson is facing his 32nd operation from injuries sustained during his ten year career between 1966 and 1975 with Denver, Cincinnati and Green Bay. He needs his ankle fixed. He has had knee replacements and hip replacements. In 1975 when he was a member of the Green Bay Packers he had a trifecta---elbow, knee and ankle. Matson laughed that procedure made it tough for him to go to the backroom. Matson's first surgery came after he tore up his knee at the University of Oregon.
Matson seems to be fine mentally even after having four of five concussions during his career. He said he walks a little funny though. He admits he is fortunate despite the surgeries as he played 10 years and had a business career after football. He probably should be getting more than $1.064 a month in pension but that is considerably more than many who played for roughly the same amount of time during the same time period that Matson was employed in the AFL and NFL.
Matson is not a big fan of the late Gene Upshaw, the former Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association and New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees.
Last year Brees seemed to dismiss complaints by former players who were looking for more benefits from the NFL.
“There’s some guys out there that have made bad business decisions,” Brees said. “They took their pensions early because they never went out and got a job. They've had a couple divorces and they’re making payments to this place and that place. And that’s why they don’t have money. And they’re coming to us to basically say, ‘Please make up for my bad judgment.’ In that case, that’s not our fault as players.”
Brees sounded an awful lot like Upshaw who once said that his association couldn't take care of everyone.
Brees should have spoken to someone like Matson who did get a job after his career. In fact Matson had a job during his playing days. After his career Matson worked for Roger Penske and was able to get health insurance even though just about every player who leaves the game has a pre-existing condition which makes it extremely difficult for former players to get health coverage. Players who have been in the NFL since 1993 and become vested veterans have health benefits for five years following their careers. In Matson's day they was no post career safety net. The five years is probably not enough for present day players as their bodies seem to give out in six or seven years after a career and they need constant medical care.
Brees seems to be totally out of touch with working conditions of past players (pre-1993ers) and that is pretty sad as Brees has his name on the antitrust lawsuit that the former players association planned in the event of a lockout in an effort to torpedo the NFL's labor scheme.
The football culture is suck it up and be a man. You tear a knee up, put some tape on it and play.
Matson doesn't have too much regard for either the owners or the players association in this battle.
"The owners only care about getting all of the money," Matson said of the 2011 lockout. "I don't know what (Brees) is talking about or helping the pre-1993 players. Rookies are making $50 million. (We) got no payment for training camp; they furnished your meals and put you up. We got 50 bucks for an exhibition game (six in 1968) and Paul Brown used to have three-a-days (practices) in heat and humidity that was terrible. I never gave it a second thought to have an off season job, we always had jobs in the off season."
The football culture seems to not have evolved very much since the days when the NFL was a part time occupation for both owners and players. In the 1950s, Chicago Bears owner George Halas ran the football operations from July until December and was a sporting goods store owner in Chicago the rest of the year. Football was just a stepping stone to another career but the players from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and later have found out that football whether they like it or not is a lifelong profession as they suffer with football related ailments that include depression, mood swings, brain trauma, neck, shoulder, elbow, hip, knee and ankle injuries. There are also family issues and documented bankruptcies and business failures.
Thoughts of suicide and actually suicides haunt former players.
There apparently is no real count of how many players who never qualified for NFL post career benefits available who are on the government dole before the age of 65 with social security disability or Medicare. There is no way of knowing how many high school, college, Arena Football Leaguers, USFLers, World Football League players who are also being cared for by the United States government although taxpayers may be on the hook for billions to provide care from football injuries.
Matson tried to sue the NFL/NFLPA for addition benefits in 1998 and failed. He blames both sides for the problems that retired and discarded players have and are facing.
"Upshaw had his good old boys network with (Harold) Henderson (NFL Executive Vice President for Labor Relations and Chairman of the National Football League Management Council Executive Committee). They denied everybody's claims (for disability). They wished you would go away and die. The NFL is boot hill. If you ignore it long enough. Upshaw was paying $150-200,000 for yes men and got a $6 million a year salary. We (the former players) are walking dead and can't do anything.
In 1969, Matson broke his tibia as a member of the Bengals against Denver. He told the Bengals trainer that he was hurt but no one wanted to tell Bengals coach Paul Brown that Matson was hurt.
"(The trainer) was scared of Paul," said Matson. "He said you're okay. If you can walk, you play, not like an NBA player if his toe hurts, he is out for two weeks. After the game I told my wife as I walked up the steps at Nippert Stadium. Four days later they X-rayed it."
The Bengals franchise moved to Riverfront Stadium in 1970 and the players had to contend with an Astroturf surface.
"It was pretty damaging. The (baseball's) Reds didn't like it. It was like an asphalt surface," he said.
Matson played just six games in 1969 but he was a valuable member of Paul Brown Bengals and had the respect of his teammates. He was the team's player representative. In 1974, the NFLPA went on strike which forced the cancellation of the annual College All-Stars versus NFL Champion Charity Game in Chicago. There was a 44 day strike that year but the NFLPA could not keep the membership on the same page.
The players' mantra in 1974 was "No Freedom, No Football" which was a shot at the owners who were not giving players a right to sell their services after they played out their contract. If a player decided to sign with another team, the "Rozelle Rule" named after NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle kicked in. The commissioner would review the signing and figure out what "compensation" was owed to a team who lost a free agent to another team. The players struck on July 1. NFLPA Executive Director Ed Garvey and his membership could not get the owners do not agree on even a single demand. The players association called off the strike on August 10 and decided to sue the NFL. In 1975, members of the New York Jets and the New England Patriots struck on the final weekend of the pre-season in an effort to get the talks moving. Eventually the NFL was found guilty of violating federal labor and antitrust laws.
In 1977 after the NFL owners were found guilty of violating federal labor and antitrust laws, the owners and players came up with a new collective bargaining agreement. The players did received improved benefits, an impartial arbitration of all grievances were implemented, there were some changes in the waiver system and option clauses and some free- agent restrictions were ended.
Interestingly enough, according to Matson, the NFLPA also sort better disability, insurance along with widow's and health benefits in 1974. Matson said Paul Brown told him. "You tried to ruin the NFL but you are going to stay," after he picketed in front of the Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio.
"(There is) a lot of wear and tear on the human anatomy," said Matson of playing football and he played two of the toughest positions physically---the offensive line and on the wedge on special teams.
If you were hit in the head and were knocked out, the trainer would come out and see if a player was okay.
"If you could see two out of three fingers," said Matson of an on-field check up, "you went back in. I was in the middle of the wedge. Nobody cares about a wedge. I was at the point of attack in the wedge."
In Matson's day, defensive linemen were allowed to slap the heads of offensive players to gain an advantage.
"Deacon Jones, Tom Jackson, he was really good at it. I studied the Oakland Raiders who were really good at that," he said. "Today they are wrestling with each other."
Matson does wonder about the icons of the 1990s, a guy like Steve Young or a guy like Troy Aikman. Both suffered a number of concussions during their days as quarterbacks although Aikman has said that a back problem not concussions ultimately led him to retirement.
Matson is hoping the NFLPA will look after the old players as part of the collective bargaining process which will eventually resume once the court proceedings wind down, but he doesn't hold much hope. Matson is 66 years old and qualifies for social security and Medicare. His body is a wreck and he needs some work on his shoulders as well as his ankles. The NFLPA failed him and his peers by not collectively bargained a post career benefit package with the owners.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble 's xplana.com, kobo's literati or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Gene Atkins: A discarded and disabled former football player forgotten in the NFL lockout
THURSDAY, 17 MARCH 2011 08:11
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/gene-atkins-a-discarded-and-disabled-former-football-player-forgotten-in-the-nfl-lockout
As the National Football League hired lawyers and attorneys from the decertified National Football League Players Association game-planned for an April court date in Minneapolis where they will argue over what went wrong in their collective bargaining talks and why there is no new Collective Bargaining Agreement in place, Gene Atkins will go about his daily struggle at his Texas home.
The 46-year-old Atkins has some better days than others but struggles with his concentration and focus and his constant headaches and pain. Doctors said he has permanent brain damage from playing football. Atkins was once of the most intimidating players on the New Orleans Saints, a safety who hit hard and wanted to put fear in offensive players.
But that was a long time ago. Atkins last played for the Miami Dolphins in 1996 and then retired. His life soon unraveled. There was a domestic dispute involving his wife, an arrest, business failures, depression, constant headaches and by 2000, the thoughts of suicide. Atkins’ post-career problems seem to follow a pattern, a rather disturbing set of circumstances that is not all that unusual among ex-NFL players. He is living off the United States safety net of Social Security and Medicare despite his young age like other former NFL players, a safety net that might cost taxpayers a billion dollars for discarded, disabled players.
Atkins was a contemporary of two other big hitters, Philadelphia's Andre Waters and Chicago's Dave Duerson. Waters committed suicide on Nov. 20, 2006. Duerson killed himself in February. The Duerson suicide hit Atkins hard. But Atkins admitted he could have beaten both of them to the gun if not for his children.
Gene Atkins’ friend and lawyer Jeffrey Dahl is trying to get Atkins some financial help in dealing with his day-to-day existence. By 2005, Atkins turned to the NFL for assistance and got the cold shoulder. In 2006, Atkins appealed and got some help but not much from the NFL. Just how did Gene Atkins go from one of the hardest hitting and smartest players on the field to where he is today? The answer might come from the 1993 New Orleans Saints media guide.
Atkins is described in the club produced book the following way -- possessing good speed, has gained a reputation for aggressiveness and the big hit -- Atkins was taught to be an intimidating force at his position and played that way.
"The NFL told me my biggest asset was my memory," Atkins said on Monday talking about his playing career, which lasted 10 years from 1987 to 1996 with New Orleans and Miami. "Dom Capers (the New Orleans defensive backfield coach) had a very complicated defense. It was like a chess game. I learned it in two years and mastered it in four years."
Atkins admitted that he didn't remember the question this reporter asked. He doesn’t have very much of a short-term memory. In 2008, a Seattle doctor confirmed what the layman would know after talking to Atkins. But Atkins does remember the football culture and how all he wanted to do was become a vested NFL veteran and get some post career benefits.
"I mastered that defense, grades of 90 percent to 80 percent in 100 to 80 plays and maybe one or two errors," he said.
But while Atkins was playing he used his head in tackling and that probably was his undoing but in football you play hurt and if you ever complain, your career is on the line. It is part of the football culture that starts on the Pop Warner level and carries through junior high, high school, college and the pros, whether it is the NFL, the Canadian Football League, the United Football League or indoor football.
"Man suck it up. If you can walk, you can play," said Atkins of the football mentality.
"Maybe over 20 concussions, sometimes I couldn't see and I would tell (Saints defensive back) Brett Maxie or (linebacker) Sam Mills cover until I get my vision back. The trainer would come out and never report a concussion.
"I had one listed concussion. You are just dizzy, can you see this? If you went to the sidelines you were a wimp. The peer pressure."
Atkins was in his own words "a gladiator."
Atkins wanted to be known as the roughest and toughest on the field.
"Everything was about intimidation," he said. "Put fear in the offensive guy. Tough, rough and rugged. There was no hitting with the shoulder. If I played today, like that guy in Pittsburgh (James Harrison), they’d probably fine me my whole paycheck."
Atkins was a seventh round draft choice, the last round of the grab bag, in 1987, and faced long odds making the club. He graduated from Florida A&M with a degree in physical education. Rookies not only have to play a position but have to be special teams’ players.
He had to prove he belonged.
Atkins' rookie season was also the last NFL strike season. All Gene Atkins wanted to do was make the team and the collective bargaining agreement -- something that might have helped him down the road -- was the last thing on his mind. He was part of the football culture and at Florida A&M, he was taught "that you kill a mosquito with an axe." In other words, you have to play hard and lay someone out which is a variation of Al Davis' quote that the "quarterback must go down and go down hard.”
In Atkins' world, there was no room for a soft player.
"They (coaches) are going to say they are going to cut you if you don't hit hard or … be physical," he said. "(Coaches) look in the training room. It is a sign of weakness being in the trainer's room. You are not putting on dresses. We are gladiators who go to fight. There is nothing soft. It is a contact sport."
But a contact sport can cause major damage to a human bodies colliding.
"You can take your car (after an accident) to a body shop and the guy says I can fix that," said Atkins. "But after five or six times, you can’t fix that. The same goes for your brain. You can’t change that."
Atkins left it all on the field for New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson and Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga and ended up with brain damage. He has never heard from his former owners. Atkins and Benson are alike in one way; both are on the government dole. Atkins is getting social security disability benefits and Medicare.
Benson got about $185 million is cash payments to keep his football team in New Orleans from Governor Mike Foster and the Louisiana legislature between 2002 and 2010 as a thank you for not breaking his Superdome lease and leaving New Orleans.
Tom Benson is still doing the “Benson Boogie” while Gene Atkins tries to remember what day it is.
Benson has a new deal with Louisiana where he is getting less money but a renovated Superdome, and he purchased a building next to the stadium and is renting office space to the state. Atkins is hoping that the next collective bargaining agreement takes care of discarded and disabled players like him and provides money to treat the broken down hulks for care.
Atkins made a rather interesting observation on Monday. He thinks some of the off-field problems that a number of active players have had may indicate that something is going on with their brains. Atkins did name two players in particular who have gotten in trouble, one legal and one with his mouth and thinks a third, long time vet, will have some major physical issues once his playing days are over.
Back in 1987, Atkins went on strike but he didn't pay much attention to what Executive Director Gene Upshaw and the rest of the executive committee of the National Football League Players Association were saying.
"I had no idea what we were striking for," he said. "I just wanted to get vested. I think there were talking about Plan (he stumbles, and is prodded by this reporter), Plan B. Free agency. I was focusing on making the team."
Atkins was told the story about New York Giants nose tackle Jim Burt who waited in the Giants Stadium parking lot until the striking players decided to walk into the stadium for practice en masse in 1987 with the players association collapsing. Burt said "as football players we were used to getting hit over the head" and he was happy to be back even though the players gained nothing by going out. Atkins asked how long Burt was in the league at that point. It was seven years and Atkins said if a veteran didn’t know what was going on, how could a rookie?
Atkins was still around in 1993 when the players and owners reached a new collective bargaining agreement that included a better pension and some post-career health benefits for five years if a player became a four-year vested veteran.
The owners and players collective bargained working conditions but the players did a rotten job. They opted for money instead of long-time health benefits and players like Atkins were left with very little protection.
Five years isn't enough protection for players who absorbed a beating. But in the world of football, a football career is merely a stepping-stone and not a lifelong journey.
Atkins life unraveled after football. By 2005 he sought help and went to the NFL. He had no insurance, was unable to work and wanted disability income. In June of that year, the Bert Bell-Pete Rozelle Player Retirement Plan Board turned down his request. In February 2006, the board awarded Atkins "inactive total and permanent disability" benefits, which gave him $911.25 a month.
Atkins gets that and whatever the government gives him in SSI and Medicare benefits.
"In 2007 Gene was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome by Dr. Robert Cantu yet the NFL owners have fought hard to deny him," Dahl said.
In 2008, a Seattle neurologist wrote in his report, "I therefore consider Mr. Atkins to be totally disabled, at least as part of a consequence of professional football injuries.”
Atkins and Dahl are still pursuing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to do something. Right now the owners and players are fighting over splitting as estimated nine billion dollars of annual revenue. The players still seem to be still "Money Now."
Atkins has two major interests in the looming courtroom, National Labor Relations Board battles. He wants the league to look after him and his son is a member of the Cincinnati Bengals. Gene Atkins hopes Geno Atkins never faces the same people he encounters on a daily basis.
The sports media is keeping score with fans as to who is to blame in the NFL lockout like fans matter in the dispute. There is a silliness surrounding the NFL Draft, which only exists because the NFL owners and NFLPA agreed to it as part of working conditions, and whether college players taken in the first round should be shown off on stage while there is a lockout. The disbanded players association wants to do something different to celebrate the draft.
Here is a free suggestion to the former NFLPA: Take care of all of your players, past and present and work out a deal with the owners to see that they get post-career care and stop the banal, inane and juvenile kabuki dance with players you don’t even have in your association — the college athletes.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
THURSDAY, 17 MARCH 2011 08:11
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/gene-atkins-a-discarded-and-disabled-former-football-player-forgotten-in-the-nfl-lockout
As the National Football League hired lawyers and attorneys from the decertified National Football League Players Association game-planned for an April court date in Minneapolis where they will argue over what went wrong in their collective bargaining talks and why there is no new Collective Bargaining Agreement in place, Gene Atkins will go about his daily struggle at his Texas home.
The 46-year-old Atkins has some better days than others but struggles with his concentration and focus and his constant headaches and pain. Doctors said he has permanent brain damage from playing football. Atkins was once of the most intimidating players on the New Orleans Saints, a safety who hit hard and wanted to put fear in offensive players.
But that was a long time ago. Atkins last played for the Miami Dolphins in 1996 and then retired. His life soon unraveled. There was a domestic dispute involving his wife, an arrest, business failures, depression, constant headaches and by 2000, the thoughts of suicide. Atkins’ post-career problems seem to follow a pattern, a rather disturbing set of circumstances that is not all that unusual among ex-NFL players. He is living off the United States safety net of Social Security and Medicare despite his young age like other former NFL players, a safety net that might cost taxpayers a billion dollars for discarded, disabled players.
Atkins was a contemporary of two other big hitters, Philadelphia's Andre Waters and Chicago's Dave Duerson. Waters committed suicide on Nov. 20, 2006. Duerson killed himself in February. The Duerson suicide hit Atkins hard. But Atkins admitted he could have beaten both of them to the gun if not for his children.
Gene Atkins’ friend and lawyer Jeffrey Dahl is trying to get Atkins some financial help in dealing with his day-to-day existence. By 2005, Atkins turned to the NFL for assistance and got the cold shoulder. In 2006, Atkins appealed and got some help but not much from the NFL. Just how did Gene Atkins go from one of the hardest hitting and smartest players on the field to where he is today? The answer might come from the 1993 New Orleans Saints media guide.
Atkins is described in the club produced book the following way -- possessing good speed, has gained a reputation for aggressiveness and the big hit -- Atkins was taught to be an intimidating force at his position and played that way.
"The NFL told me my biggest asset was my memory," Atkins said on Monday talking about his playing career, which lasted 10 years from 1987 to 1996 with New Orleans and Miami. "Dom Capers (the New Orleans defensive backfield coach) had a very complicated defense. It was like a chess game. I learned it in two years and mastered it in four years."
Atkins admitted that he didn't remember the question this reporter asked. He doesn’t have very much of a short-term memory. In 2008, a Seattle doctor confirmed what the layman would know after talking to Atkins. But Atkins does remember the football culture and how all he wanted to do was become a vested NFL veteran and get some post career benefits.
"I mastered that defense, grades of 90 percent to 80 percent in 100 to 80 plays and maybe one or two errors," he said.
But while Atkins was playing he used his head in tackling and that probably was his undoing but in football you play hurt and if you ever complain, your career is on the line. It is part of the football culture that starts on the Pop Warner level and carries through junior high, high school, college and the pros, whether it is the NFL, the Canadian Football League, the United Football League or indoor football.
"Man suck it up. If you can walk, you can play," said Atkins of the football mentality.
"Maybe over 20 concussions, sometimes I couldn't see and I would tell (Saints defensive back) Brett Maxie or (linebacker) Sam Mills cover until I get my vision back. The trainer would come out and never report a concussion.
"I had one listed concussion. You are just dizzy, can you see this? If you went to the sidelines you were a wimp. The peer pressure."
Atkins was in his own words "a gladiator."
Atkins wanted to be known as the roughest and toughest on the field.
"Everything was about intimidation," he said. "Put fear in the offensive guy. Tough, rough and rugged. There was no hitting with the shoulder. If I played today, like that guy in Pittsburgh (James Harrison), they’d probably fine me my whole paycheck."
Atkins was a seventh round draft choice, the last round of the grab bag, in 1987, and faced long odds making the club. He graduated from Florida A&M with a degree in physical education. Rookies not only have to play a position but have to be special teams’ players.
He had to prove he belonged.
Atkins' rookie season was also the last NFL strike season. All Gene Atkins wanted to do was make the team and the collective bargaining agreement -- something that might have helped him down the road -- was the last thing on his mind. He was part of the football culture and at Florida A&M, he was taught "that you kill a mosquito with an axe." In other words, you have to play hard and lay someone out which is a variation of Al Davis' quote that the "quarterback must go down and go down hard.”
In Atkins' world, there was no room for a soft player.
"They (coaches) are going to say they are going to cut you if you don't hit hard or … be physical," he said. "(Coaches) look in the training room. It is a sign of weakness being in the trainer's room. You are not putting on dresses. We are gladiators who go to fight. There is nothing soft. It is a contact sport."
But a contact sport can cause major damage to a human bodies colliding.
"You can take your car (after an accident) to a body shop and the guy says I can fix that," said Atkins. "But after five or six times, you can’t fix that. The same goes for your brain. You can’t change that."
Atkins left it all on the field for New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson and Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga and ended up with brain damage. He has never heard from his former owners. Atkins and Benson are alike in one way; both are on the government dole. Atkins is getting social security disability benefits and Medicare.
Benson got about $185 million is cash payments to keep his football team in New Orleans from Governor Mike Foster and the Louisiana legislature between 2002 and 2010 as a thank you for not breaking his Superdome lease and leaving New Orleans.
Tom Benson is still doing the “Benson Boogie” while Gene Atkins tries to remember what day it is.
Benson has a new deal with Louisiana where he is getting less money but a renovated Superdome, and he purchased a building next to the stadium and is renting office space to the state. Atkins is hoping that the next collective bargaining agreement takes care of discarded and disabled players like him and provides money to treat the broken down hulks for care.
Atkins made a rather interesting observation on Monday. He thinks some of the off-field problems that a number of active players have had may indicate that something is going on with their brains. Atkins did name two players in particular who have gotten in trouble, one legal and one with his mouth and thinks a third, long time vet, will have some major physical issues once his playing days are over.
Back in 1987, Atkins went on strike but he didn't pay much attention to what Executive Director Gene Upshaw and the rest of the executive committee of the National Football League Players Association were saying.
"I had no idea what we were striking for," he said. "I just wanted to get vested. I think there were talking about Plan (he stumbles, and is prodded by this reporter), Plan B. Free agency. I was focusing on making the team."
Atkins was told the story about New York Giants nose tackle Jim Burt who waited in the Giants Stadium parking lot until the striking players decided to walk into the stadium for practice en masse in 1987 with the players association collapsing. Burt said "as football players we were used to getting hit over the head" and he was happy to be back even though the players gained nothing by going out. Atkins asked how long Burt was in the league at that point. It was seven years and Atkins said if a veteran didn’t know what was going on, how could a rookie?
Atkins was still around in 1993 when the players and owners reached a new collective bargaining agreement that included a better pension and some post-career health benefits for five years if a player became a four-year vested veteran.
The owners and players collective bargained working conditions but the players did a rotten job. They opted for money instead of long-time health benefits and players like Atkins were left with very little protection.
Five years isn't enough protection for players who absorbed a beating. But in the world of football, a football career is merely a stepping-stone and not a lifelong journey.
Atkins life unraveled after football. By 2005 he sought help and went to the NFL. He had no insurance, was unable to work and wanted disability income. In June of that year, the Bert Bell-Pete Rozelle Player Retirement Plan Board turned down his request. In February 2006, the board awarded Atkins "inactive total and permanent disability" benefits, which gave him $911.25 a month.
Atkins gets that and whatever the government gives him in SSI and Medicare benefits.
"In 2007 Gene was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome by Dr. Robert Cantu yet the NFL owners have fought hard to deny him," Dahl said.
In 2008, a Seattle neurologist wrote in his report, "I therefore consider Mr. Atkins to be totally disabled, at least as part of a consequence of professional football injuries.”
Atkins and Dahl are still pursuing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to do something. Right now the owners and players are fighting over splitting as estimated nine billion dollars of annual revenue. The players still seem to be still "Money Now."
Atkins has two major interests in the looming courtroom, National Labor Relations Board battles. He wants the league to look after him and his son is a member of the Cincinnati Bengals. Gene Atkins hopes Geno Atkins never faces the same people he encounters on a daily basis.
The sports media is keeping score with fans as to who is to blame in the NFL lockout like fans matter in the dispute. There is a silliness surrounding the NFL Draft, which only exists because the NFL owners and NFLPA agreed to it as part of working conditions, and whether college players taken in the first round should be shown off on stage while there is a lockout. The disbanded players association wants to do something different to celebrate the draft.
Here is a free suggestion to the former NFLPA: Take care of all of your players, past and present and work out a deal with the owners to see that they get post-career care and stop the banal, inane and juvenile kabuki dance with players you don’t even have in your association — the college athletes.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Randy Cross: Time NFL Owners Took Care of Discarded Players
By Evan Weiner
December 7, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/randy-cross-time-nfl-owners-took-care-of-discarded-players
(New York, N. Y.) -- Randy Cross, who was a member of three San Francisco 49ers Super Bowl championship squads, thinks it is time that National Football League owners take some responsibility and provide medical benefits for retired and discarded players. Cross is now an NFL television analyst and is not part of any of the retired or discarded players groups begging NFL owners to help to pay for medical costs for players who are disabled because of injuries suffered during their NFL careers.
"I read everything, I stay in touch with all of that," said Cross, a six time Pro Bowl selection during his 13-year career which ended in 1988. "I am not sure, I think ultimately there is a real liability issue that the league has to get their arms around and take responsibility for, for the physical and mental well-being for some of these players that have struggled the way they have. I don't think there is any two ways around it.
"You can't tell me that concussions and brain injuries and the physical injuries and what not aren't traced back to the careers in football. The league has to take responsibility for that. And, they (the NFL owners) are the ones who have to do it. It is their game; it is not the Players Associations game. It is not some new executive director's game (referring to National Football League Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith); it's the league's game.
"If they are not willing to take responsibility for it, I think---a) it is sad and b) somebody has to hold their feet to the fire."
The National Football League owners and players collectively bargain the labor rules of the industry. The old or discarded players did not get the same post-career benefits that are bestowed on baseball players thanks to Marvin Miller and his Major League Baseball Players Association staff. (Miller was again denied admission into the Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday--a wrong decision by voters as Miller changed baseball and made sure those players with the proper service time got a pension and post career benefits although there were some overlooked players who did not qualify based on service time) because former association executive directors Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw went for money and not post career benefits.
They failed the players. The NFL owners are not legally required to help the former players at this point who need assistance but there should be a moral obligation.
Cross was part of two labor stoppages in 1982 and 1987. In retrospect, neither job action got the players what they really needed----good post-career mental benefits and pensions.
"They were both abysmal failures and this (the potential 2011 lockout) all the earmarks of being the same," said Cross. "When the NFL Players Association is run by and influenced by a union type person (Smith), a person that has interests of a union variety---this is not a union. This is a group that is together for as player’s maximum for two or three years on average. These guys need to make the money they can, get the coverage they can and when you have that kind of influence in this negotiation, it is not good news.
"If Gene Upshaw (the deceased former Executive Director of the NFLPA) for all his failings, and God knows you probably hear enough of that from the some of the guys about the things that went wrong but the game of football for the has never flourished from that period from (19)93 to 2008. Never, ever, ever. That was always because the number one priority was building the game."
Cross is correct about the financial growth of the NFL starting in 1993. It was in 1993 that a desperate Rupert Murdoch threw hundreds of millions of dollars at the NFL owners to land the rights to National Football Conference regular season and playoff games along with the Super Bowl. Murdoch needed the NFL product to give credibility to his struggling syndicated FOX grouping of television stations and scored big with the signing which not only included the NFL rights but he picked up stronger affiliates when CBS stations did not renew affiliate deals because that network lost the NFL TV rights. Murdoch's contract upped the ante for General Election's NBC along with Disney's ABC for the Monday Night Football franchise and Disney's ESPN and Ted Turners Turner Broadcasting for cable TV rights.
New stadiums came on board complete with club seats, luxury boxes, in-stadium restaurants (major revenue generators) thanks to the federal 1986 Tax Act (which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan) which changed taxation language for municipalities building stadiums and arenas. The municipalities could only take eight cents on every dollar worth of revenue generated in a stadium to pay down the debt of the building costs. Individual cities signed various leases with teams and those cities without teams, Nashville, Baltimore and St. Louis enticed owners from other cities (Houston, Cleveland and Anaheim with new stadiums), Oakland convinced Al Davis to move his Raiders from Los Angeles back to the Oakland Coliseum. Owners were chasing sweetheart deals, and enhanced revenues. Expansion teams in Charlotte, Jacksonville, Cleveland and Houston brought in over a billion dollars to league owners. The league got two significant bumps in TV contracts since 1993 and the league owners have a war chest to fight the players in 2011 as Murdoch's FOX, GE's (soon to be Comcast) NBC, Disney's ESPN, Sumner Redstone's CBS and DirecTV will play the league a rights fee in 2011 even if no games are played because of a lockout.
"They need to find a way to keep building the game, take care of the players that went in the past," said Cross. "And I am sorry; I don't think the guys who went in the past are the responsibility of the guys that are playing right now."
Cross doesn't see any hope that the owners and players will have a new collective bargaining deal in place when the present agreement expires on March 3.
"There is going to be some serious toe-to-toe stuff," he said. "I mean, if you are used to scheduling vacations around training camp in late July or early August, I would move my calendar back a month or two. It will affect the season. There is no way around it. There is going to be a draft, the draft is the last official act of this agreement. No (mini-camp or free agency), there will be a draft. The one thing that could happen with the draft and I could be full of it, but they could have it earlier. There is no reason to wait until late April to have a draft, so why not do it earlier?"
The football negotiations are fascinating in that there are a lot of moving parts. Smith, the Obama political operative, is seemingly conducting a campaign sending players to Capital Hill to discuss the possible lockout with Congressional leaders and staffers. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose father replaced Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 in the United States Senate from New York after Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 6, 1968 while running for President, also is a political lobbyist as are all sports commissioners. Goodell's father-in-law Samuel Skinner was President George H. W. Bush's chief of staff and Goodell's wife worked for Murdoch's FOX News Channel. The owners are not on the same page in terms of revenue sharing but they do want to cut players salaries by 18 percent and reduce the size of the revenue given to players from 59 to 48 percent. Then there are the retired and discarded players who have no medical benefits (some of whom have pre-existing conditions and could not get health insurance that are taking government support through disability and Medicare). They want help. They want medical insurance, they want better pensions. Fifty NFL Hall of Famers get pensions of less than $200 a month.
"I think everyone has a little bit of skin in the game," said Cross. "I just think the majority of this is sort of a token effort to appeal to the old guys whether it is coming from the NFL or NFLPA. It is a PR (public relations) thing more than a legitimate, concerted effort to really get stuff done for the older players that built the game."
Neither Goodell nor Smith has really responded to the former and discarded players. Smith is telling his players to save money because he anticipates a March lockout. There is less than three months to go get a deal done but it appears that both sides are entrenching their positions which means that the NFL off-season may really be an off-season with no free agent signings, no min-camps, no organized team activities and perhaps no training camp or pre-season games.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
December 7, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/randy-cross-time-nfl-owners-took-care-of-discarded-players
(New York, N. Y.) -- Randy Cross, who was a member of three San Francisco 49ers Super Bowl championship squads, thinks it is time that National Football League owners take some responsibility and provide medical benefits for retired and discarded players. Cross is now an NFL television analyst and is not part of any of the retired or discarded players groups begging NFL owners to help to pay for medical costs for players who are disabled because of injuries suffered during their NFL careers.
"I read everything, I stay in touch with all of that," said Cross, a six time Pro Bowl selection during his 13-year career which ended in 1988. "I am not sure, I think ultimately there is a real liability issue that the league has to get their arms around and take responsibility for, for the physical and mental well-being for some of these players that have struggled the way they have. I don't think there is any two ways around it.
"You can't tell me that concussions and brain injuries and the physical injuries and what not aren't traced back to the careers in football. The league has to take responsibility for that. And, they (the NFL owners) are the ones who have to do it. It is their game; it is not the Players Associations game. It is not some new executive director's game (referring to National Football League Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith); it's the league's game.
"If they are not willing to take responsibility for it, I think---a) it is sad and b) somebody has to hold their feet to the fire."
The National Football League owners and players collectively bargain the labor rules of the industry. The old or discarded players did not get the same post-career benefits that are bestowed on baseball players thanks to Marvin Miller and his Major League Baseball Players Association staff. (Miller was again denied admission into the Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday--a wrong decision by voters as Miller changed baseball and made sure those players with the proper service time got a pension and post career benefits although there were some overlooked players who did not qualify based on service time) because former association executive directors Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw went for money and not post career benefits.
They failed the players. The NFL owners are not legally required to help the former players at this point who need assistance but there should be a moral obligation.
Cross was part of two labor stoppages in 1982 and 1987. In retrospect, neither job action got the players what they really needed----good post-career mental benefits and pensions.
"They were both abysmal failures and this (the potential 2011 lockout) all the earmarks of being the same," said Cross. "When the NFL Players Association is run by and influenced by a union type person (Smith), a person that has interests of a union variety---this is not a union. This is a group that is together for as player’s maximum for two or three years on average. These guys need to make the money they can, get the coverage they can and when you have that kind of influence in this negotiation, it is not good news.
"If Gene Upshaw (the deceased former Executive Director of the NFLPA) for all his failings, and God knows you probably hear enough of that from the some of the guys about the things that went wrong but the game of football for the has never flourished from that period from (19)93 to 2008. Never, ever, ever. That was always because the number one priority was building the game."
Cross is correct about the financial growth of the NFL starting in 1993. It was in 1993 that a desperate Rupert Murdoch threw hundreds of millions of dollars at the NFL owners to land the rights to National Football Conference regular season and playoff games along with the Super Bowl. Murdoch needed the NFL product to give credibility to his struggling syndicated FOX grouping of television stations and scored big with the signing which not only included the NFL rights but he picked up stronger affiliates when CBS stations did not renew affiliate deals because that network lost the NFL TV rights. Murdoch's contract upped the ante for General Election's NBC along with Disney's ABC for the Monday Night Football franchise and Disney's ESPN and Ted Turners Turner Broadcasting for cable TV rights.
New stadiums came on board complete with club seats, luxury boxes, in-stadium restaurants (major revenue generators) thanks to the federal 1986 Tax Act (which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan) which changed taxation language for municipalities building stadiums and arenas. The municipalities could only take eight cents on every dollar worth of revenue generated in a stadium to pay down the debt of the building costs. Individual cities signed various leases with teams and those cities without teams, Nashville, Baltimore and St. Louis enticed owners from other cities (Houston, Cleveland and Anaheim with new stadiums), Oakland convinced Al Davis to move his Raiders from Los Angeles back to the Oakland Coliseum. Owners were chasing sweetheart deals, and enhanced revenues. Expansion teams in Charlotte, Jacksonville, Cleveland and Houston brought in over a billion dollars to league owners. The league got two significant bumps in TV contracts since 1993 and the league owners have a war chest to fight the players in 2011 as Murdoch's FOX, GE's (soon to be Comcast) NBC, Disney's ESPN, Sumner Redstone's CBS and DirecTV will play the league a rights fee in 2011 even if no games are played because of a lockout.
"They need to find a way to keep building the game, take care of the players that went in the past," said Cross. "And I am sorry; I don't think the guys who went in the past are the responsibility of the guys that are playing right now."
Cross doesn't see any hope that the owners and players will have a new collective bargaining deal in place when the present agreement expires on March 3.
"There is going to be some serious toe-to-toe stuff," he said. "I mean, if you are used to scheduling vacations around training camp in late July or early August, I would move my calendar back a month or two. It will affect the season. There is no way around it. There is going to be a draft, the draft is the last official act of this agreement. No (mini-camp or free agency), there will be a draft. The one thing that could happen with the draft and I could be full of it, but they could have it earlier. There is no reason to wait until late April to have a draft, so why not do it earlier?"
The football negotiations are fascinating in that there are a lot of moving parts. Smith, the Obama political operative, is seemingly conducting a campaign sending players to Capital Hill to discuss the possible lockout with Congressional leaders and staffers. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose father replaced Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 in the United States Senate from New York after Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 6, 1968 while running for President, also is a political lobbyist as are all sports commissioners. Goodell's father-in-law Samuel Skinner was President George H. W. Bush's chief of staff and Goodell's wife worked for Murdoch's FOX News Channel. The owners are not on the same page in terms of revenue sharing but they do want to cut players salaries by 18 percent and reduce the size of the revenue given to players from 59 to 48 percent. Then there are the retired and discarded players who have no medical benefits (some of whom have pre-existing conditions and could not get health insurance that are taking government support through disability and Medicare). They want help. They want medical insurance, they want better pensions. Fifty NFL Hall of Famers get pensions of less than $200 a month.
"I think everyone has a little bit of skin in the game," said Cross. "I just think the majority of this is sort of a token effort to appeal to the old guys whether it is coming from the NFL or NFLPA. It is a PR (public relations) thing more than a legitimate, concerted effort to really get stuff done for the older players that built the game."
Neither Goodell nor Smith has really responded to the former and discarded players. Smith is telling his players to save money because he anticipates a March lockout. There is less than three months to go get a deal done but it appears that both sides are entrenching their positions which means that the NFL off-season may really be an off-season with no free agent signings, no min-camps, no organized team activities and perhaps no training camp or pre-season games.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Both Owners and Players Responsible for Retired Football Players Plight
Both Owners and Players Responsible for Retired Football Players Plight
By Evan Weiner
September 5, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/both-owners-and-players-responsible-for-retired-football-players-plight
(New York, N. Y.) -- Another National Football League season is starting and for the first time ever, the NFL seems to be taking a closer look at concussions and head injuries. There is a poster in locker rooms urging players to be vigilant about head injuries, But the NFL has known about head injuries for decades. During the week leading up to the first American Football League-National Football League World Championship Game in Los Angeles in January 1967, football people were talking about head injuries at a bar in a Los Angeles area hotel. Among the people at the bar were NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, CBS Sports President Bill McPhail and the 1940 Heisman Trophy Winner Tom Harmon.
Harmon told the assembled people at the watering hole that once face bars were put onto helmets, the game changed. The head because of the helmet with bars became a weapon. Players would have their bells rung but it was a part of football. The head was better protected, so they thought, after more modern ones replaced the leather helmets and the bars were attached to protect the face.
But Harmon knew better in 1967 and a lot of former players are paying the price because no one listened to Tom Harmon at that Los Angeles hotel bar.
That conversation took place 43 years ago. In those 43 years, many players have suffered because of getting their bell rung. The owners and players didn’t care about the long-term possibilities that players would become disabled because of football-related injuries in any collective bargaining agreements for their post career medical care.
The object was getting the best money deal done.
Who is to blame?
The owners or players? The TV executives who underwrote the enterprise? The marketing partners? The fans?
That is a difficult question to answer.
The owners of the 1950s had no idea what they had in terms of a business. The players of those days played football as a hobby because it is one of two jobs they held. There really wasn’t much scrutiny of injuries in those days. Players fought to stay on 33 man rosters because they wanted to play football. There was no money in the game for anyone so it was all about playing football.
In the 1960s, the National Football League and the American Football League Players Associations were just looking for financial gains as television money began flooding the industry. If there were any player agents in those days, they also were looking for financial gains. No one was looking to what would happen to the former players as they got older and how they would be cared for because of football injuries.
No one it seemed worried about the long term of players who were banging into one another at high speeds and using their heads as part of their blocking strategies. A look at various players associations contract talks with the owners and labor actions is an interesting study.
The players association leadership failed their membership. It was all about money and not about safety and health issues after a playing career was done. The 1974-5 labor talks centered on getting players the right to become free agents and breaking a league ruling that required the commissioner to decide on a compensation package for a team should a player decide to go elsewhere after playing out his option.
The NFLPA’s rallying cry was “No Freedom, No Football.”
"The players were with a team in perpetuity," recalled Randy Vataha, the New England Patriots player representative. "No team was going to give up two first round draft picks to sign a free agent.
The NFL's policy was referred to as the "Rozelle Rule," and the NFLPA membership wanted free agency among their 58 demands in 1975. While the Players Association leadership was prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out, some of the rank and file wasn't.
By the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines. On August 11, Association President Ed Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period. Garvey would pursue another tactic, the Mackey case.
John Mackey was the one time President of the NFLPA.
The New England Patriots struck the final preseason-season game of the 1975 season. The contest with the New York Jets at New Haven was the first ever cancelled game due to a labor impasse.
"There had been a cooling off period and by mid-season 1974, nothing was happening. The players weren't going to strike and there were no negotiations," said Vataha. The guys on the Patriots asked for an update on the negotiations. They were either going to strike or take the last offer on the table.
"So we didn't play and that week we had some meaningful negotiations. But it was evident that we were going to go ahead with the Mackey case."
The Mackey case began on February 3, 1975. It finally ended for the NFL after the 1987 strike. The NFL did cut deals with the players in 1977 and 1982. The only alternative or leverage the players had in the 1970s was the Canadian Football League which signed Joe Theisman, Tom Cousineau and Vince Ferragammo over the years. But the CFL really posed a threat to the NFL.
The players struck on September 20, 1982 and a collective bargaining agreement was ratified on November 17. Seven games were cancelled as a result of the 57-day walkout.
The four-year deal featured an extension of the college draft through the 1992 season; a minimum salary, training camp and post-season pay were increased along with player medical insurance and retirement benefits. There was also a severance package included after a player was cut.
"I think any time you strike, you strike for a reason," said Harry Carson who was playing with the Giants in 1982. "If we could get some benefit from it, I think it was worth it.
"From the first strike in 1982, we got the severance package as part of it, but we should have gotten more. There were a lot of guys who were not necessarily striking for free agency but they wanted more money.
"Looking at it in retrospect, I think the players should have struck for much better benefits because the NFL probably has the worst retirement package in sports."
Twenty-eight years later, the NFL’s retirees still have a rotten retirement package when compared with former baseball players and other athletes.
Carson said one of the reasons football players have not done as well in negotiations with their owners as say their baseball counterparts is solidarity.
"You don't have the same thing. You have so many players and players have their own agendas. It's hard to keep players together once they go on strike.
"Some players are going to cross the picket line and once that happens, you are not going to succeed."
Carson’s words were direct and strong about NFLPA solidarity. Retired players today are still a fractious bunch with different agendas and for the most part have been tossed aside by present day NFL owners and by the players association. The owners care about their team of today, the players association cares about their players of today. The former players have veered off in different directions in their pursuit of getting health insurance and more retirement money.
The NFL was again forced to deal with it players association in 1987.
The players decided to strike after the second week of the season and the NFL reverted to its 1974 tactic of bringing in rookies and free agents and play replacement games. The league cancelled the third week's schedule and resumed with the week four matchups.
In 2000, Hollywood made a movie about the 1987 strike called "Replacements" which was based on the Washington Redskins.
Some teams scouted the best available talent and tried to put together a strong replacement team. Other teams took chunks of local semipro teams, like the New York Giants, and hoped for the best. Others like Philadelphia Eagles Coach Buddy Ryan didn't take the replacement games too seriously and wanted for the players to return.
Like in 1974, veterans crossed the picket lines and by October 25, the NFL was able to claim victory. The players reverted to their old standby; plan B that was court action and that set off years of litigation.
Dallas Cowboy President Tex Schramm was the main force behind the ploy of bringing in replacement players. The league lost a significant amount of games, eight, in 1982 and that was not going to happen again in 1987.
"It was a great time and a lot of fun," said Charley Casserly who was part of the Redskins front office at that time. "Really, the interesting thing was we put together a time, the whole organization and Joe Gibbs did a great job coaching them. Nobody crossed the picket line and we beat two teams, St. Louis and Dallas on that climatic Monday Night that had about 10-12 players cross the picket line. The Dallas team had (Tony) Dorsett, Randy White, Danny White, Too Tall Jones. It was quite a time."
The NFL teams who did compete for players for Schramm's replacement league look anyway for players. Casserley found four players in a Richmond, Virginia halfway house who were playing for a minor league team including Tony Robinson who was the quarterback of the replacement team that beat Dallas.
"We did have a little philosophy on it," Casserly continued. "We wanted players that knew the system. We had to put together a team in 10 days to go play a game. Football unlike all other sports is really a team sport. So we wanted guys who knew the Joe Gibbs system. So we started with players who had been in our camp that year and been in our camp the year before and had been in camps with the Gibbs/(Don)
Coryell system. We got players from everywhere.
"Obviously NFL cuts, but we got players from Canada, players who were cut in Canada. We wanted players in camp who were healthy and ready to go."
The players crumbled quickly in 1987 but years later Dave Jennings, who was a New York Jet punter at the time, thinks the showdown with the owners was worth it.
"The players were not that interested in a long term strike, they were looking at the next paycheck," said Jennings. "It's tough to get players to strike and stay together. In 1987, it was a shorter strike and we had the court cases working and eventually it worked out for us.
"We got nothing from the 1987 strike, we didn't get anything directly, but indirectly we got free agency and you see what happened. Free agency works."
Free agency might have worked but it didn’t help John Mackey. The head injuries he suffered in his career eventually caught up to him. The NFL Players Association initially refused to pay a disability income because there was proven link between brain injury and playing football. The league and the NFL Players' Association were almost shamed into coming up with a program that was named after Mackey's number. It provides $88,000-a-year for nursing home care and up to $50,000 annually for adult day care.
The league and players helped Mackey but there are so many who have fallen through the cracks and depend on government programs to pay their medical bills.
The modern players got money but were failed by their union representatives and agents. The owners who didn’t look out for them failed them. The union led by Ed Garvey and then Gene Upshaw did not take care of their constituency. They got the players more money for playing but failed to take care of the players once they were useless to any teams.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on “The Business and Politics of Sports.” He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
September 5, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/both-owners-and-players-responsible-for-retired-football-players-plight
(New York, N. Y.) -- Another National Football League season is starting and for the first time ever, the NFL seems to be taking a closer look at concussions and head injuries. There is a poster in locker rooms urging players to be vigilant about head injuries, But the NFL has known about head injuries for decades. During the week leading up to the first American Football League-National Football League World Championship Game in Los Angeles in January 1967, football people were talking about head injuries at a bar in a Los Angeles area hotel. Among the people at the bar were NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, CBS Sports President Bill McPhail and the 1940 Heisman Trophy Winner Tom Harmon.
Harmon told the assembled people at the watering hole that once face bars were put onto helmets, the game changed. The head because of the helmet with bars became a weapon. Players would have their bells rung but it was a part of football. The head was better protected, so they thought, after more modern ones replaced the leather helmets and the bars were attached to protect the face.
But Harmon knew better in 1967 and a lot of former players are paying the price because no one listened to Tom Harmon at that Los Angeles hotel bar.
That conversation took place 43 years ago. In those 43 years, many players have suffered because of getting their bell rung. The owners and players didn’t care about the long-term possibilities that players would become disabled because of football-related injuries in any collective bargaining agreements for their post career medical care.
The object was getting the best money deal done.
Who is to blame?
The owners or players? The TV executives who underwrote the enterprise? The marketing partners? The fans?
That is a difficult question to answer.
The owners of the 1950s had no idea what they had in terms of a business. The players of those days played football as a hobby because it is one of two jobs they held. There really wasn’t much scrutiny of injuries in those days. Players fought to stay on 33 man rosters because they wanted to play football. There was no money in the game for anyone so it was all about playing football.
In the 1960s, the National Football League and the American Football League Players Associations were just looking for financial gains as television money began flooding the industry. If there were any player agents in those days, they also were looking for financial gains. No one was looking to what would happen to the former players as they got older and how they would be cared for because of football injuries.
No one it seemed worried about the long term of players who were banging into one another at high speeds and using their heads as part of their blocking strategies. A look at various players associations contract talks with the owners and labor actions is an interesting study.
The players association leadership failed their membership. It was all about money and not about safety and health issues after a playing career was done. The 1974-5 labor talks centered on getting players the right to become free agents and breaking a league ruling that required the commissioner to decide on a compensation package for a team should a player decide to go elsewhere after playing out his option.
The NFLPA’s rallying cry was “No Freedom, No Football.”
"The players were with a team in perpetuity," recalled Randy Vataha, the New England Patriots player representative. "No team was going to give up two first round draft picks to sign a free agent.
The NFL's policy was referred to as the "Rozelle Rule," and the NFLPA membership wanted free agency among their 58 demands in 1975. While the Players Association leadership was prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out, some of the rank and file wasn't.
By the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines. On August 11, Association President Ed Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period. Garvey would pursue another tactic, the Mackey case.
John Mackey was the one time President of the NFLPA.
The New England Patriots struck the final preseason-season game of the 1975 season. The contest with the New York Jets at New Haven was the first ever cancelled game due to a labor impasse.
"There had been a cooling off period and by mid-season 1974, nothing was happening. The players weren't going to strike and there were no negotiations," said Vataha. The guys on the Patriots asked for an update on the negotiations. They were either going to strike or take the last offer on the table.
"So we didn't play and that week we had some meaningful negotiations. But it was evident that we were going to go ahead with the Mackey case."
The Mackey case began on February 3, 1975. It finally ended for the NFL after the 1987 strike. The NFL did cut deals with the players in 1977 and 1982. The only alternative or leverage the players had in the 1970s was the Canadian Football League which signed Joe Theisman, Tom Cousineau and Vince Ferragammo over the years. But the CFL really posed a threat to the NFL.
The players struck on September 20, 1982 and a collective bargaining agreement was ratified on November 17. Seven games were cancelled as a result of the 57-day walkout.
The four-year deal featured an extension of the college draft through the 1992 season; a minimum salary, training camp and post-season pay were increased along with player medical insurance and retirement benefits. There was also a severance package included after a player was cut.
"I think any time you strike, you strike for a reason," said Harry Carson who was playing with the Giants in 1982. "If we could get some benefit from it, I think it was worth it.
"From the first strike in 1982, we got the severance package as part of it, but we should have gotten more. There were a lot of guys who were not necessarily striking for free agency but they wanted more money.
"Looking at it in retrospect, I think the players should have struck for much better benefits because the NFL probably has the worst retirement package in sports."
Twenty-eight years later, the NFL’s retirees still have a rotten retirement package when compared with former baseball players and other athletes.
Carson said one of the reasons football players have not done as well in negotiations with their owners as say their baseball counterparts is solidarity.
"You don't have the same thing. You have so many players and players have their own agendas. It's hard to keep players together once they go on strike.
"Some players are going to cross the picket line and once that happens, you are not going to succeed."
Carson’s words were direct and strong about NFLPA solidarity. Retired players today are still a fractious bunch with different agendas and for the most part have been tossed aside by present day NFL owners and by the players association. The owners care about their team of today, the players association cares about their players of today. The former players have veered off in different directions in their pursuit of getting health insurance and more retirement money.
The NFL was again forced to deal with it players association in 1987.
The players decided to strike after the second week of the season and the NFL reverted to its 1974 tactic of bringing in rookies and free agents and play replacement games. The league cancelled the third week's schedule and resumed with the week four matchups.
In 2000, Hollywood made a movie about the 1987 strike called "Replacements" which was based on the Washington Redskins.
Some teams scouted the best available talent and tried to put together a strong replacement team. Other teams took chunks of local semipro teams, like the New York Giants, and hoped for the best. Others like Philadelphia Eagles Coach Buddy Ryan didn't take the replacement games too seriously and wanted for the players to return.
Like in 1974, veterans crossed the picket lines and by October 25, the NFL was able to claim victory. The players reverted to their old standby; plan B that was court action and that set off years of litigation.
Dallas Cowboy President Tex Schramm was the main force behind the ploy of bringing in replacement players. The league lost a significant amount of games, eight, in 1982 and that was not going to happen again in 1987.
"It was a great time and a lot of fun," said Charley Casserly who was part of the Redskins front office at that time. "Really, the interesting thing was we put together a time, the whole organization and Joe Gibbs did a great job coaching them. Nobody crossed the picket line and we beat two teams, St. Louis and Dallas on that climatic Monday Night that had about 10-12 players cross the picket line. The Dallas team had (Tony) Dorsett, Randy White, Danny White, Too Tall Jones. It was quite a time."
The NFL teams who did compete for players for Schramm's replacement league look anyway for players. Casserley found four players in a Richmond, Virginia halfway house who were playing for a minor league team including Tony Robinson who was the quarterback of the replacement team that beat Dallas.
"We did have a little philosophy on it," Casserly continued. "We wanted players that knew the system. We had to put together a team in 10 days to go play a game. Football unlike all other sports is really a team sport. So we wanted guys who knew the Joe Gibbs system. So we started with players who had been in our camp that year and been in our camp the year before and had been in camps with the Gibbs/(Don)
Coryell system. We got players from everywhere.
"Obviously NFL cuts, but we got players from Canada, players who were cut in Canada. We wanted players in camp who were healthy and ready to go."
The players crumbled quickly in 1987 but years later Dave Jennings, who was a New York Jet punter at the time, thinks the showdown with the owners was worth it.
"The players were not that interested in a long term strike, they were looking at the next paycheck," said Jennings. "It's tough to get players to strike and stay together. In 1987, it was a shorter strike and we had the court cases working and eventually it worked out for us.
"We got nothing from the 1987 strike, we didn't get anything directly, but indirectly we got free agency and you see what happened. Free agency works."
Free agency might have worked but it didn’t help John Mackey. The head injuries he suffered in his career eventually caught up to him. The NFL Players Association initially refused to pay a disability income because there was proven link between brain injury and playing football. The league and the NFL Players' Association were almost shamed into coming up with a program that was named after Mackey's number. It provides $88,000-a-year for nursing home care and up to $50,000 annually for adult day care.
The league and players helped Mackey but there are so many who have fallen through the cracks and depend on government programs to pay their medical bills.
The modern players got money but were failed by their union representatives and agents. The owners who didn’t look out for them failed them. The union led by Ed Garvey and then Gene Upshaw did not take care of their constituency. They got the players more money for playing but failed to take care of the players once they were useless to any teams.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on “The Business and Politics of Sports.” He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Friday, July 23, 2010
Discarded NFL players are often forgotten in retirement
Discarded NFL players are often forgotten in retirement
FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2010 16:15
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/discarded-nfl-players-are-often-forgotten-in-retirement
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
As National Football League training camps begin to open up around the country, (the New York Jets in Cortland, N.Y. on Aug. 1, the New York Giants in Albany, N.Y. also on Aug. 1 and the Philadelphia Eagles at Lehigh in Bethlehem, Pa. on Monday) some 2,560 players are getting ready for what has become an annual ritual — two a day sessions upon the broiling sun to prove they belong on the field. Eventually only 1,696 of them will make teams. A number of the 864 players who are "cut" might end up on practice squads where they make a minimum of $5,200 a week to hone their skills. Some of the players will be placed on injured reserve and will either return to the field or get cut when they are deemed healthy. Each team can keep as many as eight players on the payroll (practice squad) which means 256 players might get another shot at a roster spot when a team loses a player to an injury.
Football is a tough game. Americans have been sold on football's brutality since the October 31, 1960 CBS documentary called "The Violent World of Sam Huff" which was narrated by Walter Cronkite. Yes TV networks once did documentaries in a time when TV news did reporting, research and presented facts and not worried about being profitable. In the 1970s, Al Primo convinced TV executives that news could be turned into entertainment and news divisions could make really big money. Cable TV news would take Primo's idea to the next level and began to feature raving lunatics screaming about their viewpoint because it made for "good TV". Huff was a linebacker with the New York Giants and was the first NFL player ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine on November 30, 1959. Huff's job was to "hurt people" because football was a "man's game" according to the accompanying Time magazine column.
The Huff piece came about 10 months after the "greatest football game ever" when Johnny Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to an overtime win over the Giants in the NFL Championship Game, a game that captivated Americans and propelled the NFL from a "mom and pop" operation into the big time. Huff wasn't the best linebacker in the NFL but played for the "glamorous" New York Giants, a team that caught the fancy of Madison Avenue's advertising community and the TV networks which were headquartered in New York. Huff's Giants didn't win the 1958 championship, Baltimore did but Baltimore was led by a quiet crew cut quarterback named Unitas while the Giants had the handsome Frank Gifford and the tough as nails Huff.
Sam Huff became a successful businessman after his career. Unitas didn't. The quarterback who put the NFL on the map couldn't use his right hand as he got older because of a tendon injury he suffered in 1968. He has two knee replacements and heart bypass was denied disability. Unitas died in 2002 but the denial of disability to the quarterback who put the NFL on the map still draws the ire of former players in tough spots.
In 2007, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, the chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, held a hearing because she wanted to have "an open discussion on the fairness of the system to severely disabled retired players." It was the start of drawing attention to the plight of retired NFL players. Johnny Unitas' widow Sandra was in Washington watching the hearings.
Huff in his Time magazine interview in 1959 didn't say anything new. A Life magazine had a cover story on December 3, 1971 "Suicide Squad Football's most violent men." Suicide squads have been given a more genteel name — "Special Teams" — but that's where rookies have to first earn their stripes in the NFL. Special teams are the worst assignments on the team and punt returns can be especially dangerous.
Football has been wrestling with players been injured and maimed for more than a century. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 told college presidents to clean up the game or he would ban football because of the number of deaths and injuries associated with the game.
New rules were implemented but the game remained violent and more than a century later, it seems that not much has changed. Players are still one play away from ending their career and that leads to the question.
Do the young players and some of the veterans who are about to go to camp know what they are getting into? If you listen to Dave Pear (and other older retired players who suffered life changing injuries playing football), the answer is no. Pear played in the NFL for six years as a defensive tackle between 1975 and 1980 with the Baltimore Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders. He played in one Pro Bowl and was a member of the Raiders Super Bowl XV championship team in 1980-81. Despite all of that, Pear wished he never played football.
"They think they are but no they are not," said Pear who broke his neck during his career and is facing hip replacement surgery in the very near future. "I don't begrudge the active players one penny and I suggest to them save as much as you can because when they become 40, 45, 50, 55, if things don't change, they are going to need the money because the union won't support them."
Pear is uninsurable and depends on government support such as Medicare and social security disability for his medical needs. But he might be one of the lucky ones as he has his wife's support and seems willing to take on the NFL and the NFLPA in an effort to get access to his benefits. He is one of the few with George Visger, Brent Boyd, Conrad Dobler and Mike Ditka who are speaking out about what they feel is the NFL and the NFLPA's abandonment of broken down old players who are in need.
But a lot of former players are not talking, partly because they have been trained since junior high school to "suck it up" and "be a man" which is the football mentality. Most players who play college football have no skills when they leave college because they don't get an education as they are too busy playing football. Sunday's warriors have been beaten over their heads since they were small and are team players even in retirement.
Retired players face high rates of divorce, face bankruptcies and have to put up with the pain of serious injuries on a daily basis. Alzheimer's disease and memory-related diseases in former players between the ages of 30 and 49 are 19 percent higher than average in that population pool.
"Football players wear a mask," said Pear. "All people see is a number. We are just a number that is how football works. Nobody knows how many retired players there (in dire straits)."
The House of Representatives has been holding hearings and monitoring the head injuries situation around the NFL. In 2009, several House members did not think NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or the league has done enough to care for players with head injuries — concussions — and that the league really has not made much of an effort investigating long time damage from concussions suffered by players who worked in the NFL as players.
Pear and other retirees have been after the league and the players association to do more and it wasn't until Congress stepped in and began hearings in 2007 that the league and the players association took notice.
The NFL and researches have been at odds over the sports head trauma and later cognitive degeneration. Researchers looking into the relationship between concussions and cognitive problems have seen a link while the NFL's medical committee on concussions has not. On December 3, 2009, the NFL changed the league's concussion policy telling teams that if a player shows any significant sign of concussion that player must be removed from a game or practice and cannot return to the field on the same day.
New NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith told the retirees that "the rift is over" between the old players and the union and that help for those in need is on the way. But Pear doesn't see any evidence that the rift is really over. "The NFL grosses about eight and a half billion dollars a year, so where is the dough? (Former Executive Director, the late Gene) Upshaw once said we could not receive a pension and disability. Now we have the Gene Upshaw Dire Need Fund, but nothing has changed. So (to today's players) save every penny because once they realize they need medical insurance and can't get it."
When the cheering stops for a good number NFL players, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Because of the injuries, a good many players became medical liabilities and are uninsurable. The National Football League does not guarantee contracts and if you are a marginal player who was injured, as soon as a doctor pronounces you healthy, you could be cut and your contract just ends with some severance pay.
Players of Pear's era got no severance and there was no guaranteed money given as a bonus. The bonus money is the only payment that a player will get, all players are then on a week-to-week basis. Virtually all of the players are replaceable on the spot.
"I know there is no pot of gold," said Pear. "In football, you are only a number. When you are a professional football player, you think you are invincible but when you get hit in the head, you injure your brain and life becomes different. We want our disability, our pension and future medical benefits. We don't want charity"
The football culture is different than real life. Football players grow up in a paramilitary setting as one long time NFL owner once said. That may explain why the National Football League Players Association has never been as effective as the Major League Baseball Players Association or the National Basketball Players Association or the National Hockey League Players Association in delivering guaranteed contracts to their members. The NFLPA seemingly has been pushing salaries up throughout the last four decades and not worrying about aftercare for former members until recently when the league and the players association were hauled before Congress to talk about the plight of former players.
"What they have done is create a myth," said Pear. "They have misled these young men telling them to be tough and work through injuries. Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL guarantee disability, pensions and medical their career. They (the NFL and the NFLPA) have convinced up that we do not deserve it. They have not allowed us access to our benefits which is not right and that has hurt players and players' families."
The National Football league Players Association has not kept records detailing the difficulties former union members have had in their post-football lives. One of the problems is that most players last 3 1/2 years in the league and pensions for players with three years in the league is not much. But the 3 1/2 year average is deceiving. Running backs may last 2.2 years and not be eligible for a pension or benefits as an example. The NFL may be recognized as the National Football League, but people in the NFL know the initials NFL as Not For Long. A good number of players never make it to where they can apply for a pension or disability and by the time they get to the NFL, after surviving high school and college ball, they probably have had some injury baggage. There is a disability benefit plan but according to Pear, it is more lip service than reality.
Congress, for the most part, has left the NFL issue behind although the House could call the NFL and NFLPA before them at any time. Pear is of the opinion that Congress, a class action suit by former players and chipping away at the NFL's image are three areas where the retired players can make the most strides.
The class action suit demanding compensation for injuries would need a law firm with deep pockets willing to take on the NFL and would require players to step up and talk about their problems. It might be easier to find a law firm than getting macho tough guys to go public. There is still a stigma attached even in retirement for players who don't toe the company line. Congress can go after two of the league's antitrust exemptions, the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which allowed the NFL to package all of the league's teams (14 in 1961, 32 in 2010) and sell the league to over-the-air and cable TV networks as one entity and undo the 1966 American Football league and National football League merger. That is highly unlikely but the NFL can be vulnerable there. The NFL does a remarkable job selling the product — football — but can the NFL afford images of broken down old stars and grunts who are relatively young, in their 40s and 50s parading around with ailments suffered in games?
It is unlikely that NFL media partners, Sumner Redstone's CBS (or any of the Redstone's holdings including Showtime), General Electric's NBC, Disney's ESPN or Rupert Murdoch's FOX businesses (including Fox News Channel or the FOX Business Channel) would tackle the issue. Newspapers are not partners with the NFL but newspaper sports sections depend on the NFL to fill up space for content and hope that readers will pay attention to ads and some of the ads are football related wrapped around Thanksgiving, weekends and playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl. A reporter sniffing around might lose access to the NFL and most writers would rather give up their right arms than be denied NFL access. The NFL controls the narrative and while Time Warner (the cable TV programmer and channel stock side not the stock side that owns Time Warner Cable) no longer has an NFL TV contract and could do pieces on CNN (a news network that hardly covers news), Time Warner might not want to show the NFL in a bad light. Image or perceived perception is everything to the NFL.
Pear fits into the study of short term memory problems. "There is a problem, you don't know what it is, as a player you are taught to work through it, but as you get older....I wished I never played. I enjoyed playing football when I was not injured. I played with a broken neck for two years. It wasn't worth it."
The image of the NFL, the romance of training camp, the start of the season goes fully on display by Aug. 1. The question for the 2,560 players who are in training camps is simple? Do you know what you are getting into? It is a question that only they can answer and perhaps instead of worrying about how much money they can get in the ongoing collective bargaining agreement, the players should check off safety concerns for both active and retired players (even though retired players don't pay the salaries of NFLPA staff) as their top priority in the next CBA.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and speaking on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2010 16:15
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/discarded-nfl-players-are-often-forgotten-in-retirement
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
As National Football League training camps begin to open up around the country, (the New York Jets in Cortland, N.Y. on Aug. 1, the New York Giants in Albany, N.Y. also on Aug. 1 and the Philadelphia Eagles at Lehigh in Bethlehem, Pa. on Monday) some 2,560 players are getting ready for what has become an annual ritual — two a day sessions upon the broiling sun to prove they belong on the field. Eventually only 1,696 of them will make teams. A number of the 864 players who are "cut" might end up on practice squads where they make a minimum of $5,200 a week to hone their skills. Some of the players will be placed on injured reserve and will either return to the field or get cut when they are deemed healthy. Each team can keep as many as eight players on the payroll (practice squad) which means 256 players might get another shot at a roster spot when a team loses a player to an injury.
Football is a tough game. Americans have been sold on football's brutality since the October 31, 1960 CBS documentary called "The Violent World of Sam Huff" which was narrated by Walter Cronkite. Yes TV networks once did documentaries in a time when TV news did reporting, research and presented facts and not worried about being profitable. In the 1970s, Al Primo convinced TV executives that news could be turned into entertainment and news divisions could make really big money. Cable TV news would take Primo's idea to the next level and began to feature raving lunatics screaming about their viewpoint because it made for "good TV". Huff was a linebacker with the New York Giants and was the first NFL player ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine on November 30, 1959. Huff's job was to "hurt people" because football was a "man's game" according to the accompanying Time magazine column.
The Huff piece came about 10 months after the "greatest football game ever" when Johnny Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to an overtime win over the Giants in the NFL Championship Game, a game that captivated Americans and propelled the NFL from a "mom and pop" operation into the big time. Huff wasn't the best linebacker in the NFL but played for the "glamorous" New York Giants, a team that caught the fancy of Madison Avenue's advertising community and the TV networks which were headquartered in New York. Huff's Giants didn't win the 1958 championship, Baltimore did but Baltimore was led by a quiet crew cut quarterback named Unitas while the Giants had the handsome Frank Gifford and the tough as nails Huff.
Sam Huff became a successful businessman after his career. Unitas didn't. The quarterback who put the NFL on the map couldn't use his right hand as he got older because of a tendon injury he suffered in 1968. He has two knee replacements and heart bypass was denied disability. Unitas died in 2002 but the denial of disability to the quarterback who put the NFL on the map still draws the ire of former players in tough spots.
In 2007, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, the chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, held a hearing because she wanted to have "an open discussion on the fairness of the system to severely disabled retired players." It was the start of drawing attention to the plight of retired NFL players. Johnny Unitas' widow Sandra was in Washington watching the hearings.
Huff in his Time magazine interview in 1959 didn't say anything new. A Life magazine had a cover story on December 3, 1971 "Suicide Squad Football's most violent men." Suicide squads have been given a more genteel name — "Special Teams" — but that's where rookies have to first earn their stripes in the NFL. Special teams are the worst assignments on the team and punt returns can be especially dangerous.
Football has been wrestling with players been injured and maimed for more than a century. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 told college presidents to clean up the game or he would ban football because of the number of deaths and injuries associated with the game.
New rules were implemented but the game remained violent and more than a century later, it seems that not much has changed. Players are still one play away from ending their career and that leads to the question.
Do the young players and some of the veterans who are about to go to camp know what they are getting into? If you listen to Dave Pear (and other older retired players who suffered life changing injuries playing football), the answer is no. Pear played in the NFL for six years as a defensive tackle between 1975 and 1980 with the Baltimore Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders. He played in one Pro Bowl and was a member of the Raiders Super Bowl XV championship team in 1980-81. Despite all of that, Pear wished he never played football.
"They think they are but no they are not," said Pear who broke his neck during his career and is facing hip replacement surgery in the very near future. "I don't begrudge the active players one penny and I suggest to them save as much as you can because when they become 40, 45, 50, 55, if things don't change, they are going to need the money because the union won't support them."
Pear is uninsurable and depends on government support such as Medicare and social security disability for his medical needs. But he might be one of the lucky ones as he has his wife's support and seems willing to take on the NFL and the NFLPA in an effort to get access to his benefits. He is one of the few with George Visger, Brent Boyd, Conrad Dobler and Mike Ditka who are speaking out about what they feel is the NFL and the NFLPA's abandonment of broken down old players who are in need.
But a lot of former players are not talking, partly because they have been trained since junior high school to "suck it up" and "be a man" which is the football mentality. Most players who play college football have no skills when they leave college because they don't get an education as they are too busy playing football. Sunday's warriors have been beaten over their heads since they were small and are team players even in retirement.
Retired players face high rates of divorce, face bankruptcies and have to put up with the pain of serious injuries on a daily basis. Alzheimer's disease and memory-related diseases in former players between the ages of 30 and 49 are 19 percent higher than average in that population pool.
"Football players wear a mask," said Pear. "All people see is a number. We are just a number that is how football works. Nobody knows how many retired players there (in dire straits)."
The House of Representatives has been holding hearings and monitoring the head injuries situation around the NFL. In 2009, several House members did not think NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or the league has done enough to care for players with head injuries — concussions — and that the league really has not made much of an effort investigating long time damage from concussions suffered by players who worked in the NFL as players.
Pear and other retirees have been after the league and the players association to do more and it wasn't until Congress stepped in and began hearings in 2007 that the league and the players association took notice.
The NFL and researches have been at odds over the sports head trauma and later cognitive degeneration. Researchers looking into the relationship between concussions and cognitive problems have seen a link while the NFL's medical committee on concussions has not. On December 3, 2009, the NFL changed the league's concussion policy telling teams that if a player shows any significant sign of concussion that player must be removed from a game or practice and cannot return to the field on the same day.
New NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith told the retirees that "the rift is over" between the old players and the union and that help for those in need is on the way. But Pear doesn't see any evidence that the rift is really over. "The NFL grosses about eight and a half billion dollars a year, so where is the dough? (Former Executive Director, the late Gene) Upshaw once said we could not receive a pension and disability. Now we have the Gene Upshaw Dire Need Fund, but nothing has changed. So (to today's players) save every penny because once they realize they need medical insurance and can't get it."
When the cheering stops for a good number NFL players, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Because of the injuries, a good many players became medical liabilities and are uninsurable. The National Football League does not guarantee contracts and if you are a marginal player who was injured, as soon as a doctor pronounces you healthy, you could be cut and your contract just ends with some severance pay.
Players of Pear's era got no severance and there was no guaranteed money given as a bonus. The bonus money is the only payment that a player will get, all players are then on a week-to-week basis. Virtually all of the players are replaceable on the spot.
"I know there is no pot of gold," said Pear. "In football, you are only a number. When you are a professional football player, you think you are invincible but when you get hit in the head, you injure your brain and life becomes different. We want our disability, our pension and future medical benefits. We don't want charity"
The football culture is different than real life. Football players grow up in a paramilitary setting as one long time NFL owner once said. That may explain why the National Football League Players Association has never been as effective as the Major League Baseball Players Association or the National Basketball Players Association or the National Hockey League Players Association in delivering guaranteed contracts to their members. The NFLPA seemingly has been pushing salaries up throughout the last four decades and not worrying about aftercare for former members until recently when the league and the players association were hauled before Congress to talk about the plight of former players.
"What they have done is create a myth," said Pear. "They have misled these young men telling them to be tough and work through injuries. Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL guarantee disability, pensions and medical their career. They (the NFL and the NFLPA) have convinced up that we do not deserve it. They have not allowed us access to our benefits which is not right and that has hurt players and players' families."
The National Football league Players Association has not kept records detailing the difficulties former union members have had in their post-football lives. One of the problems is that most players last 3 1/2 years in the league and pensions for players with three years in the league is not much. But the 3 1/2 year average is deceiving. Running backs may last 2.2 years and not be eligible for a pension or benefits as an example. The NFL may be recognized as the National Football League, but people in the NFL know the initials NFL as Not For Long. A good number of players never make it to where they can apply for a pension or disability and by the time they get to the NFL, after surviving high school and college ball, they probably have had some injury baggage. There is a disability benefit plan but according to Pear, it is more lip service than reality.
Congress, for the most part, has left the NFL issue behind although the House could call the NFL and NFLPA before them at any time. Pear is of the opinion that Congress, a class action suit by former players and chipping away at the NFL's image are three areas where the retired players can make the most strides.
The class action suit demanding compensation for injuries would need a law firm with deep pockets willing to take on the NFL and would require players to step up and talk about their problems. It might be easier to find a law firm than getting macho tough guys to go public. There is still a stigma attached even in retirement for players who don't toe the company line. Congress can go after two of the league's antitrust exemptions, the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which allowed the NFL to package all of the league's teams (14 in 1961, 32 in 2010) and sell the league to over-the-air and cable TV networks as one entity and undo the 1966 American Football league and National football League merger. That is highly unlikely but the NFL can be vulnerable there. The NFL does a remarkable job selling the product — football — but can the NFL afford images of broken down old stars and grunts who are relatively young, in their 40s and 50s parading around with ailments suffered in games?
It is unlikely that NFL media partners, Sumner Redstone's CBS (or any of the Redstone's holdings including Showtime), General Electric's NBC, Disney's ESPN or Rupert Murdoch's FOX businesses (including Fox News Channel or the FOX Business Channel) would tackle the issue. Newspapers are not partners with the NFL but newspaper sports sections depend on the NFL to fill up space for content and hope that readers will pay attention to ads and some of the ads are football related wrapped around Thanksgiving, weekends and playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl. A reporter sniffing around might lose access to the NFL and most writers would rather give up their right arms than be denied NFL access. The NFL controls the narrative and while Time Warner (the cable TV programmer and channel stock side not the stock side that owns Time Warner Cable) no longer has an NFL TV contract and could do pieces on CNN (a news network that hardly covers news), Time Warner might not want to show the NFL in a bad light. Image or perceived perception is everything to the NFL.
Pear fits into the study of short term memory problems. "There is a problem, you don't know what it is, as a player you are taught to work through it, but as you get older....I wished I never played. I enjoyed playing football when I was not injured. I played with a broken neck for two years. It wasn't worth it."
The image of the NFL, the romance of training camp, the start of the season goes fully on display by Aug. 1. The question for the 2,560 players who are in training camps is simple? Do you know what you are getting into? It is a question that only they can answer and perhaps instead of worrying about how much money they can get in the ongoing collective bargaining agreement, the players should check off safety concerns for both active and retired players (even though retired players don't pay the salaries of NFLPA staff) as their top priority in the next CBA.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and speaking on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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