Bears and Packers: Bitter Rivals? Not Really
By Evan Weiner
January 21, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/bears-and-packers-bitter-rivals-not-really
(New York, N. Y.) -- Those bitter old rivals, the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers, who take to the football field in Chicago on Sunday, really aren't the bitter old rivals after all. You see the football teams in Chicago and Green Bay are really old business partners who needed each other's financial support to survive in the very early days of the National Football League in the 1920s and were still dependent on each other as late as the 1950s.
In 1919, Earl (Curly) Lambeau and George Calhoun organized a football team in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Lambeau and Calhoun may not have realized what they were doing at the time, but Green Bay's football team was named after the team's benefactor and Lambeau's employer, the Indian Packing Company, Green Bay was not paid of any league and played whoever was available.
The Indian Packing Company gave Lambeau $500 for equipment and allowed the team to use the company field for practices. Lambeau's team might have been the first "pro" football club to depend on corporate backing for naming rights even if it was just $500. Interestingly enough, the Chicago Bears franchise has a similar history.
There was a momentum to organize football into some entity after World War I. In 1920, The American Professional Football Conference came about because of three reasons. Rising salaries was becoming a problem; players were jumping from one team to another following the highest offers and the use of college players still enrolled in schools. The "owners" of the day sound an awful lot like the owners of 2010 complaining about giving players too much of the revenues generated by football games.
On August 20, 1920, the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians and Dayton Triangles agreed to join a league that would follow the same rules. Four weeks later, there was another meeting in Canton with Akron, Canton, Cleveland and Dayton from Ohio, the Hammond Pros and the Muncie Flyers from Indiana, the Rochester Jeffersons of New York and the Decatur Staleys, Racine Cardinals and Rock Island Independents in attendance.
The group changed the name of the circuit to the American Professional Football Association, charged a $100 a franchise membership fee and named Jim Thorpe President of the APFA. None of the teams ever paid the $100. There was no league schedule as teams could play whatever opponent they could book and four other teams joined the league, the Buffalo All-Americans, Chicago Tigers, Columbus Panhandlers and the Detroit Heralds.
The APFA's first game was on September 26 when Rock Island defeated the St. Paul Ideals 48-0 before 800 fans at home. By season's end, the Chicago Tigers and Detroit had folded.
In 1921, the APFA had 22 teams including the first year Green Bay Packers. A. E. Staley turned the Decatur Staleys over to George Halas who moved the team to Cubs Park. Staley gave George Halas $5,000 to retain the Staley name for another season. The Staleys who finished 9-1-1 were named champions. Staley was a big producer of corn based products and was another corporate sponsor, a much bigger benefactor than the Indian Packing Company.
In 1922, Green Bay withdrew from the league after admitting the Packers used college players the year before. Curly Lambeau rescued the team by putting up $50 to buy the franchise and promised to obey APFA rules. Lambeau went broke keeping the Packers going but local businesses arranged a $2,500 loan to keep the team playing. By year's end, a public non-profit cooperation was set up to operate the team and that arrangement is still in place eight decades later.
On June 24, the APFA changed its name to the National Football League and the Chicago Staleys became the Chicago Bears.
Halas was already wielded an enormous amount of power in the newly named NFL. As the NFL came into existence, the owners adopted a constitution that required an owner's vote to approve a franchise move. That night, Halas moved the Bears to Chicago without a vote.
The Bears and Packers became bitter rivals in the 1920s yet allies in many ways. Lambeau and Halas needed one another and the NFL needed them.
"Halas came up the hard way, sort of like we did, we were a town team that had to struggle through a number of financial crisis in our early history and he had somewhat the same. His wife had a laundry and they did the uniforms.
"When he started out, he did press releases in long hand and delivered them to the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times, a think it may have been a case of a common experience, a common bond and also there was a strong, intense rivalry between the two teams in part because of the two guys who coached them, Halas and Curly Lambeau who coached the Packers. Lambeau was equally intense, I can assure you," said Lee Remmel, a long time Green Bay Press Gazette sportswriter and Packer Public Relations Director.
"In 1956 when (Green Bay) had a citywide referendum to funding the building of the stadium that is now Lambeau Field, (Halas) came up personally and spoke on behalf of the referendum, the yes vote obviously.
"He was one of the key figures in getting the equal sharing of television revenue when the league went to television. That is a big factor in our survival in the NFL. Without it, obviously we would not."
Green Bay Packers officials knew Halas would do anything to win on the field, but he was extremely important in helping to maintain the franchise in northern Wisconsin. But Green Bay also helped assure the finances of the Bears as well.
"We did make a loan to Halas one time to meet his payroll in his early days," Remmel said. "In fact, when he did his book Halas by Halas in 1979, he asked me if I could find an affidavit or an IOU and I tracked it down at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It was an IOU that the Packers had loaned Halas something like $1,500 in 1930."
Neither Halas nor Lambeau seemed to be a stickler for rules. The 1925 season would be a turning point for the league as Harold (Red) Grange signed a contract with George Halas and the Bears following his All-American season at the University of Illinois. Halas admitted to signing Grange early, before his college eligibility was up.
On Thanksgiving Day, Grange made his debut as the Bears hosted the Chicago Cardinals at Wrigley Field before a crowd of 36,000. At the beginning of December, the Bears went on an eight game, 12-day barnstorming tour in St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Detroit and back to Chicago.
The Bears-Giants game at New York's Polo Grounds drew 73,000 people and gave the struggling first year New York Giants franchise a much needed financial lift. The Bears went out west and attracted a crowd of 75,000 in Los Angeles. Because of Grange's drawing power, the NFL faced its first competition from a league called the American Football League in 1926.
Grange made $100,000 and his manager/agent's C.C. Pyle, often referred to as "Cash and Carry Pyle," also made $100,000. Grange played 18 games in three months. More importantly for the NFL, the Galloping Ghost brought the pro league much needed publicity.
Pyle told Halas that Grange wanted a five-figured contract and one-third ownership in the Bears for 1926 season. Halas refused. Pyle leased Yankee Stadium in New York and then petitioned the NFL for a franchise. The NFL refused. Giant owner Tim Mara felt threatened with Pyle's request and the NFL backed up Mara.
Pyle then started the AFL, which included a New York Yankees team led by Grange, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Brooklyn, Newark and a road team representing Los Angeles. The ninth team Rock Island jumped over from the NFL. Grange's presence could not save the AFL and the NFL came up with a new star, the Duluth Eskimos Ernie Nevers who played in 29 games throughout the country to earn his $15,000 paycheck.
Halas got legislation through that prevented people like Red Grange from joining a team in mid season. Teams could not sign a player whose college class had not graduated. Halas then put a stop to a common practice. In the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, there is an exhibit that goes back to those days when it was very common for a player to suit up for a college team on Saturday and a pro team on Sunday. The Grange signing clearly violated NFL rules, but the signing of Red Grange, and the subsequent national barnstorming tour of the Bears may have saved the NFL in the 1920's.
"We have some headgear from the 1920s and 1930s. The headgear not only went over the head and behind the head, but over the face too," said John Bankert, who was the Executive Director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the 1990s. "A lot of people say it was facial protection, but I don't believe that though. Many of those guys played in college on Saturday and under an assumed name on Sunday.
"George Trafton, however, who played for Notre Dame as a center also played some pro football in those early days. He had part of his index finger missing. So when he would reach down on the ball, a guy across the line who says, "Hey, didn't I see you yesterday? Trafton would say, "If you saw me then you must have played too!"
Green Bay was the last of the small towns in the NFL after Portsmouth, Ohio’s team moved to Detroit in 1934. Green Bay and Chicago's histories date back to a place that no longer exists. The NFL of 1922 included the Chicago Cardinals, a franchise that now plays in Glendale, Arizona and the Dayton Triangles, a team that moved to Brooklyn in 1930 and ended up in Indianapolis after various attempts at success in Brooklyn, Boston, New York, Miami (All American Football Conference), Baltimore, New York, Dallas, Baltimore and finally Indianapolis. All the other teams have been relegated to the dustbin of history.
The oldest rivals in the NFL clearly are dependent on one another and football in Chicago and Green Bay would not be the same if Green Bay disappeared from the NFL. Lambeau saved Halas and Halas returned the favor in the 1950s.
Bitter rivals? Maybe not.
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 and amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label NFL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NFL. Show all posts
Friday, January 21, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
When Football and Basketball Were Just Games
By Evan Weiner
January 14, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/when-football-and-basketball-were-just-games
(New York, N. Y.) -- As the National Football League playoffs roll on and the "drama" continues to unfold surround the will the Denver Nuggets trade Carmelo Anthony to the New Jersey Nets so he can sign a huge multi-million dollar before the opportunity dissipates should the National Basketball Association owners change working conditions in the next collective bargaining agreement, it should be remembered that at one time that being a "big league" athlete was job a seasonal job.
Back in the 1940s, 20-somethings played ball for fun, a little money or used it as time filler until a real job opened up.
Sports began to change in the 1950s when municipalities started building stadiums for baseball (and football) teams and television began sprinkling money into the leagues because sports programming filled up television schedules. Today major league sports in the United States cannot live without government support (stadium or arena funding, the waiving of TV antitrust issues for sports leagues, cable TV rules and corporate tax breaks on big ticket items such as luxury boxes and club seats at stadiums and arenas), cable TV and corporations buying tickets.
Today, the National Football League is a multi-billion dollar business; the National Basketball Association is a multi-billion dollar global entity with ties to Europe and China. Back in the 1940s, baseball in the United States was "the" sport but boxing and horse racing also had rabid followers. There was little interest in the pro basketball leagues at the time and the NFL was barely a notch above semi-pro status.
There is only one athlete who was been a member of a pro basketball championship squad and a pro football championship team in the same calendar year. Neither league is in existence today although the two leagues' DNA can be found both in the National Basketball Association and the National Football League.
As you continue reading and trying to figure out the answer, here is a little clue for you all. It happened after World War II and the player in question went to college (Northwestern) on a basketball scholarship and needed to be talked into playing football. Yet the player is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.
A little background is needed.
The defunct basketball circuit was the National Basketball League. The NBL was the only pro basketball league at the time and had franchises in small Midwest cities and those teams usually were company teams with the players working for a piston manufacturer or tire companies in some cases. The Rochester Seagram’s were a semi-pro independent team which was sponsored by a distillery. After World War II ended in August 1945, the NBL invited Les Harrison to bring his team into the pro league.
Harrison brought athletes to Rochester. His collection included baseball players Del Rice and Chuck Connors and an eventual Pro Football Hall of Famer, Otto Graham who led the Cleveland Browns to championships in both the All American Football Conference and the National Football League. Baseball players flocked to basketball in the off season for a chance to make a few extra bucks and the emphasis here is on the words "a few." Graham is the answer to the trivia question. He is the only athlete to win “major league” championships in basketball with the 1945-46 Royals and the 1946 Cleveland Browns of the All American Football Conference in the same calendar year.
The NBL was not a fulltime enterprise. The All American Football Conference was organized by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward with teams in New York, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Miami, Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles and started play in 1946.
Graham ended up with the Browns and quarterbacked Paul Brown's championship squad in 1946 and in 1947 and in 1948 and in 1949. Graham became a football superstar and one of football’s highest paid performers, something that was not going to happen in Rochester playing basketball.
"We won the championship in all four years there (AAFC)," said Graham. "We played in the championship game six straight years (1950-55) in the NFL and won three of the six there. I went to college on a basketball scholarship. I didn't even play football I played intramural football," he said. ”I played with the Royals the season before the All American Football Conference had started. My teammates were Del Rice, Chuck Connors, the Rifleman of TV fame, Bob Davies, Red Boltzmann, Fuzzy Levine and we won the championship.
"I think I'm the only guy to have played on a championship basketball team and football team in the same year (1946). I played in Fort Wayne, Indiana and in fact they did dominate professional basketball at that time. We knocked them off. It was fun. But basketball took up too much time and I couldn't play football and basketball both, so I stuck with football.
"The NBL was the best league in the world. The Browns hadn't started yet and the Browns and the All American Football Conference didn't start until the fall of 1946. So I had nothing to do at that time, so after I started football, it overlapped with basketball and I didn't go back."
Graham was the quarterback on the dominant team of the AAFC. Rochester wasn’t too shabby either. The team won two NBL “pennants” but lost to George Milan in the NBL championships twice. Rochester joined the NBA in 1948 and won an NBA title in 1951.
Graham on the other hand had four AAFC crowns and one NFL title by 1950. The Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers entered the NFL after a merger of sorts between the AAFC and NFL after the 1949 season. Graham and the Browns quickly showed the NFL how good they were.
"It (the AAFC) was a good league. The NFL people would say our worst team could beat your best team. Go get a football before you think about playing our teams.
"Paul Brown, who was very intelligent, he was a great coach not because he knew more football necessarily. But he brought organization to professional football. I was really very lucky to have played for Paul Brown. I was drafted by Detroit (in 1944) and if I had gone to Detroit to Detroit and Paul Brown had gotten Bobby Layne, I would have liked to see what would have happened when those two collided,” recalled Graham in the 1990s.
"We did dominate the (AAFC) league and so we joined the NFL and they were going to run all over us. Well, the very first game, (NFL Commissioner) Bert Bell scheduled us to play against the Eagles who had won the two previous years in the NFL in Philadelphia and we kicked the hell out of them, 35-10 and we proved we had a good football team.
"Bert Bell said it was the best organized football team he had ever seen. From that time on we were a dominant football team. We beat the Rams in the championship 30-28 on a field goal by Graze. We proved we belong."
NFL teams targeted the Browns. The Browns were 47-4-3 in the AAFC, but the league was considered second rate.
"Our feeling, quite frankly, we did so well that every team we played against we knew was going to give their utmost to beat us because we at that time were the top team. So we never had an easy schedule because even the worst team is going to play their best game against us. Paul Brown just prepared us to do our best. We were well prepared. No other team in history was as well prepared as us,” Graham said.
Graham said the entire the 1950 season was the highlight of his career. He on occasion gave some thought about playing both sports simultaneously and with the basketball and football season not having much of an overlap except in November and December; it could have been possible for Graham to do both. But travel was limited to buses and trains in both football and basketball and that was a deterrent.
"Rochester is now out in Sacramento after going to Cincinnati and Kansas City and Fort Wayne is in Detroit,” said Graham in the 1990s. “I remember one train trip. We played a ballgame in Rochester; we spent the night on a train, not a sleeper but sitting up all night long. I was so mad and we had to go to Oshkosh two nights later. That's the way it was in those days. Our owner (Lester Harrison) wanted to save money.
"It's tough to do both sports," he said of Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson, "but if I was paid they kind of money they got, I would be tempted."
Graham made $25,000 in his best season with Cleveland. He was the NFL’s highest paid player, NBA teams were going out of business at a rapid rate and the league was down to just eight teams while Graham was quarterbacking. The All American Football Conference is just a footnote in NFL history now. The NFL took AAFC three teams, the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers. By 1949, Chicago could not support a third team after the Bears and Cardinals, the Los Angeles Dons were financially tapped out, the Brooklyn Dodgers had merged with the New York Yankees. Buffalo supported its Bills but was not an NFL city. Buffalo was left out of the NFL-AAFC merger.
“They were going out of business and we just felt that getting a west coast team was important and getting Cleveland was important. We also brought in Baltimore but they didn’t make it at that particularly. But the 49ers and Cleveland Browns and were very important at that particularly time to get a national scope,” said Pittsburgh Steelers owner and now American Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney. "That was a good move."
The other "good move" for putting money in the pockets of owners and players and front office staff was television. Television development, which was halted during World War II, resumed. That would be the important component to the skyrocketing popularity of sports in the 1950s. An interesting side note to Graham's teams. The Rochester Royals also called Cincinnati, Kansas City, Omaha and Sacramento home. The franchise could be on the move again. Graham's Browns ended up in Baltimore in 1996. The new Cleveland franchise in the NFL started in 1999. The 1946 Cleveland Browns replaced the Cleveland Rams in the city after Rams owner Daniel Reeves took his franchise to Los Angeles. The Cleveland Rams started life in the second American Football League in 1936 and joined the NFL in 1937. The franchise moved to Anaheim in 1980 and to St. Louis in 1995.
.
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 or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
January 14, 2011
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/when-football-and-basketball-were-just-games
(New York, N. Y.) -- As the National Football League playoffs roll on and the "drama" continues to unfold surround the will the Denver Nuggets trade Carmelo Anthony to the New Jersey Nets so he can sign a huge multi-million dollar before the opportunity dissipates should the National Basketball Association owners change working conditions in the next collective bargaining agreement, it should be remembered that at one time that being a "big league" athlete was job a seasonal job.
Back in the 1940s, 20-somethings played ball for fun, a little money or used it as time filler until a real job opened up.
Sports began to change in the 1950s when municipalities started building stadiums for baseball (and football) teams and television began sprinkling money into the leagues because sports programming filled up television schedules. Today major league sports in the United States cannot live without government support (stadium or arena funding, the waiving of TV antitrust issues for sports leagues, cable TV rules and corporate tax breaks on big ticket items such as luxury boxes and club seats at stadiums and arenas), cable TV and corporations buying tickets.
Today, the National Football League is a multi-billion dollar business; the National Basketball Association is a multi-billion dollar global entity with ties to Europe and China. Back in the 1940s, baseball in the United States was "the" sport but boxing and horse racing also had rabid followers. There was little interest in the pro basketball leagues at the time and the NFL was barely a notch above semi-pro status.
There is only one athlete who was been a member of a pro basketball championship squad and a pro football championship team in the same calendar year. Neither league is in existence today although the two leagues' DNA can be found both in the National Basketball Association and the National Football League.
As you continue reading and trying to figure out the answer, here is a little clue for you all. It happened after World War II and the player in question went to college (Northwestern) on a basketball scholarship and needed to be talked into playing football. Yet the player is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.
A little background is needed.
The defunct basketball circuit was the National Basketball League. The NBL was the only pro basketball league at the time and had franchises in small Midwest cities and those teams usually were company teams with the players working for a piston manufacturer or tire companies in some cases. The Rochester Seagram’s were a semi-pro independent team which was sponsored by a distillery. After World War II ended in August 1945, the NBL invited Les Harrison to bring his team into the pro league.
Harrison brought athletes to Rochester. His collection included baseball players Del Rice and Chuck Connors and an eventual Pro Football Hall of Famer, Otto Graham who led the Cleveland Browns to championships in both the All American Football Conference and the National Football League. Baseball players flocked to basketball in the off season for a chance to make a few extra bucks and the emphasis here is on the words "a few." Graham is the answer to the trivia question. He is the only athlete to win “major league” championships in basketball with the 1945-46 Royals and the 1946 Cleveland Browns of the All American Football Conference in the same calendar year.
The NBL was not a fulltime enterprise. The All American Football Conference was organized by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward with teams in New York, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Miami, Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles and started play in 1946.
Graham ended up with the Browns and quarterbacked Paul Brown's championship squad in 1946 and in 1947 and in 1948 and in 1949. Graham became a football superstar and one of football’s highest paid performers, something that was not going to happen in Rochester playing basketball.
"We won the championship in all four years there (AAFC)," said Graham. "We played in the championship game six straight years (1950-55) in the NFL and won three of the six there. I went to college on a basketball scholarship. I didn't even play football I played intramural football," he said. ”I played with the Royals the season before the All American Football Conference had started. My teammates were Del Rice, Chuck Connors, the Rifleman of TV fame, Bob Davies, Red Boltzmann, Fuzzy Levine and we won the championship.
"I think I'm the only guy to have played on a championship basketball team and football team in the same year (1946). I played in Fort Wayne, Indiana and in fact they did dominate professional basketball at that time. We knocked them off. It was fun. But basketball took up too much time and I couldn't play football and basketball both, so I stuck with football.
"The NBL was the best league in the world. The Browns hadn't started yet and the Browns and the All American Football Conference didn't start until the fall of 1946. So I had nothing to do at that time, so after I started football, it overlapped with basketball and I didn't go back."
Graham was the quarterback on the dominant team of the AAFC. Rochester wasn’t too shabby either. The team won two NBL “pennants” but lost to George Milan in the NBL championships twice. Rochester joined the NBA in 1948 and won an NBA title in 1951.
Graham on the other hand had four AAFC crowns and one NFL title by 1950. The Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers entered the NFL after a merger of sorts between the AAFC and NFL after the 1949 season. Graham and the Browns quickly showed the NFL how good they were.
"It (the AAFC) was a good league. The NFL people would say our worst team could beat your best team. Go get a football before you think about playing our teams.
"Paul Brown, who was very intelligent, he was a great coach not because he knew more football necessarily. But he brought organization to professional football. I was really very lucky to have played for Paul Brown. I was drafted by Detroit (in 1944) and if I had gone to Detroit to Detroit and Paul Brown had gotten Bobby Layne, I would have liked to see what would have happened when those two collided,” recalled Graham in the 1990s.
"We did dominate the (AAFC) league and so we joined the NFL and they were going to run all over us. Well, the very first game, (NFL Commissioner) Bert Bell scheduled us to play against the Eagles who had won the two previous years in the NFL in Philadelphia and we kicked the hell out of them, 35-10 and we proved we had a good football team.
"Bert Bell said it was the best organized football team he had ever seen. From that time on we were a dominant football team. We beat the Rams in the championship 30-28 on a field goal by Graze. We proved we belong."
NFL teams targeted the Browns. The Browns were 47-4-3 in the AAFC, but the league was considered second rate.
"Our feeling, quite frankly, we did so well that every team we played against we knew was going to give their utmost to beat us because we at that time were the top team. So we never had an easy schedule because even the worst team is going to play their best game against us. Paul Brown just prepared us to do our best. We were well prepared. No other team in history was as well prepared as us,” Graham said.
Graham said the entire the 1950 season was the highlight of his career. He on occasion gave some thought about playing both sports simultaneously and with the basketball and football season not having much of an overlap except in November and December; it could have been possible for Graham to do both. But travel was limited to buses and trains in both football and basketball and that was a deterrent.
"Rochester is now out in Sacramento after going to Cincinnati and Kansas City and Fort Wayne is in Detroit,” said Graham in the 1990s. “I remember one train trip. We played a ballgame in Rochester; we spent the night on a train, not a sleeper but sitting up all night long. I was so mad and we had to go to Oshkosh two nights later. That's the way it was in those days. Our owner (Lester Harrison) wanted to save money.
"It's tough to do both sports," he said of Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson, "but if I was paid they kind of money they got, I would be tempted."
Graham made $25,000 in his best season with Cleveland. He was the NFL’s highest paid player, NBA teams were going out of business at a rapid rate and the league was down to just eight teams while Graham was quarterbacking. The All American Football Conference is just a footnote in NFL history now. The NFL took AAFC three teams, the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers. By 1949, Chicago could not support a third team after the Bears and Cardinals, the Los Angeles Dons were financially tapped out, the Brooklyn Dodgers had merged with the New York Yankees. Buffalo supported its Bills but was not an NFL city. Buffalo was left out of the NFL-AAFC merger.
“They were going out of business and we just felt that getting a west coast team was important and getting Cleveland was important. We also brought in Baltimore but they didn’t make it at that particularly. But the 49ers and Cleveland Browns and were very important at that particularly time to get a national scope,” said Pittsburgh Steelers owner and now American Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney. "That was a good move."
The other "good move" for putting money in the pockets of owners and players and front office staff was television. Television development, which was halted during World War II, resumed. That would be the important component to the skyrocketing popularity of sports in the 1950s. An interesting side note to Graham's teams. The Rochester Royals also called Cincinnati, Kansas City, Omaha and Sacramento home. The franchise could be on the move again. Graham's Browns ended up in Baltimore in 1996. The new Cleveland franchise in the NFL started in 1999. The 1946 Cleveland Browns replaced the Cleveland Rams in the city after Rams owner Daniel Reeves took his franchise to Los Angeles. The Cleveland Rams started life in the second American Football League in 1936 and joined the NFL in 1937. The franchise moved to Anaheim in 1980 and to St. Louis in 1995.
.
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 or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, December 6, 2010
New Jersey’s horse racing problems rooted in NFL wanderlust
Monday, 06 December 2010 12:01
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/new-jerseys-horse-racing-problems-rooted-in-nfl-wanderlust
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
As New Jersey continues to figure out what to do with the state's financially ailing horse racing tracks, the "popular" (according to media pundits who like to affix tags like popular, hapless or weak to political figures or sports teams) or "superstar" (according to the Tucker Carlson founded Daily Caller conservative political website) Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie has to balance his desire to "fix" the industry with the reality that New Jersey is leaking gambling money to New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware. For more than four decades states have been adding all sorts of ways for the average person to spend money gambling near their homes whether it was at an Off Track Betting facility (and that is now an endangered species in New York) to playing all sorts of games at the local 7-Eleven or Wawa stores. The state would get a percentage of the take and pay off bills.
That opens up a real ethical debate that no one seems to want to address.
Should the state encourage legal gambling knowing that people who have addiction problems might add betting to their addictions as a way to generate revenue or just raise taxes?
Tax hikes, of course, are highly unpopular so why not hide them?
Gambling is a form of taxation and across the Hudson River in Queens, New York, a casino will be opening in 2011 at Aqueduct racetrack. New York's gain could potentially be a New Jersey's revenue loss.
The Queens casino will be operated by a Malaysian company, Genting, and will eventually house 4,525 video lottery terminals. The first 1,600 will be opened sometime in early 2011.There will eventually be a major structure housing the terminals at the Queens racetrack and New York racing will be able to up purses and draw a better grade of horse to Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga. New York is also hoping that some of the casinos proceeds will go to pay off education costs in the state. That brings up another ethical question that politicians ran away from.
"Neighborhood" casinos don't attract the "high rollers" who can afford to lose money. The crowd is a lower to middle class crowd that is there for either enjoyment or hoping to hit the jackpot. It is a tax although on the lower and middle class yet it never is packaged that way. Those people will be paying a tax they have never considered because gambling is a form of recreation even though they are the ones shouting about high tax rates.
The same media people who tout "rising star" politicians or "popular" politicians or "superstar" politicians never bother to actually understand that an elected official makes decisions that impact lives and is not a celebrity. The pundits never explain state gambling. Politicians more than four decades ago decided to start state gambling games as a way to collect revenues. That is why there are so many "racinos" — racetracks with slot machines and in some cases table games. That is why restaurant goers can play keno while waiting for a slice of pizza in New York.
Aqueduct will be just another casino within a driving distance of northern New Jersey. It will join the Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway as a close competitor. Pennsylvania casinos are also within a quick drive and one Poconos casino regularly runs ads on an AM northern New Jersey radio station telling people to make the drive there. In the Philadelphia area, there are slots at racetracks and Delaware along with Maryland also feature slot parlors. Atlantic City is not the only game in town anymore and for those in northern New Jersey, there will be a casino/resort opening in what used to be known as the Borscht Belt near Monticello, New York in the next few years.
That is a problem for the "popular" and "superstar" governor whose main job is to get New Jersey out of the fiscal mess the state is coping with. Of course New Jersey is not alone in the budget problems and no amount of "media celebrity" accolades is going to pull the any state out of the financial crisis.
If that were the case, California with Governor Schwarzenegger would have turn the financial ship around and the Golden State would be swimming in money. It is just not that easy.
Both the thoroughbred and standard bred horse racing industry have been dying for years. At one time, Yonkers Raceway packed 40,000 people into the stands on a Saturday night. That was four decades ago. Now the venue is a casino that features some racing most nights. The same is true at Dover Downs in Delaware and the trend around the country has been to put slots into tracks in an attempt to get people into the venue to bet on something, not necessarily horses. Christie's problem is that Atlantic City is the hub of gambling in New Jersey and the casinos there don't really want any in-state competition for gambling dollars from New Jersey racetracks. Ideally the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park would be the perfect venues for slot machines but that is not happening anytime soon, like this afternoon, and New Jersey is losing money on the racetracks.
Apparently Monmouth lost about $6.5 million this year and the Meadowlands came in at around $11 million in losses. The total was offset by contributions from Atlantic City casinos and taxpayers dollars. Governor Christie wants to end the subsidies but others want to save horse racing in the state and some of the suggestions include internet gambling on races, opening New Jersey's version of Off Track Betting, selling off Monmouth (no one would buy the facility for just horse racing) and limiting racing at the Meadowlands to just a few days a year.
All of the solutions are flawed. If New Jersey does get out of the horse racing industry, the state will lose horse farms and that has a domino falling impact on all sorts of secondary industries from veterinarians to stable operators to people spending money in the community where the farms are located. That means a job and tax revenue loss. Because of casino gambling, Delaware was able to save horse farms that would surely had left if horse racing ended at the remaining tracks in the state. New York and Maryland are struggling with that problem although both states think that they can stem the tide of farms leaving with money from the "machines" as Yonkers Raceway owner Tim Rooney calls them.
The National Football League and other sports leagues would fight legalized sports gambling in Atlantic City although New Jersey lawmakers had the ability to legalize sports gambling in 1993 and passed on the opportunity.
Delaware does have legalized "parlay" National Football League action at the state's casinos.
Ironically, New Jersey got into the racetrack business because of the National Football League. In 1971 and 1972, state elected officials built the Meadowlands racetrack with the thought that the proceeds from the track would help pay down the debt at the new football facility that would eventually house the New York Giants. The football venue was completed in 1976. Meanwhile Leon Hess was becoming more and more unhappy with the terms of his lease at Shea Stadium as his Jets franchise played second fiddle to the New York Mets at the New York City-owned sports facility in Queens. Hess was eyeing New Jersey and his lease with the New York City ended in 1983.
Hess was a member of the Board of Directors of the Monmouth Park Jockey Club. By 1985, Hess had a deal for his Jets to play in the Meadowlands and New Jersey bought Monmouth Park from Hess and his fellow Jockey Club members for $45 million. The Hess-New Jersey negotiations for the football team move to New Jersey started in 1983 as did the Monmouth Park talks. The two negotiations were not linked.
At least not officially.
The state originally went after the Yankees in 1972 and thought a deal which about to be struck between Yankees owner CBS and a local New Jersey businessmen for about $13 million. New Jersey would have built a baseball park in the Meadowlands for the Yankees. In 1972, CBS Chairman William Paley told Yankees President Michael Burke to either sell the team or buy it himself. CBS could not put Yankees games on CBS' owned and operated WCBS-TV, Channel 2 in New York because of Federal Communication Commission rules. Back in 1972, that was where the real money on the team could have been made through TV advertising revenue and promotions. New Jersey officials felt that a deal to move the team to the state was imminent but Burke informed New Jersey interests that the team wasn't for sale near the end of 1972, A few days later, on January 3, 1973, Burke announced that a group led by George M. Steinbrenner III had purchased the club for $10 million (along with a $1.5 million tax credit).
The New York Yankees franchise remained in the Bronx.
New Jersey has to do something soon because of pressures from inside the state and external pressure has gambling money seeps into neighboring states. The longer politicians kick the can down the street, the harder it will be to solve New Jersey's horse racing and gambling problem.
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
Monday, 06 December 2010 12:01
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/new-jerseys-horse-racing-problems-rooted-in-nfl-wanderlust
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
As New Jersey continues to figure out what to do with the state's financially ailing horse racing tracks, the "popular" (according to media pundits who like to affix tags like popular, hapless or weak to political figures or sports teams) or "superstar" (according to the Tucker Carlson founded Daily Caller conservative political website) Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie has to balance his desire to "fix" the industry with the reality that New Jersey is leaking gambling money to New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware. For more than four decades states have been adding all sorts of ways for the average person to spend money gambling near their homes whether it was at an Off Track Betting facility (and that is now an endangered species in New York) to playing all sorts of games at the local 7-Eleven or Wawa stores. The state would get a percentage of the take and pay off bills.
That opens up a real ethical debate that no one seems to want to address.
Should the state encourage legal gambling knowing that people who have addiction problems might add betting to their addictions as a way to generate revenue or just raise taxes?
Tax hikes, of course, are highly unpopular so why not hide them?
Gambling is a form of taxation and across the Hudson River in Queens, New York, a casino will be opening in 2011 at Aqueduct racetrack. New York's gain could potentially be a New Jersey's revenue loss.
The Queens casino will be operated by a Malaysian company, Genting, and will eventually house 4,525 video lottery terminals. The first 1,600 will be opened sometime in early 2011.There will eventually be a major structure housing the terminals at the Queens racetrack and New York racing will be able to up purses and draw a better grade of horse to Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga. New York is also hoping that some of the casinos proceeds will go to pay off education costs in the state. That brings up another ethical question that politicians ran away from.
"Neighborhood" casinos don't attract the "high rollers" who can afford to lose money. The crowd is a lower to middle class crowd that is there for either enjoyment or hoping to hit the jackpot. It is a tax although on the lower and middle class yet it never is packaged that way. Those people will be paying a tax they have never considered because gambling is a form of recreation even though they are the ones shouting about high tax rates.
The same media people who tout "rising star" politicians or "popular" politicians or "superstar" politicians never bother to actually understand that an elected official makes decisions that impact lives and is not a celebrity. The pundits never explain state gambling. Politicians more than four decades ago decided to start state gambling games as a way to collect revenues. That is why there are so many "racinos" — racetracks with slot machines and in some cases table games. That is why restaurant goers can play keno while waiting for a slice of pizza in New York.
Aqueduct will be just another casino within a driving distance of northern New Jersey. It will join the Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway as a close competitor. Pennsylvania casinos are also within a quick drive and one Poconos casino regularly runs ads on an AM northern New Jersey radio station telling people to make the drive there. In the Philadelphia area, there are slots at racetracks and Delaware along with Maryland also feature slot parlors. Atlantic City is not the only game in town anymore and for those in northern New Jersey, there will be a casino/resort opening in what used to be known as the Borscht Belt near Monticello, New York in the next few years.
That is a problem for the "popular" and "superstar" governor whose main job is to get New Jersey out of the fiscal mess the state is coping with. Of course New Jersey is not alone in the budget problems and no amount of "media celebrity" accolades is going to pull the any state out of the financial crisis.
If that were the case, California with Governor Schwarzenegger would have turn the financial ship around and the Golden State would be swimming in money. It is just not that easy.
Both the thoroughbred and standard bred horse racing industry have been dying for years. At one time, Yonkers Raceway packed 40,000 people into the stands on a Saturday night. That was four decades ago. Now the venue is a casino that features some racing most nights. The same is true at Dover Downs in Delaware and the trend around the country has been to put slots into tracks in an attempt to get people into the venue to bet on something, not necessarily horses. Christie's problem is that Atlantic City is the hub of gambling in New Jersey and the casinos there don't really want any in-state competition for gambling dollars from New Jersey racetracks. Ideally the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park would be the perfect venues for slot machines but that is not happening anytime soon, like this afternoon, and New Jersey is losing money on the racetracks.
Apparently Monmouth lost about $6.5 million this year and the Meadowlands came in at around $11 million in losses. The total was offset by contributions from Atlantic City casinos and taxpayers dollars. Governor Christie wants to end the subsidies but others want to save horse racing in the state and some of the suggestions include internet gambling on races, opening New Jersey's version of Off Track Betting, selling off Monmouth (no one would buy the facility for just horse racing) and limiting racing at the Meadowlands to just a few days a year.
All of the solutions are flawed. If New Jersey does get out of the horse racing industry, the state will lose horse farms and that has a domino falling impact on all sorts of secondary industries from veterinarians to stable operators to people spending money in the community where the farms are located. That means a job and tax revenue loss. Because of casino gambling, Delaware was able to save horse farms that would surely had left if horse racing ended at the remaining tracks in the state. New York and Maryland are struggling with that problem although both states think that they can stem the tide of farms leaving with money from the "machines" as Yonkers Raceway owner Tim Rooney calls them.
The National Football League and other sports leagues would fight legalized sports gambling in Atlantic City although New Jersey lawmakers had the ability to legalize sports gambling in 1993 and passed on the opportunity.
Delaware does have legalized "parlay" National Football League action at the state's casinos.
Ironically, New Jersey got into the racetrack business because of the National Football League. In 1971 and 1972, state elected officials built the Meadowlands racetrack with the thought that the proceeds from the track would help pay down the debt at the new football facility that would eventually house the New York Giants. The football venue was completed in 1976. Meanwhile Leon Hess was becoming more and more unhappy with the terms of his lease at Shea Stadium as his Jets franchise played second fiddle to the New York Mets at the New York City-owned sports facility in Queens. Hess was eyeing New Jersey and his lease with the New York City ended in 1983.
Hess was a member of the Board of Directors of the Monmouth Park Jockey Club. By 1985, Hess had a deal for his Jets to play in the Meadowlands and New Jersey bought Monmouth Park from Hess and his fellow Jockey Club members for $45 million. The Hess-New Jersey negotiations for the football team move to New Jersey started in 1983 as did the Monmouth Park talks. The two negotiations were not linked.
At least not officially.
The state originally went after the Yankees in 1972 and thought a deal which about to be struck between Yankees owner CBS and a local New Jersey businessmen for about $13 million. New Jersey would have built a baseball park in the Meadowlands for the Yankees. In 1972, CBS Chairman William Paley told Yankees President Michael Burke to either sell the team or buy it himself. CBS could not put Yankees games on CBS' owned and operated WCBS-TV, Channel 2 in New York because of Federal Communication Commission rules. Back in 1972, that was where the real money on the team could have been made through TV advertising revenue and promotions. New Jersey officials felt that a deal to move the team to the state was imminent but Burke informed New Jersey interests that the team wasn't for sale near the end of 1972, A few days later, on January 3, 1973, Burke announced that a group led by George M. Steinbrenner III had purchased the club for $10 million (along with a $1.5 million tax credit).
The New York Yankees franchise remained in the Bronx.
New Jersey has to do something soon because of pressures from inside the state and external pressure has gambling money seeps into neighboring states. The longer politicians kick the can down the street, the harder it will be to solve New Jersey's horse racing and gambling problem.
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
Thursday, November 18, 2010
The Politics of the National Football League Potential Lockout
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/in-the-nfl-potential-lockout-all-roads-lead-to-washington
By Evan Weiner
November 18, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- Since the last time we visited the potential National Football League owners' lockout of the players next March, about 72 hours ago, it appears that are a number of people have become a bit anxious about the whole process becoming politicized. The NFL had some issues with the piece. Former players had their say and no one, it seems, wants this to head to Congress and the Oval Office.
Or do they?
One former National Football League player sent an e-mail criticizing this writer for suggesting that National Football League Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith should take some former players who are disabled from injuries that they suffered while working as football players in the NFL and bring them before Congressmen John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The suggestion is that Smith have the players testify and ask the GOP leaders to their faces why those two Congressmen and one Senator, along with the others who enjoy stellar house and senate health benefits because they are in Congress, should repeal the law that was passed in 2010 which will allow Americans with pre-existing conditions who cannot get insurance to buy health insurance should be overturned.
The former player wrote, "I take issue with the political spin that you put in your article. You are right, every player has pre-existing conditions as a result of playing in the NFL. It is up to the NFL to take care of their players, past and present. It is not up to the American taxpayer to pay for the care of the NFL players, past and present. It is obvious that the proposed health care plan that Obama passed will destroy our health care industry. I am hopeful that Mr. Cantor and Mr. Boehner will do everything in their power to get the health care plan repealed.
"The NFL owners have incredible revenue streams coming in, and the players who make this possible should be protected by the owners. Football is a huge industry, and there is a tremendous amount of money being generated by the sport. Perhaps the owners could take a part of the revenues that they generate through licensing, and apply them to a health care plan for all players past and present."
The 2010 health care plan isn't too far from the proposed Republican plan of the early 1990s which Robert Dole championed. A number of former NFL players cannot get health care because of pre-existing conditions and they are getting government assistance whether it is Social Security or Medicare despite not being the retirement age which last time anybody looked was funded by American citizens.
The NFL and the NFLPA tried to negotiate a deal to provide health care to about 2,500 out of 3,200 retired players but the NFLPA wanted all the retirees protected and rejected the NFL’s plan. The NFLPA wanted all the players protected and claimed a large group of former players would not be insured by TransAmerica because of pre-existing conditions.
That rejection brings the health care issue into the discussion and could be used as a reason to go before Congress, which under Boehner, Cantor and McConnell wants to roll back the 2010 legislation and there seems to be no GOP alternative.
The National Football League of today was created by Congress and two Presidential signatures. In 1961, two Democrats, Emanuel Cellar in the House and Estes Kefauver in the Senate crafted legislation that became known as the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy which allowed NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to take all 14 NFL teams and sell them as one entity to American television networks starting in 1962. Rozelle played off CBS and NBC and got substantial deals with CBS. After losing two TV battles to CBS in 1964, NBC chairman David Sarnoff decided to make the American Football League a real major league entity. He gave them a huge (for 1965) five year deal and football was flooded with money.
In 1966, the NFL and AFL agreed to merge but needed Congressional approval. Again Cellar was involved but two Louisiana Democrats, Russell Long in the Senate and Hale Boggs in the House literally traded their votes to Rozelle in exchange for an expansion team in New Orleans and the merger was approved. Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation which was on the back of an anti-inflation bill in October 1966 and within ten days, New Orleans had a team.
Additional federal legislation, specifically the 1984 Cable TV Act and the 1986 Tax Act, put more money in owners' pockets. That is why this will play out in Washington eventually.
The NFL-NFLPA dispute will start perhaps with a federal mediator, then the National Labor Relations Board, maybe Congress and maybe even the Oval Office. President Bill Clinton in 1994 summoned Major League Baseball owners and players to the White House in an attempt to settle the 1994-95 baseball strike.
He failed.
To that former player, here is the answer not from this writer to the column of 72 hours ago of "How DeMaurice Smith can wreak havoc on a NFL lockout" but from an Associated Press story of November 18, 2010 which is entitled "The Influence Game": NFL union seeks Congress help. A note to the AP writer, DeMaurice Smith runs an association not a union. Apparently according to the story the NFLPA has a lobbyist, which seeming comes as a shock to the AP, who has been working Capital Hill since the summer. The NFL too is working over Congress with a lobbyist and both the NFLPA's DeMaurice Smith and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell have visited the White House.
According to the piece, the NFL's political action group contributed $600,000 in campaign contributions.
Goodell, it should be noted is the son of former New York Senator Charles Goodell, who was appointed to the Senate seat after Robert Kennedy was murdered in June 1968 and is married to a former FOX News Channel anchor Jane Skinner, whose father Sam Skinner is a former White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush.
Smith was on the Obama Presidential transitional staff and is a tight friend of Attorney General Eric Holder.
The AP piece, which shows how out of touch the Washington media is with reality has a disclaimer that appears in the middle of the piece --- EDITOR'S NOTE -- An occasional look at how behind-the-scenes influence is exercised in Washington --- as if this is a news flash.
It seems health care for former players could become a major flash point in the battle between the owners and players. Right now the owners seem to have a plan that would cut the players take of the revenues from 59.6 percent of the revenue to 48.2 percent and cut players salaries by 18 percent. If there is no contract in place by March 3, 2011, the players --- a good many of them who have pre-existing conditions could be scrambling for health care.
The NFL plans to use health care as a bargaining tool to get an agreement. The league issued this statement -- "Regarding the funding of current player benefits if there is a work stoppage, here is what we have said: 'This is yet one more reason to get back to the bargaining table and get an agreement. But there is no question that a strike or lockout triggers rights under a federal law known as COBRA that allows employees to continue their existing health insurance coverage without interruption or change in terms -- either at their expense or their union’s expense. This means that no player or family member would experience any change in coverage for so much as a single day because of a work stoppage. The union surely knows this and there is no excuse suggesting otherwise.'”
In the public relations front, the league is assuring retired players that whatever happens with the CBA, they will get their benefits.
“I know that retired players and their families are watching the current round of bargaining between the NFL and players’ union with growing concern,” said NFL Alumni President and Executive Director George Martin in a letter dated September 7, 2010. “They want to make sure that their benefits will be secure and uninterrupted, no matter what happens in those negotiations. I have discussed this matter with Commissioner Goodell on several occasions, and he has always assured me that retired player benefits will be protected, first in the uncapped year, and then if the CBA its expires.
“I have seen the statements from NFLPA representatives that retirees will lose their benefits if the agreement expires. I am convinced that is not true, and have again asked Commissioner Goodell for his assurances on this point. He was unequivocal and told me again that he as Commissioner, and the owners as a group, are committed to protecting and funding current retired player benefit programs.
“In his letter to retired players, Martin said that he had received the following commitments from the NFL:
“First, no matter what the status of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the NFL clubs will continue to make all required contributions to the pension plan, will continue to pay in full all pension benefits earned by retired players, and will continue to accept requests from vested players to begin receiving benefits as provided for in the pension plan.
“Second, NFL clubs will continue to fund the basic and supplemental disability plans, and the 88 Plan, and will continue to accept and process new applications even after the Collective Bargaining Agreement expires. In addition, the league has pledged to work with NFL Alumni to develop new outreach programs to identify retired players in need of assistance and to getting those players the help they need.
“Third, retired players will continue to receive post-career medical benefits as provided in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, regardless of whether the agreement expires. Their medical benefits will continue on the same terms as today just as if the CBA were still in place.
That should come as good news to one player, an 11-year veteran who will continue to receive his $201.36 a month pension.
But former players don't seem to be too interested in helping DeMaurice Smith. "The NFLPA has been guilty of not helping the pre-1993 retired guys, and these are the guys who have medical problems from playing in the NFL. I don't believe that any of the guys will join DeMaurice Smith, and the NFLPA the way that you suggested because we have been discarded for many, many years by the NFLPA. The thought of using the discarded guys to help settle the CBA negotiations doesn`t sound good to me because of the way that we have been treated.
"During the historic trial that 2062 retired guys were awarded $28.1 million, Jeffrey Kessler, the lead attorney for the NFLPA built his defense around the retired guys being un-marketable, and worthless. He compared us to "dog food.'"
The high stakes battle is gearing up. Goodell and Smith are veteran Washington insiders. The battle is political and much more important than who makes it to "The Big Game" in February.
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
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/in-the-nfl-potential-lockout-all-roads-lead-to-washington
By Evan Weiner
November 18, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- Since the last time we visited the potential National Football League owners' lockout of the players next March, about 72 hours ago, it appears that are a number of people have become a bit anxious about the whole process becoming politicized. The NFL had some issues with the piece. Former players had their say and no one, it seems, wants this to head to Congress and the Oval Office.
Or do they?
One former National Football League player sent an e-mail criticizing this writer for suggesting that National Football League Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith should take some former players who are disabled from injuries that they suffered while working as football players in the NFL and bring them before Congressmen John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The suggestion is that Smith have the players testify and ask the GOP leaders to their faces why those two Congressmen and one Senator, along with the others who enjoy stellar house and senate health benefits because they are in Congress, should repeal the law that was passed in 2010 which will allow Americans with pre-existing conditions who cannot get insurance to buy health insurance should be overturned.
The former player wrote, "I take issue with the political spin that you put in your article. You are right, every player has pre-existing conditions as a result of playing in the NFL. It is up to the NFL to take care of their players, past and present. It is not up to the American taxpayer to pay for the care of the NFL players, past and present. It is obvious that the proposed health care plan that Obama passed will destroy our health care industry. I am hopeful that Mr. Cantor and Mr. Boehner will do everything in their power to get the health care plan repealed.
"The NFL owners have incredible revenue streams coming in, and the players who make this possible should be protected by the owners. Football is a huge industry, and there is a tremendous amount of money being generated by the sport. Perhaps the owners could take a part of the revenues that they generate through licensing, and apply them to a health care plan for all players past and present."
The 2010 health care plan isn't too far from the proposed Republican plan of the early 1990s which Robert Dole championed. A number of former NFL players cannot get health care because of pre-existing conditions and they are getting government assistance whether it is Social Security or Medicare despite not being the retirement age which last time anybody looked was funded by American citizens.
The NFL and the NFLPA tried to negotiate a deal to provide health care to about 2,500 out of 3,200 retired players but the NFLPA wanted all the retirees protected and rejected the NFL’s plan. The NFLPA wanted all the players protected and claimed a large group of former players would not be insured by TransAmerica because of pre-existing conditions.
That rejection brings the health care issue into the discussion and could be used as a reason to go before Congress, which under Boehner, Cantor and McConnell wants to roll back the 2010 legislation and there seems to be no GOP alternative.
The National Football League of today was created by Congress and two Presidential signatures. In 1961, two Democrats, Emanuel Cellar in the House and Estes Kefauver in the Senate crafted legislation that became known as the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy which allowed NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to take all 14 NFL teams and sell them as one entity to American television networks starting in 1962. Rozelle played off CBS and NBC and got substantial deals with CBS. After losing two TV battles to CBS in 1964, NBC chairman David Sarnoff decided to make the American Football League a real major league entity. He gave them a huge (for 1965) five year deal and football was flooded with money.
In 1966, the NFL and AFL agreed to merge but needed Congressional approval. Again Cellar was involved but two Louisiana Democrats, Russell Long in the Senate and Hale Boggs in the House literally traded their votes to Rozelle in exchange for an expansion team in New Orleans and the merger was approved. Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation which was on the back of an anti-inflation bill in October 1966 and within ten days, New Orleans had a team.
Additional federal legislation, specifically the 1984 Cable TV Act and the 1986 Tax Act, put more money in owners' pockets. That is why this will play out in Washington eventually.
The NFL-NFLPA dispute will start perhaps with a federal mediator, then the National Labor Relations Board, maybe Congress and maybe even the Oval Office. President Bill Clinton in 1994 summoned Major League Baseball owners and players to the White House in an attempt to settle the 1994-95 baseball strike.
He failed.
To that former player, here is the answer not from this writer to the column of 72 hours ago of "How DeMaurice Smith can wreak havoc on a NFL lockout" but from an Associated Press story of November 18, 2010 which is entitled "The Influence Game": NFL union seeks Congress help. A note to the AP writer, DeMaurice Smith runs an association not a union. Apparently according to the story the NFLPA has a lobbyist, which seeming comes as a shock to the AP, who has been working Capital Hill since the summer. The NFL too is working over Congress with a lobbyist and both the NFLPA's DeMaurice Smith and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell have visited the White House.
According to the piece, the NFL's political action group contributed $600,000 in campaign contributions.
Goodell, it should be noted is the son of former New York Senator Charles Goodell, who was appointed to the Senate seat after Robert Kennedy was murdered in June 1968 and is married to a former FOX News Channel anchor Jane Skinner, whose father Sam Skinner is a former White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush.
Smith was on the Obama Presidential transitional staff and is a tight friend of Attorney General Eric Holder.
The AP piece, which shows how out of touch the Washington media is with reality has a disclaimer that appears in the middle of the piece --- EDITOR'S NOTE -- An occasional look at how behind-the-scenes influence is exercised in Washington --- as if this is a news flash.
It seems health care for former players could become a major flash point in the battle between the owners and players. Right now the owners seem to have a plan that would cut the players take of the revenues from 59.6 percent of the revenue to 48.2 percent and cut players salaries by 18 percent. If there is no contract in place by March 3, 2011, the players --- a good many of them who have pre-existing conditions could be scrambling for health care.
The NFL plans to use health care as a bargaining tool to get an agreement. The league issued this statement -- "Regarding the funding of current player benefits if there is a work stoppage, here is what we have said: 'This is yet one more reason to get back to the bargaining table and get an agreement. But there is no question that a strike or lockout triggers rights under a federal law known as COBRA that allows employees to continue their existing health insurance coverage without interruption or change in terms -- either at their expense or their union’s expense. This means that no player or family member would experience any change in coverage for so much as a single day because of a work stoppage. The union surely knows this and there is no excuse suggesting otherwise.'”
In the public relations front, the league is assuring retired players that whatever happens with the CBA, they will get their benefits.
“I know that retired players and their families are watching the current round of bargaining between the NFL and players’ union with growing concern,” said NFL Alumni President and Executive Director George Martin in a letter dated September 7, 2010. “They want to make sure that their benefits will be secure and uninterrupted, no matter what happens in those negotiations. I have discussed this matter with Commissioner Goodell on several occasions, and he has always assured me that retired player benefits will be protected, first in the uncapped year, and then if the CBA its expires.
“I have seen the statements from NFLPA representatives that retirees will lose their benefits if the agreement expires. I am convinced that is not true, and have again asked Commissioner Goodell for his assurances on this point. He was unequivocal and told me again that he as Commissioner, and the owners as a group, are committed to protecting and funding current retired player benefit programs.
“In his letter to retired players, Martin said that he had received the following commitments from the NFL:
“First, no matter what the status of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the NFL clubs will continue to make all required contributions to the pension plan, will continue to pay in full all pension benefits earned by retired players, and will continue to accept requests from vested players to begin receiving benefits as provided for in the pension plan.
“Second, NFL clubs will continue to fund the basic and supplemental disability plans, and the 88 Plan, and will continue to accept and process new applications even after the Collective Bargaining Agreement expires. In addition, the league has pledged to work with NFL Alumni to develop new outreach programs to identify retired players in need of assistance and to getting those players the help they need.
“Third, retired players will continue to receive post-career medical benefits as provided in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, regardless of whether the agreement expires. Their medical benefits will continue on the same terms as today just as if the CBA were still in place.
That should come as good news to one player, an 11-year veteran who will continue to receive his $201.36 a month pension.
But former players don't seem to be too interested in helping DeMaurice Smith. "The NFLPA has been guilty of not helping the pre-1993 retired guys, and these are the guys who have medical problems from playing in the NFL. I don't believe that any of the guys will join DeMaurice Smith, and the NFLPA the way that you suggested because we have been discarded for many, many years by the NFLPA. The thought of using the discarded guys to help settle the CBA negotiations doesn`t sound good to me because of the way that we have been treated.
"During the historic trial that 2062 retired guys were awarded $28.1 million, Jeffrey Kessler, the lead attorney for the NFLPA built his defense around the retired guys being un-marketable, and worthless. He compared us to "dog food.'"
The high stakes battle is gearing up. Goodell and Smith are veteran Washington insiders. The battle is political and much more important than who makes it to "The Big Game" in February.
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
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Issa, Brown and California’s Stadium Problem
By Evan Weiner
November 10, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/issa-brown-and-califronia-s-stadium-problem
(New York, N. Y.) --Sometime in January, perhaps Darrell Issa will find time in his busy schedule as a Congressman in Washington and start a recall campaign of the new California Governor Jerry Brown. Congressman Issa, a Republican from Southern California, probably will head up the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform -- a fitting committee for someone who has had a couple of brushes with the law in the past -- and his plans are to call members of the Obama Administration to discuss all possible areas of corruption during the first two years of the Obama presidency.
Issa was one of the architects of the 2003 recall of California Governor Gray Davis. He contributed $1.6 million to get enough names on a petition that ultimately forced the recall of Davis and forced an election. The former body builder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger won a special election in 2003 and California voters returned Schwarzenegger to Sacramento in 2006.
The Schwarzenegger years didn't exactly turn out well and the state is still grappling with massive debt. Jerry Brown now has to deal with California fiscal problems. Meanwhile Issa will probably go about calling people before his committee, wasting time and money in the process because that is what politicians do so well in Washington.
Brown's priority will be to get California back to fiscal solvency and more than likely that means that Ed Roski and AEG will not get that much help from the state in their attempts to build new football facilities in the City of Industry and Los Angeles. Brown's record as California governor from 1976 through 1982 is empty when it comes to the stadium game although Los Angeles Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom took his team south to Anaheim and Raiders owner Al Davis also went south from Oakland to Los Angeles. As Oakland mayor between 1999 and 2007, Brown did little to help of two Oakland A's ownership groups who were looking for a publicly funded baseball park.
Brown was governor when Los Angeles landed the 1984 Summer Olympics but that was more Peter Ueberroth's baby and Ueberroth did not depend on the state to build facilities for the Games although the Coliseum did get a facelift.
Schwarzenegger was in favor of building a Los Angeles football stadium and had hoped to attract two franchises in that facility.
In sports, the National Football League has a California problem. The football facilities in San Francisco, Oakland and Sand Diego need to be replaced. The league has not had a team in the Los Angeles area since 1994. Georgia Frontiere moved her Anaheim-based Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis and Raiders owner Al Davis left the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for Oakland.
Davis might have remained in Los Angeles had the NFL not changed the terms of a deal that would have seen Davis moved his team from the Coliseum to a stadium in the parking lot of the Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood. The details of the broken down agreement have come out over the past 15 years although Los Angeles reporters never really report how the deal fell apart.
Davis and the NFL were going to put up money to erect the facility. Davis was promised that five Super Bowls would be played in the building over a 10 year period to help pay down the debt and his team was going to be the only franchise in the facility which meant that Davis would have been able to get lucrative revenue streams like luxury boxes and club seat sales. But the NFL started changing the details of the contract. The promise of five Super Bowls in the facility was gone; the NFL offered three in a ten year period, then one. Davis also found out that his team would share the facility with another NFL team one year after the stadium opened and while he would sell the luxury boxes and club seats, he would have to start sharing revenues with another franchise.
The proposed deal became untenable and Davis took an offer from Oakland and left Los Angeles in the spring of 1995.
The National Football League gave Los Angeles a conditional expansion franchise in 1999 but the state didn't have the money to build a facility on a toxic waste site in Carson and lost an opportunity to secure the team. Houston, whose voters approved a referendum to build a stadium after Bud Adams took his Houston Oilers to Nashville, ended up with the franchise.
Phil Anschutz's AEG eventually built a soccer stadium in the Carson area.
While Los Angeles business people like Roski and the Anschutz Entertainment Group scramble to get financing for a facility, the state of California is cutting back on sports. The University of California, Berkeley will drop five of its intercollegiate sports programs, baseball, men's and women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse and rugby at the end of the 2011 academic year with the hope of saving $4 million annually. Cal's athletic program has been losing more than $10 million annually over the past few years. Sports losses though a just part of California's large fiscal problems.
Roski is hoping to build his $ 800 million stadium along with a retail facility with private money. The project appears to be dormant at the moment. Roski's group claims that seven NFL franchises have been targeted as potential tenants in his stadium including Zygi Wilf's Minnesota Vikings, Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills, Wayne Weaver's Jacksonville Jaguars, the York family's San Francisco 49ers, Stan Kroenke's St. Louis Rams, the Spanos family’s San Diego Chargers and Davis' Oakland Raiders. Roski's $800 million price tag may be just a dream considering the cost of the new stadiums in East Rutherford, New Jersey and Arlington, Texas, the New Meadowlands Stadium and Cowboys Stadium cost well over a billion dollars.
The Spanos family has been seeking a new facility in San Diego since 2000 and could leave San Diego at any moment if someone had a new stadium ready somewhere else. That has not happened. Wilf's lease in Minnesota ends after 2011. Wilson's lease in Orchard Park expires in 2012. Jacksonville's business community has offered the Jaguars franchise lukewarm support partially because the Jacksonville business community is not very big. Davis' Oakland lease ends in 2013. Kroenke's St. Louis lease ends in 2014. The York family has an agreement to move to Santa Clara but no one knows when a stadium will be built there. Denise York's brother Eddie DeBartolo had an agreement to build a new San Francisco stadium in 1997 when he ran the 49ers. The facility was never built. DeBartolo lost control of the franchise and the York family is running things. The franchise remains in Candlestick Park.
AEG wants to build a football stadium near the arena-entertainment-hotel complex that the company has built in downtown Los Angeles.
Schwarzenegger, in October 2009, signed an environmental exemption bill that waived an environment study of the project. One of California's major obstacles in building stadiums has been environmental studies. One question that should be explored though, can California justify sports spending when the California education system is scaling back?
While business titans in the Los Angeles areas figure out a way to build an NFL facility, up the 101 freeway in Santa Clara is supposed to build a private-publicly funded stadium in that city after voters last June approved by referendum. But the project seemingly has been halted until NFL owners and the National Football League Players Association sign off on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Santa Clara has committed $444 million dollars to the stadium, the York family is supposed to provide the rest of the funding. Here is a question that should be asked. Do the Yorks have that money which might be more than $500 million to get the construction started?
Any delays in stadium building will hike the construction cost.
The NFL wants stadiums built in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Oakland. The National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern allegedly is washing his hands of trying to build a new basketball arena in Sacramento for the Maloof brothers' Kings franchise after striking out repeated in the Sacramento arena game since 2006. Stern has put contraction on the table as a negotiating point in the NBA owners-players association on-going collective bargaining agreement talks. Stern's ploy gets the players attention as the association doesn't want to lose jobs and also puts cities like Sacramento on notice that they better play ball with him or the league will take the franchise away without a new arena.
Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff has struck out in his attempts to get a new baseball stadium built in Oakland (Brown apparently didn't pursue that with any vigor while he was Oakland's mayor) and down the I-880 in Fremont. There may be a deal in the works for Wolff to move his A's to San Jose but Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's crack committee on the A's relocation to San Jose and how that might impact the San Francisco Giants franchise has still not reporting the results of the study.
San Francisco ownership may have territorial rights to San Jose despite the fact that two referendums to build stadiums in the South Bay failed and the distance between San Jose and San Francisco is considerably larger than the distance between the two ball parks in San Francisco and Oakland. The two baseball teams share the over-the-air and cable TV market where big money is made. Wolff is getting a San Jose stadium for his Major League Soccer franchise in the city.
Oakland is looking into building a football stadium that would host Davis' Raiders and perhaps the York family's 49ers if the Santa Clara option fails.
Issa may be too busy to start a Jerry Brown recall drive in January considering how many investigations he wants to start on the Hill. Brown may have other more important items on his desk than supporting a Los Angeles area stadium and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell may not care about getting stadiums built until the league gets an agreement with the players on a new collective bargaining deal and that may not be easy. The players association might disband and head to the National Labor Relations Board, a group that is friendlier to workers with a Democrat sitting in the White House, and that is a messy process that could take a while to settle down.
All of this means that it might be another five to eight years before the National Football League plays another game in Los Angeles or stadiums are built in Santa Clara or Oakland or San Diego. The California problem is not going away anytime soon.
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
November 10, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/issa-brown-and-califronia-s-stadium-problem
(New York, N. Y.) --Sometime in January, perhaps Darrell Issa will find time in his busy schedule as a Congressman in Washington and start a recall campaign of the new California Governor Jerry Brown. Congressman Issa, a Republican from Southern California, probably will head up the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform -- a fitting committee for someone who has had a couple of brushes with the law in the past -- and his plans are to call members of the Obama Administration to discuss all possible areas of corruption during the first two years of the Obama presidency.
Issa was one of the architects of the 2003 recall of California Governor Gray Davis. He contributed $1.6 million to get enough names on a petition that ultimately forced the recall of Davis and forced an election. The former body builder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger won a special election in 2003 and California voters returned Schwarzenegger to Sacramento in 2006.
The Schwarzenegger years didn't exactly turn out well and the state is still grappling with massive debt. Jerry Brown now has to deal with California fiscal problems. Meanwhile Issa will probably go about calling people before his committee, wasting time and money in the process because that is what politicians do so well in Washington.
Brown's priority will be to get California back to fiscal solvency and more than likely that means that Ed Roski and AEG will not get that much help from the state in their attempts to build new football facilities in the City of Industry and Los Angeles. Brown's record as California governor from 1976 through 1982 is empty when it comes to the stadium game although Los Angeles Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom took his team south to Anaheim and Raiders owner Al Davis also went south from Oakland to Los Angeles. As Oakland mayor between 1999 and 2007, Brown did little to help of two Oakland A's ownership groups who were looking for a publicly funded baseball park.
Brown was governor when Los Angeles landed the 1984 Summer Olympics but that was more Peter Ueberroth's baby and Ueberroth did not depend on the state to build facilities for the Games although the Coliseum did get a facelift.
Schwarzenegger was in favor of building a Los Angeles football stadium and had hoped to attract two franchises in that facility.
In sports, the National Football League has a California problem. The football facilities in San Francisco, Oakland and Sand Diego need to be replaced. The league has not had a team in the Los Angeles area since 1994. Georgia Frontiere moved her Anaheim-based Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis and Raiders owner Al Davis left the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for Oakland.
Davis might have remained in Los Angeles had the NFL not changed the terms of a deal that would have seen Davis moved his team from the Coliseum to a stadium in the parking lot of the Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood. The details of the broken down agreement have come out over the past 15 years although Los Angeles reporters never really report how the deal fell apart.
Davis and the NFL were going to put up money to erect the facility. Davis was promised that five Super Bowls would be played in the building over a 10 year period to help pay down the debt and his team was going to be the only franchise in the facility which meant that Davis would have been able to get lucrative revenue streams like luxury boxes and club seat sales. But the NFL started changing the details of the contract. The promise of five Super Bowls in the facility was gone; the NFL offered three in a ten year period, then one. Davis also found out that his team would share the facility with another NFL team one year after the stadium opened and while he would sell the luxury boxes and club seats, he would have to start sharing revenues with another franchise.
The proposed deal became untenable and Davis took an offer from Oakland and left Los Angeles in the spring of 1995.
The National Football League gave Los Angeles a conditional expansion franchise in 1999 but the state didn't have the money to build a facility on a toxic waste site in Carson and lost an opportunity to secure the team. Houston, whose voters approved a referendum to build a stadium after Bud Adams took his Houston Oilers to Nashville, ended up with the franchise.
Phil Anschutz's AEG eventually built a soccer stadium in the Carson area.
While Los Angeles business people like Roski and the Anschutz Entertainment Group scramble to get financing for a facility, the state of California is cutting back on sports. The University of California, Berkeley will drop five of its intercollegiate sports programs, baseball, men's and women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse and rugby at the end of the 2011 academic year with the hope of saving $4 million annually. Cal's athletic program has been losing more than $10 million annually over the past few years. Sports losses though a just part of California's large fiscal problems.
Roski is hoping to build his $ 800 million stadium along with a retail facility with private money. The project appears to be dormant at the moment. Roski's group claims that seven NFL franchises have been targeted as potential tenants in his stadium including Zygi Wilf's Minnesota Vikings, Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills, Wayne Weaver's Jacksonville Jaguars, the York family's San Francisco 49ers, Stan Kroenke's St. Louis Rams, the Spanos family’s San Diego Chargers and Davis' Oakland Raiders. Roski's $800 million price tag may be just a dream considering the cost of the new stadiums in East Rutherford, New Jersey and Arlington, Texas, the New Meadowlands Stadium and Cowboys Stadium cost well over a billion dollars.
The Spanos family has been seeking a new facility in San Diego since 2000 and could leave San Diego at any moment if someone had a new stadium ready somewhere else. That has not happened. Wilf's lease in Minnesota ends after 2011. Wilson's lease in Orchard Park expires in 2012. Jacksonville's business community has offered the Jaguars franchise lukewarm support partially because the Jacksonville business community is not very big. Davis' Oakland lease ends in 2013. Kroenke's St. Louis lease ends in 2014. The York family has an agreement to move to Santa Clara but no one knows when a stadium will be built there. Denise York's brother Eddie DeBartolo had an agreement to build a new San Francisco stadium in 1997 when he ran the 49ers. The facility was never built. DeBartolo lost control of the franchise and the York family is running things. The franchise remains in Candlestick Park.
AEG wants to build a football stadium near the arena-entertainment-hotel complex that the company has built in downtown Los Angeles.
Schwarzenegger, in October 2009, signed an environmental exemption bill that waived an environment study of the project. One of California's major obstacles in building stadiums has been environmental studies. One question that should be explored though, can California justify sports spending when the California education system is scaling back?
While business titans in the Los Angeles areas figure out a way to build an NFL facility, up the 101 freeway in Santa Clara is supposed to build a private-publicly funded stadium in that city after voters last June approved by referendum. But the project seemingly has been halted until NFL owners and the National Football League Players Association sign off on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Santa Clara has committed $444 million dollars to the stadium, the York family is supposed to provide the rest of the funding. Here is a question that should be asked. Do the Yorks have that money which might be more than $500 million to get the construction started?
Any delays in stadium building will hike the construction cost.
The NFL wants stadiums built in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Oakland. The National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern allegedly is washing his hands of trying to build a new basketball arena in Sacramento for the Maloof brothers' Kings franchise after striking out repeated in the Sacramento arena game since 2006. Stern has put contraction on the table as a negotiating point in the NBA owners-players association on-going collective bargaining agreement talks. Stern's ploy gets the players attention as the association doesn't want to lose jobs and also puts cities like Sacramento on notice that they better play ball with him or the league will take the franchise away without a new arena.
Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff has struck out in his attempts to get a new baseball stadium built in Oakland (Brown apparently didn't pursue that with any vigor while he was Oakland's mayor) and down the I-880 in Fremont. There may be a deal in the works for Wolff to move his A's to San Jose but Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's crack committee on the A's relocation to San Jose and how that might impact the San Francisco Giants franchise has still not reporting the results of the study.
San Francisco ownership may have territorial rights to San Jose despite the fact that two referendums to build stadiums in the South Bay failed and the distance between San Jose and San Francisco is considerably larger than the distance between the two ball parks in San Francisco and Oakland. The two baseball teams share the over-the-air and cable TV market where big money is made. Wolff is getting a San Jose stadium for his Major League Soccer franchise in the city.
Oakland is looking into building a football stadium that would host Davis' Raiders and perhaps the York family's 49ers if the Santa Clara option fails.
Issa may be too busy to start a Jerry Brown recall drive in January considering how many investigations he wants to start on the Hill. Brown may have other more important items on his desk than supporting a Los Angeles area stadium and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell may not care about getting stadiums built until the league gets an agreement with the players on a new collective bargaining deal and that may not be easy. The players association might disband and head to the National Labor Relations Board, a group that is friendlier to workers with a Democrat sitting in the White House, and that is a messy process that could take a while to settle down.
All of this means that it might be another five to eight years before the National Football League plays another game in Los Angeles or stadiums are built in Santa Clara or Oakland or San Diego. The California problem is not going away anytime soon.
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
Friday, October 22, 2010
NFL get tough policy on illegal hits isn’t enough
FRIDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2010 12:51
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-get-tough-policy-on-illegal-hits-isnt-enough
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Weekend 7 in the National Football League is supposed to have a different look. The league has decided that the game has become too dangerous and will hand out both suspensions and fines to players who deliver what league officials think are illegal hits to the head and neck.
While some players including Pittsburgh's James Harrison (who received a $75,000 fine for his hit on Cleveland's Mohamed Massaguoi last Sunday), are unhappy with the get tough policy (Harrison threatened to retire), Michael Kaplen could not be happier with the NFL's decision although he doesn't think the NFL's sudden change of heart on big hits goes far enough.
Just who is Michael Kaplen? He is the chair of the New York State Traumatic Brain Injury Services Coordinating Council, an entity created by the New York State legislature and charged with the responsibility of making proposals and recommendations regarding traumatic brain injury to the New York State Commissioner of Health. The way Kaplen sees it, the NFL must take the lead in making football a safer game. He is hoping that there will be a successful trickledown effect on football to the people who need to kids who are playing the game in the Pop Warner leagues across the country and high school players who watch the glorification of violent hits during football games and on television sports packages either on SportsCenter on ESPN or other regional cable TV sports shows or over-the-air newscasts and even in video games.
"I have carefully followed the conduct of the NFL in its approach to concussions because I believe that school-aged athletes, school coaches and trainers, as well as parents, look to professional football teams and players for proper guidance when dealing with this silent epidemic," said Kaplen, a Past President, Brain Injury Association of New York State. "I have become increasingly frustrated with the league because although they now seem to publically be espousing correct information about concussions, the message still has not seemed to register within the sporting community. Current players are not accurately reporting their conditions for fear of professional repercussions, team trainers and coaches are ignoring obvious head injuries and are exposing players to needless further injury by an inappropriate return to play protocol, and retired players who are entitled to brain injury disability benefits are still being denied these benefits. All of this is due to the fact that although they appear to be taking this seriously, their actions belie their rhetoric."
Kaplen was at a sports fundraiser just after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced earlier this week that the league which going to suspend players for illegal hits. Kaplen and Goodell exchanged pleasantries and business cards. Kaplen would like to address the hits issue with Goodell. Also at the function was Sylvia Mackey, the wife of the Hall of Fame tight end John Mackey who is not doing well because of head injuries. The league and the National Football League Players Association almost out of embarrassment set up the 88 Plan (Mackey's number was 88) which provides retired players with up to $88,000 per year for medical and custodial care resulting from dementia, including Alzheimer's. Initially neither the league nor the players association wanted anything to do with discarded players with head injuries and refused to pay benefits because their expert doctors including Dr. Ira Casson believed that there was not enough evidence to prove a link between concussions and various ailments such as Alzheimer's disease, dementia and depression.
Dr. Casson resigned as the co-chair of the NFL committee on mild traumatic brain injury in November 2009.
The league and the players association are still acting rather indifferently about the life style of former players who are ailing and are in some cases disabled. The two entities have been claiming that head injuries suffered during games really don't have anything to do with later life problems and Congress has hauled both NFL and players association officials before them to discuss the problem.
Not much has happened other than a tongue lashing. Former players with no medical benefits are living off of government assistance to get them through life. Medical benefits end five years after a player's career is done.
The National Football League Players Association (a group that was privately criticized by other players associations for their approach) has always fought for salaries and never has looked at the long term quality of life for players who retire. It has always been about getting the most money for the players during collective bargaining negotiations under Ed Garvey and the late Gene Upshaw. It seems that DeMaurice Smith, despite a few words tossed to the former players that the players association will fight for them, is following the same path as his predecessors as Executive Director of the association, Garvey and Upshaw.
"I want from the NFL is a no nonsense rule," said Kaplen. "(A player) engages in death blows should be suspended for the rest of the season.
"The NFL for years has been compliant in selling violence and they are a part of the problem. They are content to sell violence and violence is not cool. My concern is not with the NFL but with Pop Warner and high school players. They emulate what they see. You start changing the attitude with the NFL and work your way down. The NFL players don't get it. The focus will be on children that (violence) is not going to be cool. This is football, they don't need the death blows, helmet to helmet is not part of football.
"This needs to be filtered down and there needs to be an educational campaign, Concussions are serious and brain injuries impact player's wives and children. There needs to be more than putting up posters in locker rooms."
The present players have been warned but the NFL is not taking care of former players who have had life altering head injuries according to Kaplen. The players aren't taking warnings too seriously either and that continues even after Goodell's pronouncement judged by the statements this week of players like Harrison, Chicago's Brian Urlacher, Miami's Channing Crowder and former Redskins and Broncos offensive lineman Mark Schlereth
"Despite league admonitions and posters, the reality is that a player who is experiencing the signs and symptoms of a concussion is reluctant to accurately report his condition out of genuine fear that this will lead to his termination from the team and the cancelling of his contract with a resultant loss of future income. Players may have a brain injury, but they are not ignorant. There is a real disincentive for a player knowing that that the consequence of reporting his symptoms may be the loss of all future benefits, to be forthright and report any symptoms.
"Players who are cut from team rosters because of a traumatic brain injury must still receive their full contract benefits. This new provision must be included in all future NFL contracts and must be enforced by the players association in upcoming contract negotiations," he explained.
Players who sacrifice their health for the financial benefit of team owners need to know that they will receive adequate and proper compensation for their brain injuries. We have moved beyond gladiator mentality of discarding injured warriors. Players with a brain injury need to receive proper benefits and set the right example for youth in all sports."
Kaplen has seen the medical records of some former players and thinks the league and the players have been wrongfully turned down after applying for disability. But that is not Kaplen's battle to fight. He really cannot do much for former NFL players but he and his colleagues on the New York State Traumatic Brain Injury Services Coordinating Council have given the New York State Commissioner of Health Dr. Richard F. Daines some recommendations for high school athletes that they hope will be adopted. The council wants baseline testing for all athletes and they want the testing to be paid by medical insurers and health care providers. They want to make sure any problems are caught before severe damage is inflicted.
The New York Health Commissioner has not made a ruling. Football is a violent and dangerous game. President Theodore Roosevelt ordered a cleanup of the game in 1905 and used the bully pulpit of the White House to pressure the Presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to change college football rules after the deaths of 18 players during college games in 1905. The American Football Rules Committee changed the culture of football overnight with rule changes with included the banning of mass formations and gang tackling, increasing the distance for a first down from five to ten yards and the introduction of the forward pass. Barack Obama hasn't weighed in on the head injuries in football although he has said he wants to see a college football championship game. Perhaps an Oval Office meeting is in the cards for all stakeholders in football including owners, players, college presidents, chancellors, provosts, and high school administrators to discuss the dangers of football and ways to clean it up.
James Harrison threatened to retire, Crowder has a helmet and plans to use it as part of his arsenal as a defender. Urlacher is worried that the NFL will become the National Flag Football League. That culture needs to be changed.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and a speaker on "The Business and Politics of Sports." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
FRIDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2010 12:51
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-get-tough-policy-on-illegal-hits-isnt-enough
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Weekend 7 in the National Football League is supposed to have a different look. The league has decided that the game has become too dangerous and will hand out both suspensions and fines to players who deliver what league officials think are illegal hits to the head and neck.
While some players including Pittsburgh's James Harrison (who received a $75,000 fine for his hit on Cleveland's Mohamed Massaguoi last Sunday), are unhappy with the get tough policy (Harrison threatened to retire), Michael Kaplen could not be happier with the NFL's decision although he doesn't think the NFL's sudden change of heart on big hits goes far enough.
Just who is Michael Kaplen? He is the chair of the New York State Traumatic Brain Injury Services Coordinating Council, an entity created by the New York State legislature and charged with the responsibility of making proposals and recommendations regarding traumatic brain injury to the New York State Commissioner of Health. The way Kaplen sees it, the NFL must take the lead in making football a safer game. He is hoping that there will be a successful trickledown effect on football to the people who need to kids who are playing the game in the Pop Warner leagues across the country and high school players who watch the glorification of violent hits during football games and on television sports packages either on SportsCenter on ESPN or other regional cable TV sports shows or over-the-air newscasts and even in video games.
"I have carefully followed the conduct of the NFL in its approach to concussions because I believe that school-aged athletes, school coaches and trainers, as well as parents, look to professional football teams and players for proper guidance when dealing with this silent epidemic," said Kaplen, a Past President, Brain Injury Association of New York State. "I have become increasingly frustrated with the league because although they now seem to publically be espousing correct information about concussions, the message still has not seemed to register within the sporting community. Current players are not accurately reporting their conditions for fear of professional repercussions, team trainers and coaches are ignoring obvious head injuries and are exposing players to needless further injury by an inappropriate return to play protocol, and retired players who are entitled to brain injury disability benefits are still being denied these benefits. All of this is due to the fact that although they appear to be taking this seriously, their actions belie their rhetoric."
Kaplen was at a sports fundraiser just after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced earlier this week that the league which going to suspend players for illegal hits. Kaplen and Goodell exchanged pleasantries and business cards. Kaplen would like to address the hits issue with Goodell. Also at the function was Sylvia Mackey, the wife of the Hall of Fame tight end John Mackey who is not doing well because of head injuries. The league and the National Football League Players Association almost out of embarrassment set up the 88 Plan (Mackey's number was 88) which provides retired players with up to $88,000 per year for medical and custodial care resulting from dementia, including Alzheimer's. Initially neither the league nor the players association wanted anything to do with discarded players with head injuries and refused to pay benefits because their expert doctors including Dr. Ira Casson believed that there was not enough evidence to prove a link between concussions and various ailments such as Alzheimer's disease, dementia and depression.
Dr. Casson resigned as the co-chair of the NFL committee on mild traumatic brain injury in November 2009.
The league and the players association are still acting rather indifferently about the life style of former players who are ailing and are in some cases disabled. The two entities have been claiming that head injuries suffered during games really don't have anything to do with later life problems and Congress has hauled both NFL and players association officials before them to discuss the problem.
Not much has happened other than a tongue lashing. Former players with no medical benefits are living off of government assistance to get them through life. Medical benefits end five years after a player's career is done.
The National Football League Players Association (a group that was privately criticized by other players associations for their approach) has always fought for salaries and never has looked at the long term quality of life for players who retire. It has always been about getting the most money for the players during collective bargaining negotiations under Ed Garvey and the late Gene Upshaw. It seems that DeMaurice Smith, despite a few words tossed to the former players that the players association will fight for them, is following the same path as his predecessors as Executive Director of the association, Garvey and Upshaw.
"I want from the NFL is a no nonsense rule," said Kaplen. "(A player) engages in death blows should be suspended for the rest of the season.
"The NFL for years has been compliant in selling violence and they are a part of the problem. They are content to sell violence and violence is not cool. My concern is not with the NFL but with Pop Warner and high school players. They emulate what they see. You start changing the attitude with the NFL and work your way down. The NFL players don't get it. The focus will be on children that (violence) is not going to be cool. This is football, they don't need the death blows, helmet to helmet is not part of football.
"This needs to be filtered down and there needs to be an educational campaign, Concussions are serious and brain injuries impact player's wives and children. There needs to be more than putting up posters in locker rooms."
The present players have been warned but the NFL is not taking care of former players who have had life altering head injuries according to Kaplen. The players aren't taking warnings too seriously either and that continues even after Goodell's pronouncement judged by the statements this week of players like Harrison, Chicago's Brian Urlacher, Miami's Channing Crowder and former Redskins and Broncos offensive lineman Mark Schlereth
"Despite league admonitions and posters, the reality is that a player who is experiencing the signs and symptoms of a concussion is reluctant to accurately report his condition out of genuine fear that this will lead to his termination from the team and the cancelling of his contract with a resultant loss of future income. Players may have a brain injury, but they are not ignorant. There is a real disincentive for a player knowing that that the consequence of reporting his symptoms may be the loss of all future benefits, to be forthright and report any symptoms.
"Players who are cut from team rosters because of a traumatic brain injury must still receive their full contract benefits. This new provision must be included in all future NFL contracts and must be enforced by the players association in upcoming contract negotiations," he explained.
Players who sacrifice their health for the financial benefit of team owners need to know that they will receive adequate and proper compensation for their brain injuries. We have moved beyond gladiator mentality of discarding injured warriors. Players with a brain injury need to receive proper benefits and set the right example for youth in all sports."
Kaplen has seen the medical records of some former players and thinks the league and the players have been wrongfully turned down after applying for disability. But that is not Kaplen's battle to fight. He really cannot do much for former NFL players but he and his colleagues on the New York State Traumatic Brain Injury Services Coordinating Council have given the New York State Commissioner of Health Dr. Richard F. Daines some recommendations for high school athletes that they hope will be adopted. The council wants baseline testing for all athletes and they want the testing to be paid by medical insurers and health care providers. They want to make sure any problems are caught before severe damage is inflicted.
The New York Health Commissioner has not made a ruling. Football is a violent and dangerous game. President Theodore Roosevelt ordered a cleanup of the game in 1905 and used the bully pulpit of the White House to pressure the Presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to change college football rules after the deaths of 18 players during college games in 1905. The American Football Rules Committee changed the culture of football overnight with rule changes with included the banning of mass formations and gang tackling, increasing the distance for a first down from five to ten yards and the introduction of the forward pass. Barack Obama hasn't weighed in on the head injuries in football although he has said he wants to see a college football championship game. Perhaps an Oval Office meeting is in the cards for all stakeholders in football including owners, players, college presidents, chancellors, provosts, and high school administrators to discuss the dangers of football and ways to clean it up.
James Harrison threatened to retire, Crowder has a helmet and plans to use it as part of his arsenal as a defender. Urlacher is worried that the NFL will become the National Flag Football League. That culture needs to be changed.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and a speaker on "The Business and Politics of Sports." 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
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
NFL’s concussion warning poster a small step for football
NFL’s concussion warning poster a small step for football
TUESDAY, 03 AUGUST 2010 15:47
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfls-concussion-warning-poster-a-small-step-for-football
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
When Brent Boyd reported to the Minnesota Vikings training camp in 1980 after being selected in the third round of that year's draft, the last thing on his mind was testifying before a Congressional panel about the plight of former National Football League players who suffered head injuries doing their jobs as professional football players. Boyd was a guard and like a lot of rookies, he was eager to make a favorable impression of Vikings coach Bud Grant.
Twenty-seven Septembers later in 2007, Boyd was telling members of the United States Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that he suffered brain damage from concussions, and how a disability review board rejected the opinion of two doctors who said his health problems were caused by football and sided with a third doctor who didn't agree with the other two. Boyd testified that the NFL and NFLPA were battling links between long-term health problems and concussions in the same way tobacco companies once fought links between cancer and cigarettes.
Nearly three years later, a good number of retired players are frustrated and wondering whatever happened to NFL provided healthcare after they left the NFL and why the public — both football and non-football fans — is paying their healthcare.
Boyd is still battling for NFL — not public — health benefits.
Boyd has been one of the most vocal critics of the National Football League and the National Football League Players Association. He remembered the game that would ultimately change his life. It was the final pre-season game of the 1980 season, Boyd's Vikings took on the Miami Dolphins at the old Orange Bowl. Boyd was knocked out on a play and lost sight in his right eye. He was on the sidelines telling his coach that he could see out of his right eye, the coach said can you see out of your left eye, Boyd said yes and went back into the game.
He had his bell rung. It wasn't a concussion or anything serious, he was wobbly, dizzy and couldn't see out of his right eye but as soon as all of that went away, he would be fine. It was like hitting your funny bone. Boyd was a rookie hoping to make the team and would do anything not to be cut including staying in the game. It was the turning point of Boyd's life. He made the team but his health was severely compromised. It was the first of dozens or maybe even hundreds of concussions he suffered. The injury would eventually cost him his career, a possibility of going to law school, his marriage, his post career jobs and his house. It was not until 1989 he said that he found out that the constant dizziness and fatigue were caused by the head injuries.
Boyd was out of football by 1987 at the age of 30. "Guys who retire in their 20s and 30s have a regular life ahead of them. Careers, family, you have to pay mortgages. It took away my mind, my potential dreams and goals," he said. But Boyd because of the multiple concussions could not have that and became the "father of the new movement on concussions" instead.
Out of that Boyd founded "Dignity After Football" which is a group that is fighting for the "decent benefits and dignity" for former American and National Football League players who performed in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s before the explosion of salaries in the game. Boyd wants to get the message out to the people who fund the game, TV partners, marketing partners, the people who buy luxury boxes, club suites, park in valet parking and use in-stadium restaurants and buy merchandise along with just everyday football fans. The group that includes Roman Gabriel, Joe Kapp and Ed White wants people to know that "former players live out their lives above the poverty lines and did not know how playing on Astroturf, which was developed by Monsanto, (or polyturf) would impact their bodies and the players were never told about the dangers of 'getting your bell rung' which was a concussion with serious long term effects."
The National Football League has, at least, publicly posted a warning to players which will be posted in NFL locker rooms that comes complete with a warning which seems similar to the little blurbs on cigarette packs that say smoking can be harmful. The NFL's poster includes a warning — that concussions "can change your life and your family's life forever." The warning has slogans such as "Let's Take Brain Injuries Out of Play" and has information about concussions such as facts, symptoms, and poses questions such as "Why Should I Report My Symptoms" and "What Should I Do If I Think I've Had a Concussion."
The NFL seems to be willing to acknowledge there is a problem after years of denial but for former players like Boyd, the operative word here is seems. There is little movement to help the older players like the 53-year old Boyd who rely on government programs such as Social Security and Medicare for their health care.
"There is no health care," said Boyd. (The injuries) drains bank accounts, forces divorces. We (as football players) went in with the understanding that there was a safety net."
But there was no safety net and that leads to two questions. Were members of the National Football League Players Association underrepresented under their Executive Directors Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw and should municipalities be liable for some of the injuries because ultimately municipalities ran stadiums that players knew were unsafe? Players would tell anyone who listened that the municipally owned stadiums in Philadelphia and Houston were the worst playing surfaces around and that the "artificial turf" under any name was taking a toll on the players well being.
Could the players go after the NFLPA in court for not getting benefits as part of the collective bargaining agreement with the owners? Could the players go after the municipalities or someone for installing Astroturf or polyturf or some other surface which was on top of a thin rubber pad on top of asphalt or cement? Is it too late to go after all the municipalities that had unsafe fields?
Boyd is not sure about a class action suit by the former players against their former association but the municipality liability is a question that might be worth pursuing.
The ersatz turf had bubbles and seems which players didn't think much about during the course of doing their jobs. Some players suffered knee injuries just hitting a seem, players that were knocked down hit the ground hard on a turf that the rug on top of the rubber on top of the asphalt or cement, the brain could not handle that type of impact.
In addition to his head injuries, Boyd has had knee replacements and has bad hips. The need replacements were paid by the United States government insurance programs, not the NFL.
Boyd has taken his case to Washington and is hoping that the United States Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and other members of the Senate and the House of Representatives will put pressure on the NFL and the NFLPA to take care of the older players.
A lot of the former players though are keeping quiet publicly. Privately there are e-mails from former players such as this one whose name will not be identified.
"I just had neck surgery and I am scheduled to have lumbar (L3 L4 L5) surgery in November. I am thinking about trying the Oxygen chambers for my recovery as well as, using the Oxygen chambers to reduce some of the pain in my lower back that I suffer with daily.
"Question: Will this treatment (Oxygen chamber) help me? How will it help? How often should I administer this treatment in order to see the benefits? However, it's $$Very Expensive. I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thank you for any assistance that you can provide on this matter and concern."
Some former players are pushing for the NFL to install hyperbaric oxygen chambers at training facilities and stadiums to help players (and former) players with head injuries and memory loss.
There is also a new collective bargaining agreement that needs to be negotiated between the owners and players. The present agreement ends shortly after the Super Bowl is played in February. So far there is no political pressure on the owners and players to address the old players needs however that could change if Congress decides to take a closer look at the NFL.
Why should Congress be involved? Congress created today's NFL. The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 was Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Cellar's gift to then NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and NFL owners. Cellar got the bill passed in the House, The Senate agreed and President John F. Kennedy signed it into law on September 30, 1961. The bill allowed the NFL to sell all 14 teams as one entity to a TV network. CBS beat out NBC with a major contract that was worth more than all 14 individual local NFL TV networks combined and started the NFL gold mine. The American Football League's 1964 agreement with NBC made it possible for the league to challenge the NFL financially and ultimately force a merger between the competitors in 1966.
Congress had to approve the merger. Both the House and Senate signed off on the merger and President Lyndon Johnson's signature in 1966 created a super football league and the Super Bowl.
Additionally two Congressional bills that were signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the 1984 Cable TV Act and the Tax Act of 1986 greatly benefitted the NFL (and all major league sports in the United States). Owners were able to make billions because of the changes in the cable TV structure which a basic expanded tier and ruled out a la carte selections by consumers and the changes in the tax code changed the way municipalities funded stadiums. Municipalities could get as little as eight cents on the dollar from stadium revenues to pay off stadium debt. It is not a coincidence that most new or renovated stadium and arena facilities in the United States were built after 1986.
Boyd thinks the National Football League Players Association should have taken better care of the players but the players have never really looked after much except getting paid more money. Boyd was the Vikings player rep during the 1982 strike and said that the players had to be sold on paying union dues as it was voluntary in those days and that players just concentrated on ending the strike of 1982 and getting back on the field. An effort to include players who played before 1959 in a benefits package failed in 1982. These were the same players who formed the NFLPA back in 1956.
The players wanted more immediately and never thought about the future and the Garvey-Upshaw team always concentrated on getting more money but some players privately complained about making sure that someone took care of playing conditions and severance/health packages.
Money won out. A pension and disability plan lost. Twenty five years after the 1982 strike, pension and disability remained a problem that Congress wanted to know about.
"We fought for the salaries and benefits (today's players get); it would be a classy thing for today's players (to give some benefits). You are only allowed the benefits you negotiate," Boyd said.
Boyd is one of the few who is visibly out in the public talking about the old players. The old players do talk among themselves about injuries but there is a football mentality of suck it up. They know football is a violent game and that a player will get injured. But it is still for them, take one for the team or as the Giants defensive lineman Jim Burt said after the 1987 strike when the players folded like a cheap suit, "we are used to be hit over the head but its okay."
The mentality has not seemed to change much after retirement.
"There is a touch of machismo," said Boyd. "There is fatalism, an embarrassment. Why do it if nothing is going on?" The fatalism comes out. "I don't know how many years I have left but I don't feel robbed (by playing football). I made uninformed decisions, that's what you made. I feel robbed that I didn't have that information (on head injuries), there is an irony at the same time the NFL is being the good guy with the posters about concussions, they denied (Boyd's) disability."
The poster is up in NFL locker rooms on concussions. But the former players who have had life altering injuries have seen no real change. For a good many of them, they are out of sight and out of mind even though they were the guys immortalized by the voice of John Facenda on NFL Films, sportswriters and TV networks, and built the National Football League into the America's most popular game.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
TUESDAY, 03 AUGUST 2010 15:47
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfls-concussion-warning-poster-a-small-step-for-football
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
When Brent Boyd reported to the Minnesota Vikings training camp in 1980 after being selected in the third round of that year's draft, the last thing on his mind was testifying before a Congressional panel about the plight of former National Football League players who suffered head injuries doing their jobs as professional football players. Boyd was a guard and like a lot of rookies, he was eager to make a favorable impression of Vikings coach Bud Grant.
Twenty-seven Septembers later in 2007, Boyd was telling members of the United States Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that he suffered brain damage from concussions, and how a disability review board rejected the opinion of two doctors who said his health problems were caused by football and sided with a third doctor who didn't agree with the other two. Boyd testified that the NFL and NFLPA were battling links between long-term health problems and concussions in the same way tobacco companies once fought links between cancer and cigarettes.
Nearly three years later, a good number of retired players are frustrated and wondering whatever happened to NFL provided healthcare after they left the NFL and why the public — both football and non-football fans — is paying their healthcare.
Boyd is still battling for NFL — not public — health benefits.
Boyd has been one of the most vocal critics of the National Football League and the National Football League Players Association. He remembered the game that would ultimately change his life. It was the final pre-season game of the 1980 season, Boyd's Vikings took on the Miami Dolphins at the old Orange Bowl. Boyd was knocked out on a play and lost sight in his right eye. He was on the sidelines telling his coach that he could see out of his right eye, the coach said can you see out of your left eye, Boyd said yes and went back into the game.
He had his bell rung. It wasn't a concussion or anything serious, he was wobbly, dizzy and couldn't see out of his right eye but as soon as all of that went away, he would be fine. It was like hitting your funny bone. Boyd was a rookie hoping to make the team and would do anything not to be cut including staying in the game. It was the turning point of Boyd's life. He made the team but his health was severely compromised. It was the first of dozens or maybe even hundreds of concussions he suffered. The injury would eventually cost him his career, a possibility of going to law school, his marriage, his post career jobs and his house. It was not until 1989 he said that he found out that the constant dizziness and fatigue were caused by the head injuries.
Boyd was out of football by 1987 at the age of 30. "Guys who retire in their 20s and 30s have a regular life ahead of them. Careers, family, you have to pay mortgages. It took away my mind, my potential dreams and goals," he said. But Boyd because of the multiple concussions could not have that and became the "father of the new movement on concussions" instead.
Out of that Boyd founded "Dignity After Football" which is a group that is fighting for the "decent benefits and dignity" for former American and National Football League players who performed in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s before the explosion of salaries in the game. Boyd wants to get the message out to the people who fund the game, TV partners, marketing partners, the people who buy luxury boxes, club suites, park in valet parking and use in-stadium restaurants and buy merchandise along with just everyday football fans. The group that includes Roman Gabriel, Joe Kapp and Ed White wants people to know that "former players live out their lives above the poverty lines and did not know how playing on Astroturf, which was developed by Monsanto, (or polyturf) would impact their bodies and the players were never told about the dangers of 'getting your bell rung' which was a concussion with serious long term effects."
The National Football League has, at least, publicly posted a warning to players which will be posted in NFL locker rooms that comes complete with a warning which seems similar to the little blurbs on cigarette packs that say smoking can be harmful. The NFL's poster includes a warning — that concussions "can change your life and your family's life forever." The warning has slogans such as "Let's Take Brain Injuries Out of Play" and has information about concussions such as facts, symptoms, and poses questions such as "Why Should I Report My Symptoms" and "What Should I Do If I Think I've Had a Concussion."
The NFL seems to be willing to acknowledge there is a problem after years of denial but for former players like Boyd, the operative word here is seems. There is little movement to help the older players like the 53-year old Boyd who rely on government programs such as Social Security and Medicare for their health care.
"There is no health care," said Boyd. (The injuries) drains bank accounts, forces divorces. We (as football players) went in with the understanding that there was a safety net."
But there was no safety net and that leads to two questions. Were members of the National Football League Players Association underrepresented under their Executive Directors Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw and should municipalities be liable for some of the injuries because ultimately municipalities ran stadiums that players knew were unsafe? Players would tell anyone who listened that the municipally owned stadiums in Philadelphia and Houston were the worst playing surfaces around and that the "artificial turf" under any name was taking a toll on the players well being.
Could the players go after the NFLPA in court for not getting benefits as part of the collective bargaining agreement with the owners? Could the players go after the municipalities or someone for installing Astroturf or polyturf or some other surface which was on top of a thin rubber pad on top of asphalt or cement? Is it too late to go after all the municipalities that had unsafe fields?
Boyd is not sure about a class action suit by the former players against their former association but the municipality liability is a question that might be worth pursuing.
The ersatz turf had bubbles and seems which players didn't think much about during the course of doing their jobs. Some players suffered knee injuries just hitting a seem, players that were knocked down hit the ground hard on a turf that the rug on top of the rubber on top of the asphalt or cement, the brain could not handle that type of impact.
In addition to his head injuries, Boyd has had knee replacements and has bad hips. The need replacements were paid by the United States government insurance programs, not the NFL.
Boyd has taken his case to Washington and is hoping that the United States Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and other members of the Senate and the House of Representatives will put pressure on the NFL and the NFLPA to take care of the older players.
A lot of the former players though are keeping quiet publicly. Privately there are e-mails from former players such as this one whose name will not be identified.
"I just had neck surgery and I am scheduled to have lumbar (L3 L4 L5) surgery in November. I am thinking about trying the Oxygen chambers for my recovery as well as, using the Oxygen chambers to reduce some of the pain in my lower back that I suffer with daily.
"Question: Will this treatment (Oxygen chamber) help me? How will it help? How often should I administer this treatment in order to see the benefits? However, it's $$Very Expensive. I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thank you for any assistance that you can provide on this matter and concern."
Some former players are pushing for the NFL to install hyperbaric oxygen chambers at training facilities and stadiums to help players (and former) players with head injuries and memory loss.
There is also a new collective bargaining agreement that needs to be negotiated between the owners and players. The present agreement ends shortly after the Super Bowl is played in February. So far there is no political pressure on the owners and players to address the old players needs however that could change if Congress decides to take a closer look at the NFL.
Why should Congress be involved? Congress created today's NFL. The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 was Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Cellar's gift to then NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and NFL owners. Cellar got the bill passed in the House, The Senate agreed and President John F. Kennedy signed it into law on September 30, 1961. The bill allowed the NFL to sell all 14 teams as one entity to a TV network. CBS beat out NBC with a major contract that was worth more than all 14 individual local NFL TV networks combined and started the NFL gold mine. The American Football League's 1964 agreement with NBC made it possible for the league to challenge the NFL financially and ultimately force a merger between the competitors in 1966.
Congress had to approve the merger. Both the House and Senate signed off on the merger and President Lyndon Johnson's signature in 1966 created a super football league and the Super Bowl.
Additionally two Congressional bills that were signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the 1984 Cable TV Act and the Tax Act of 1986 greatly benefitted the NFL (and all major league sports in the United States). Owners were able to make billions because of the changes in the cable TV structure which a basic expanded tier and ruled out a la carte selections by consumers and the changes in the tax code changed the way municipalities funded stadiums. Municipalities could get as little as eight cents on the dollar from stadium revenues to pay off stadium debt. It is not a coincidence that most new or renovated stadium and arena facilities in the United States were built after 1986.
Boyd thinks the National Football League Players Association should have taken better care of the players but the players have never really looked after much except getting paid more money. Boyd was the Vikings player rep during the 1982 strike and said that the players had to be sold on paying union dues as it was voluntary in those days and that players just concentrated on ending the strike of 1982 and getting back on the field. An effort to include players who played before 1959 in a benefits package failed in 1982. These were the same players who formed the NFLPA back in 1956.
The players wanted more immediately and never thought about the future and the Garvey-Upshaw team always concentrated on getting more money but some players privately complained about making sure that someone took care of playing conditions and severance/health packages.
Money won out. A pension and disability plan lost. Twenty five years after the 1982 strike, pension and disability remained a problem that Congress wanted to know about.
"We fought for the salaries and benefits (today's players get); it would be a classy thing for today's players (to give some benefits). You are only allowed the benefits you negotiate," Boyd said.
Boyd is one of the few who is visibly out in the public talking about the old players. The old players do talk among themselves about injuries but there is a football mentality of suck it up. They know football is a violent game and that a player will get injured. But it is still for them, take one for the team or as the Giants defensive lineman Jim Burt said after the 1987 strike when the players folded like a cheap suit, "we are used to be hit over the head but its okay."
The mentality has not seemed to change much after retirement.
"There is a touch of machismo," said Boyd. "There is fatalism, an embarrassment. Why do it if nothing is going on?" The fatalism comes out. "I don't know how many years I have left but I don't feel robbed (by playing football). I made uninformed decisions, that's what you made. I feel robbed that I didn't have that information (on head injuries), there is an irony at the same time the NFL is being the good guy with the posters about concussions, they denied (Boyd's) disability."
The poster is up in NFL locker rooms on concussions. But the former players who have had life altering injuries have seen no real change. For a good many of them, they are out of sight and out of mind even though they were the guys immortalized by the voice of John Facenda on NFL Films, sportswriters and TV networks, and built the National Football League into the America's most popular game.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Friday, July 30, 2010
There was a time when the Canadian Football League was a serious threat to the NFL
There was a time when the Canadian Football League was a serious threat to the NFL
FRIDAY, 30 JULY 2010 08:42
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/there-was-a-time-when-the-canadian-football-league-was-a-serious-threat-to-the-nfl
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
The New York Giants and Jets are opening up training camp in the next few days and all eyes will be on SUNY Cortland for Jets fans and SUNY Albany for Giants fans as the teams prepare for the 2010 season. But once upon a time, the National Football League and the Giants were considered a real alternative to the Canadian Football League.
The CFL paid better salaries.
In 1953, the NFL would set an attendance record and by 1954 most of the NFL teams had local TV contracts. No matter, the NFL was a step above semi-pro football and another league had set its sights on a war with the NFL.
The Canadian Football League.
The CFL signed the 1952 Heisman Trophy Winner Billy Vessels, along with Eddie LeBaron and Gene Brito. In 1955, LeBaron, Brito, Norb Heckler, Alex Webster and Tom Dublinski left the CFL for NFL teams after representatives from the two competing leagues failed to work out a no raiding treaty.
The CFL gave up on competing with the NFL by 1956, but Frank Tripucka who was the Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback said people should not have dismissed the CFL as just another league somewhere north of the United States border. Tripucka was with the Dallas Texans franchise that played in Akron and practiced in Hershey, Pa.
"A lot of people think, even in those days, that the National Football League was the almighty league but it really wasn't," said Tripucka.
The National Football League in those days was haphazard.
"I'd come home here (to New Jersey, after the CFL season had ended) and I'd watch the Giants play at the Polo Grounds and you could walk up to the ticket window and buy yourself a ticket to anywhere in the place that you wanted. I am talking about 1952, 53, 55. The time the Giants turned it around was the time they moved from the Polo Grounds to the Yankee Stadium in 1956.
"They had the playoff game for the National Football championship against that Baltimore which was that Dallas franchise. I was their property, but I decided, I came home and I was going to call it quits.
"I was totally disenchanted with football, so I came back here to Bloomfield, New Jersey to call it quits and I get a call from Saskatchewan and the fellow says what would it take you to come up here and play? I'm making a big $12,000 at that time, so I hurrily say $25,000 and he says you got it. That was the year they opened up the Canadian League to eight Americans, prior to that they only had three Americans on each team.
"The instructions they had given us was that if you were coming to Canada, don't tell anybody. Because they were going to put an injunction against you, so what most of the players did was say they were going to retire and then they went to Canada and started practicing.
"By that time the Canadian courts wouldn't send you back so you could play the season. If the National Football League wanted to sue you, they would sue you after the season was finished. Most of them didn't bother you, so that's how we got away with it."
Tripuka recited the names of Kenny Carpenter, Mac Speedie, Neill Armstrong, Bud Grant, Frankie Albert, John Henry Johnson who jumped from the NFL to the CFL.
"These were the all the type of people who went up there, so you can see the National Football League in those days wasn't that almighty so to speak. We all went up there and it was great because we played 14 games, you got up there in July and you were home in November. Whereas in the National Football League you were in January when you got home and you were making double the money.
Tripucka started with the Chicago Cardinals and ended up in Dallas in his brief NFL career, but he knew one thing about the National Football League. Bert Bell might have been the Commissioner but George Halas was running the league in the early 1950s.
"He was the founder and he pretty much ran that league," said Tripucka of Halas' influence thirty years after the NFL got its start in a Canton auto dealership. "Many a time we used to kid on the field on sideline that a referee would reach into his pocket and first look over on the sideline to George Halas. If Halas didn't give him any sign, he'd throw the flag. If Halas shook his head no, he wouldn't throw the flag."
When the CFL stopped competing, the owners had another problem. In 1956, an early form of the National Football League Players Association formed and started pushing for a minimum salary of $5,000 and pension benefits.
Canadians playing in the CFL were working a fulltime job and playing football. The Americans were commanding big salaries and Tripucka said in many ways, the CFL of the 1950s resembled the NFL in the 1920s.
"We didn't have too," he said, "The funny thing about is this is why the native Canadians liked the Americans because they felt this was going to raise their salaries up. Because these poor kids were playing for $50 just like our semi-pros down here.
"You talk to some of these old-timers from the National Football League, when the league first started they were getting $100 a game, $50 a game. Well it was the same thing up in Canada. Of course when they brought the Americans in and raised those salaries then the Canadian kids started to get more money.
Tom Landry actually started his career with the New York Yankees of the AAFC in 1949 and moved to the NFL in 1950 when the Yankees folded with the AAFC. Landry and four others joined the New York Giants. Landry would stay there until 1955, and then coach the defense through 1959.
Landry actually was planning to get out of football because it was not a professional that paid much money and going into private business around the Dallas area at the end of the decade.
"Well I think the 1950s was an interesting era," said Landry. "In that nobody made any money. I signed for $6,000 when I started and a $500 bonus. We didn't make any money but I think we had a good time playing the game.
"We weren't concerned about the other guy who made more money than we did. We weren't worried about those things. We just went out to play football. I think that's what the guys really feel good about the fifties."
Despite becoming more and more popular in the 1950s, the NFL was a part time operation. Stan Jones was an offensive lineman with George Halas' Chicago Bears and would report to training camp in July and finish his season in December and look for another job. In fact, Halas wasn't even around in the off-season.
"We weren't a full time operation. A lot of people don't realize that. The football teams closed up after the last game of the year and packed everything away and George Halas wasn't a fulltime football man himself.
"He had a sporting goods business and all the other caches would go on their life's work," said Jones, a pro football Hall of Famer. "And everybody would get together next July and back to football. In the off-season, you couldn't find the Chicago Bears other than the ticket office which was in the Halas and May Sporting Goods Company. There wasn't anything at Wrigley Field because that was the Cub home ballpark. There wasn't any place where you could say this is where the Chicago Bears are."
Life at the Chicago Bears training camp in the 1950s wasn't too much different from the other 11 teams. None of the players were paid during the eight weeks of preparation. In fact, the players didn't even have their own equipment except for shoes.
"They used the old gym at St. Joseph's College and they got out all duffel bags out and dumped everything on the floor and you went down and found a pair of shoulder pads that fit. A pair of hip pads that fit. And if nobody else claimed them, they were yours," said Jones.
"Of course you had to bring your own shoes. What happened, a lot of guys would get cut and when they were about to leave, one of the older players would say I'll give you three dollars for your shoes. Then he would sell the shoes at $10 and make a hell of a profit. We had a bunch of older players who were trading shoes. They pick them up cheat from guys who got cut, they needed the money to go home and the guy coming in needed a new pair of shoes, the old guys gave them a deal."
But shoes weren't the only things available on the player's black market. Fans were a major commodity at the central Indiana school as there was no air conditioning.
"A guy would come in and she I'm dying in here," Jones continued. "I'd say, we will sell you a fan. You couldn't buy them at Montgomery Ward's because they would be sold out in a real hot summer.
So you'd have these fans. Guys would get cut and you'd say, hey I like your fan, I'll give you five dollars for it. The next guy coming in, you'd sell it for $10.
"You never got your first paycheck until after I made the team in September unless you got cut and then they would give you money to go home with. On the other hand, they took care of all your expenses and things like that. But if you wanted to go out and get a beer, it was on your own money."
While Jones was responsible for his shoes in Chicago, Steelers players didn't have that problem.
"I used to go to camp, actually since the time I was five years old, we did issue equipment. We didn't just throw it out for them," said Dan Rooney, the son of Steelers owner Art Rooney. "We used to get in some battles with them about different things. I will tell you a great aside, when the union, their first demand was a second pair of football shoes. As you know today when you go into the locker room they have 30. But there was the demand back in 1958.
"Jack Butler, who was a great player for us and had gone to the Pro Bowl and probably should be in the Hall of Fame, he wore the same shoes for three years because they were his luck shoes and he had taped them on. We said, hey you can't be doing that. We did give them one pair each year. We said use the new shoes. He thought they were good luck the shoes that he had. He wore them literarily out."
When the season ended in the 1950s, so did football as a main vocation. New York fans may have wildly cheered the New York Giants defensive lineman Andy Robustelli on six Sundays a season, but on the Monday after the final game, it was back to work in the civilian world. Robustelli was a great player for the Los Angeles Rams between 1951 and 1955, playing in the Pro Bowl twice. But Robustelli's fortune was to be made at his Connecticut businesses not on the playing field of the Los Angeles Coliseum and he requested a trade to the New York Giants because he simply couldn't afford to live in Los Angeles, spent eight weeks without being paid for training camp and then play a 12 week season 3,000 miles away. Without the trade, Robustelli would have retired.
"Each player the day that the season was over, you were free and you looked for a job. You wouldn't see each other until next year. I think, and with all respect to the modern ballplayer, I hope the modern ballplayer appreciates, not only the opportunity, but...football is a stepping stone it's not the end of life," said Robustelli who became a successful businessman in Connecticut once his Giant days were through.
It was a different time, a different life for players who literally played for nothing and had few, if any benefits. There were no great business minds in the NFL of those days, the names that are saluted now, Halas, Rooney, Tim Mara, Bert Bell were actually second rate thinkers that had no vision for their product. It seems absurd to think that Saskatchewan could outbid NFL teams for talent but in the 1950s, the Green Bay Packers held fund raisers throughout Wisconsin and literally passed the hat so the team could operate season to season and in some cities, owners could not even give away NFL tickets. Today there are multi-billion dollar TV contracts, stadiums that cost more than a billion dollars in East Rutherford, N.J., and Arlington, Tx., thanks to two bills passed by Congress in the 1960s and signed by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson -- the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the 1966 AFL-NFL merger -- which made the league the cash cow it is today.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( FRIDAY, 30 JULY 2010 08:42 )
FRIDAY, 30 JULY 2010 08:42
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/there-was-a-time-when-the-canadian-football-league-was-a-serious-threat-to-the-nfl
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
The New York Giants and Jets are opening up training camp in the next few days and all eyes will be on SUNY Cortland for Jets fans and SUNY Albany for Giants fans as the teams prepare for the 2010 season. But once upon a time, the National Football League and the Giants were considered a real alternative to the Canadian Football League.
The CFL paid better salaries.
In 1953, the NFL would set an attendance record and by 1954 most of the NFL teams had local TV contracts. No matter, the NFL was a step above semi-pro football and another league had set its sights on a war with the NFL.
The Canadian Football League.
The CFL signed the 1952 Heisman Trophy Winner Billy Vessels, along with Eddie LeBaron and Gene Brito. In 1955, LeBaron, Brito, Norb Heckler, Alex Webster and Tom Dublinski left the CFL for NFL teams after representatives from the two competing leagues failed to work out a no raiding treaty.
The CFL gave up on competing with the NFL by 1956, but Frank Tripucka who was the Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback said people should not have dismissed the CFL as just another league somewhere north of the United States border. Tripucka was with the Dallas Texans franchise that played in Akron and practiced in Hershey, Pa.
"A lot of people think, even in those days, that the National Football League was the almighty league but it really wasn't," said Tripucka.
The National Football League in those days was haphazard.
"I'd come home here (to New Jersey, after the CFL season had ended) and I'd watch the Giants play at the Polo Grounds and you could walk up to the ticket window and buy yourself a ticket to anywhere in the place that you wanted. I am talking about 1952, 53, 55. The time the Giants turned it around was the time they moved from the Polo Grounds to the Yankee Stadium in 1956.
"They had the playoff game for the National Football championship against that Baltimore which was that Dallas franchise. I was their property, but I decided, I came home and I was going to call it quits.
"I was totally disenchanted with football, so I came back here to Bloomfield, New Jersey to call it quits and I get a call from Saskatchewan and the fellow says what would it take you to come up here and play? I'm making a big $12,000 at that time, so I hurrily say $25,000 and he says you got it. That was the year they opened up the Canadian League to eight Americans, prior to that they only had three Americans on each team.
"The instructions they had given us was that if you were coming to Canada, don't tell anybody. Because they were going to put an injunction against you, so what most of the players did was say they were going to retire and then they went to Canada and started practicing.
"By that time the Canadian courts wouldn't send you back so you could play the season. If the National Football League wanted to sue you, they would sue you after the season was finished. Most of them didn't bother you, so that's how we got away with it."
Tripuka recited the names of Kenny Carpenter, Mac Speedie, Neill Armstrong, Bud Grant, Frankie Albert, John Henry Johnson who jumped from the NFL to the CFL.
"These were the all the type of people who went up there, so you can see the National Football League in those days wasn't that almighty so to speak. We all went up there and it was great because we played 14 games, you got up there in July and you were home in November. Whereas in the National Football League you were in January when you got home and you were making double the money.
Tripucka started with the Chicago Cardinals and ended up in Dallas in his brief NFL career, but he knew one thing about the National Football League. Bert Bell might have been the Commissioner but George Halas was running the league in the early 1950s.
"He was the founder and he pretty much ran that league," said Tripucka of Halas' influence thirty years after the NFL got its start in a Canton auto dealership. "Many a time we used to kid on the field on sideline that a referee would reach into his pocket and first look over on the sideline to George Halas. If Halas didn't give him any sign, he'd throw the flag. If Halas shook his head no, he wouldn't throw the flag."
When the CFL stopped competing, the owners had another problem. In 1956, an early form of the National Football League Players Association formed and started pushing for a minimum salary of $5,000 and pension benefits.
Canadians playing in the CFL were working a fulltime job and playing football. The Americans were commanding big salaries and Tripucka said in many ways, the CFL of the 1950s resembled the NFL in the 1920s.
"We didn't have too," he said, "The funny thing about is this is why the native Canadians liked the Americans because they felt this was going to raise their salaries up. Because these poor kids were playing for $50 just like our semi-pros down here.
"You talk to some of these old-timers from the National Football League, when the league first started they were getting $100 a game, $50 a game. Well it was the same thing up in Canada. Of course when they brought the Americans in and raised those salaries then the Canadian kids started to get more money.
Tom Landry actually started his career with the New York Yankees of the AAFC in 1949 and moved to the NFL in 1950 when the Yankees folded with the AAFC. Landry and four others joined the New York Giants. Landry would stay there until 1955, and then coach the defense through 1959.
Landry actually was planning to get out of football because it was not a professional that paid much money and going into private business around the Dallas area at the end of the decade.
"Well I think the 1950s was an interesting era," said Landry. "In that nobody made any money. I signed for $6,000 when I started and a $500 bonus. We didn't make any money but I think we had a good time playing the game.
"We weren't concerned about the other guy who made more money than we did. We weren't worried about those things. We just went out to play football. I think that's what the guys really feel good about the fifties."
Despite becoming more and more popular in the 1950s, the NFL was a part time operation. Stan Jones was an offensive lineman with George Halas' Chicago Bears and would report to training camp in July and finish his season in December and look for another job. In fact, Halas wasn't even around in the off-season.
"We weren't a full time operation. A lot of people don't realize that. The football teams closed up after the last game of the year and packed everything away and George Halas wasn't a fulltime football man himself.
"He had a sporting goods business and all the other caches would go on their life's work," said Jones, a pro football Hall of Famer. "And everybody would get together next July and back to football. In the off-season, you couldn't find the Chicago Bears other than the ticket office which was in the Halas and May Sporting Goods Company. There wasn't anything at Wrigley Field because that was the Cub home ballpark. There wasn't any place where you could say this is where the Chicago Bears are."
Life at the Chicago Bears training camp in the 1950s wasn't too much different from the other 11 teams. None of the players were paid during the eight weeks of preparation. In fact, the players didn't even have their own equipment except for shoes.
"They used the old gym at St. Joseph's College and they got out all duffel bags out and dumped everything on the floor and you went down and found a pair of shoulder pads that fit. A pair of hip pads that fit. And if nobody else claimed them, they were yours," said Jones.
"Of course you had to bring your own shoes. What happened, a lot of guys would get cut and when they were about to leave, one of the older players would say I'll give you three dollars for your shoes. Then he would sell the shoes at $10 and make a hell of a profit. We had a bunch of older players who were trading shoes. They pick them up cheat from guys who got cut, they needed the money to go home and the guy coming in needed a new pair of shoes, the old guys gave them a deal."
But shoes weren't the only things available on the player's black market. Fans were a major commodity at the central Indiana school as there was no air conditioning.
"A guy would come in and she I'm dying in here," Jones continued. "I'd say, we will sell you a fan. You couldn't buy them at Montgomery Ward's because they would be sold out in a real hot summer.
So you'd have these fans. Guys would get cut and you'd say, hey I like your fan, I'll give you five dollars for it. The next guy coming in, you'd sell it for $10.
"You never got your first paycheck until after I made the team in September unless you got cut and then they would give you money to go home with. On the other hand, they took care of all your expenses and things like that. But if you wanted to go out and get a beer, it was on your own money."
While Jones was responsible for his shoes in Chicago, Steelers players didn't have that problem.
"I used to go to camp, actually since the time I was five years old, we did issue equipment. We didn't just throw it out for them," said Dan Rooney, the son of Steelers owner Art Rooney. "We used to get in some battles with them about different things. I will tell you a great aside, when the union, their first demand was a second pair of football shoes. As you know today when you go into the locker room they have 30. But there was the demand back in 1958.
"Jack Butler, who was a great player for us and had gone to the Pro Bowl and probably should be in the Hall of Fame, he wore the same shoes for three years because they were his luck shoes and he had taped them on. We said, hey you can't be doing that. We did give them one pair each year. We said use the new shoes. He thought they were good luck the shoes that he had. He wore them literarily out."
When the season ended in the 1950s, so did football as a main vocation. New York fans may have wildly cheered the New York Giants defensive lineman Andy Robustelli on six Sundays a season, but on the Monday after the final game, it was back to work in the civilian world. Robustelli was a great player for the Los Angeles Rams between 1951 and 1955, playing in the Pro Bowl twice. But Robustelli's fortune was to be made at his Connecticut businesses not on the playing field of the Los Angeles Coliseum and he requested a trade to the New York Giants because he simply couldn't afford to live in Los Angeles, spent eight weeks without being paid for training camp and then play a 12 week season 3,000 miles away. Without the trade, Robustelli would have retired.
"Each player the day that the season was over, you were free and you looked for a job. You wouldn't see each other until next year. I think, and with all respect to the modern ballplayer, I hope the modern ballplayer appreciates, not only the opportunity, but...football is a stepping stone it's not the end of life," said Robustelli who became a successful businessman in Connecticut once his Giant days were through.
It was a different time, a different life for players who literally played for nothing and had few, if any benefits. There were no great business minds in the NFL of those days, the names that are saluted now, Halas, Rooney, Tim Mara, Bert Bell were actually second rate thinkers that had no vision for their product. It seems absurd to think that Saskatchewan could outbid NFL teams for talent but in the 1950s, the Green Bay Packers held fund raisers throughout Wisconsin and literally passed the hat so the team could operate season to season and in some cities, owners could not even give away NFL tickets. Today there are multi-billion dollar TV contracts, stadiums that cost more than a billion dollars in East Rutherford, N.J., and Arlington, Tx., thanks to two bills passed by Congress in the 1960s and signed by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson -- the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the 1966 AFL-NFL merger -- which made the league the cash cow it is today.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( FRIDAY, 30 JULY 2010 08:42 )
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