Discarded NFL players continue the fight for health insurance
Monday, 22 August 2011 19:34
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/discarded-nfl-players-continue-the-fight-for-health-insurance
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There may be a cruel irony in play for disabled and discarded former National Football League players if a New York Post report is correct that MetLife is about ready to sign a multimillion dollar, multi-year deal to become the naming rights sponsor of the New Meadowlands Stadium. MetLife could be throwing as much as $20 million annually or $400 million over 20 years into the pockets of the stadium owners, the New York Jets Woody Johnson and the New York Giants Mara and Tisch families. But in a good many cases, a large percentage of former NFL players who suffered life altering injuries playing for teams like the Jets and Giants and the other 30 franchises would never be able to get a life insurance policy from MetLife.
MetLife has been a stadium sponsor since the new facility opened last year and apparently is just "upgrading" from a "cornerstone sponsor" to the naming rights sponsor. Some company figures to replace MetLife as “cornerstone sponsor” if the New York-based insurance company upgrades. Despite the media frenzy or the cable TV and talk radio carnival barkers who want to grab attention for ratings purposes that the economic sky is falling and we will be facing a double dip recession (cable TV news anchors and talk radio show hosts are economic experts just ask them), insurance companies seem to have a lot of disposable income for what probably is best described as vanity sponsorship.
MetLife is already part of the New Meadowlands Stadium landscape for a reported $7 million a year as a "cornerstone sponsor." In Los Angeles, the Anschutz Entertainment Group has sold naming rights for a proposed downtown football stadium to the Farmers Insurance Group, a Swiss company with Los Angeles headquarters. The Farmers-Anschutz Entertainment agreement is reportedly a 30-year deal with Farmers kicking in over $700 million during the length of the contract.
If the reports are correct, insurance companies will be spending over a billion dollars over a couple of decades to throw their names on top of two facilities that are used less than 30 times a year. MetLife's sports sponsorship includes plastering the company's name on blimps that over-the-air and cable TV networks use to provide aerial shots of stadiums and other sports venues.
Again there is a cruel irony in this for the former players as they probably could not get life insurance from the Farmers Insurance Group because of pre-existing injuries suffered while playing for the Los Angeles Chargers, Los Angeles Raiders and Los Angeles Rams of both the American and National Football Leagues.
The former players still have no idea if the National Football League Players Association got them any real long term health benefits from the recently concluded National Football League lockout. But the former players seem to be taking no chances that the National Football League Players Association or two decertified versions of the National Football League Players Association have once again failed their long term futures in exchange for short term economic gains.
There have been lawsuits filed and one National Labor Relations Board complaint has been placed in an attempt to change the lives of players who because of football injuries are unable to work or properly function following their careers.
The one action that is not getting much attention a claim filed by former Cleveland Browns player Bernie Parrish with the National Labor Relations Board on July 20, 2011. Parrish doesn't want the NFLPA or the association's executive director DeMaurice Smith representing him in trying to get better post career health and economic benefits from the NFL.
Parrish's involvement with the former players should not be dismissed. A former player rep and one of the founding fathers of the modern day NFLPA during his playing days in the 1960s, Parrish has gotten some results for the former players in their battle with the NFLPA in an effort to get some money steered their ways.
In 2007, Parrish and Hall of Fame defensive back Herb Adderley filed a class action suit on behalf of retired NFL players against the NFLPA and Players, Inc., one of the NFLPA subsidiaries, over retired players' benefits derived from player image and name licensing fees. Even though Parrish was dismissed from the suit as a lead plaintiff, a jury found in favor of the retired players and awarded a $28.1 million judgment against the NFLPA and Players, Inc., including $21 million in punitive damages The NFLPA appealed in February 2009, however both sides settled the case without further litigation.
"Since on or about within the six months prior to the filing and service of this charge, and continuing to date, the above-named labor organization (the NFLPA), by its agents, officers and representatives, has violated the National Labor Relations Act by violating an outstanding Board Order by continuing to try to represent the retired NFL players, including, among others Bernard Parrish," reads the complaint.
The former players have again gone in many directions in trying to secure health and economic benefits after the NFLPA signed "Money Now" collective bargaining agreements with NFL owners and didn't bother with post career benefits.
A number of former NFL players are living on government safety nets such as social security insurance and Medicare long before their 65th birthdays.
Parrish has gone through the courts and won and is now trying the National Labor Relations Board for a remedy. Last week seven former players including the quarterback of the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl squad, Jim McMahon, filed a class action suit against the NFL in a Philadelphia courtroom contending they did not receive proper treatment for concussions and that the league has been concealing links between football and brain injuries. McMahon, Joe Thomas, Ray Easterling, Wayne Radloff, Gerry Freehery, Steve Kiner and Mike Furrey are the players who have their names on this lawsuit.
Another group is also going after benefits that they feel should be theirs led by former Minnesota Vikings player Carl Eller.
Eller and other former players sued both the NFL and the NFL Players Association, contending they were illegally been left out of the latest talks after taking part in court-ordered mediation sessions earlier this year. Eller's group claimed that both sides also conspired to keep benefit levels and pension payments low in the new collective bargaining agreement.
Eller recently circulated a letter among the retirees.
“(The) NFLPA objects to Independent Retiree Organization. Owners offer $33 Million per year to Retirees. The funds would come from the $50 Million that the Leagued informed us about a couple of weeks ago. The $22 Million that is designated for Retirees in the CBA that the NFLPA has the digression to use any way it chooses. Plus another $11 Million of the $50 Million that would be administrated by the League and the Retirees. Another $11 Million of the $50 Million would remain in the hands of the NFLPA which is designated for charities.
"Roughly $44 million per year which is not included in the proposed $.95 Billion to $1.1 Billion designated for Retiree Benefits and Pensions in the CBA is pending decision by the courts. $33 million of that $44 Million to have an Independent organization control it has been agreed on by two of the three parties involved in the Eller Class Litigation. The party that objects is obviously the NFLPA. It is not for naught that I want to bring your attention to these matters. My assumption is that the NFLPA has determined that the retirees individually and as groups are idiots. And that the NFLPA can basically say anything and the Retirees will believe it. Also that by using these basic and simple tactics they can disarm any threat that they may encounter in pursuit of their goal to control Billions of dollars and continue to operate as they have in the past. "
Some of the former retirees have complained that Eller isn't reaching high enough for retirees when compared with Major League Baseball retired players. But the Major League Baseball Players Association had much better leadership with Marvin Miller as Executive Director when you examine the two groups. Miller stressed to his group to think about the future while Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw demanded "money now."
While the former players continue the fight and some quarrel among themselves, the business and corporate spending on the National Football League continues apace. There are insurance companies ready to spend billions and act like jock sniffers so that some company executives can rub elbows with NFL owners and league officials and players and coaches along with team officials. The fans care only about being entertained or how their monetary investments in fantasy leagues, point spreads over and unders are going by watching endless football shows which feature the same highlights in various degrees of slow motion and numerous anglings or listening to sports talk radio or reading handicappers guides. And some sit comatose in front of their televisions on a Sunday from the start of network pre-game shows in the morning to the final play of Sunday night football while downing beer and eating all sorts of unhealthy snack foods which may raise their health risk and force them to pay more money for life insurance policies from MetLife and Farmers.
This is the NFL Today.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition" is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Showing posts with label discarded NFL players. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discarded NFL players. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
NFL's big game against the players starts this week in Minneapolis
TUESDAY, 05 APRIL 2011 11:46
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Portions of this column are by Evan Weiner and Heather Rascher from ''A Business History of Professional Football,'' unpublished manuscript (2005).
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfls-big-game-against-the-players-starts-this-week-in-minneapolis
The biggest game on the NFL season starts on April 6 when National Football League owners and the remnants of the now defunct National Football League Players Association face off in a Minneapolis courtroom. In a script that looks like a sequel to the days after the National Football League Players Association imploded in October 1987 when the NFLPA decided to sue NFL owners for free agency, the NFLPA is back in a Minneapolis courthouse and suing NFL owners. Ten players, including one college player who was not even a part of the defunct NFLPA, Von Miller, are suing the league in an antitrust action hoping the court will lift the owners lockout.
Miller's name is on the suit but he is planning to attend the National Football League Draft, an act that restrictions the freedom of college players in finding jobs. The only reason the draft is legal is through collective bargaining. The owners and players have agreed to a draft. Miller plans to be in the courtroom while New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees, one of the 10 plaintiffs, will not attend the opening day festivities. Brees will be at a golf fundraiser.
Brees last week was sounded a conciliatory note to retired and discarded players after being blasted by Sam Huff for criticizing former players who are down and out because of football related injuries. Brees apparently learned well from the late Gene Upshaw (who was the NFLPA Executive Director) who once said that the association could not worry about every problem. While the NFL and the NFLPA duke it out in Minneapolis, the former NFLPA may be involved in another action as former New Orleans and Miami defensive back Gene Atkins is suing the NFL's retirement board after being denied additional health benefits by the group which included the late Dave Duerson. The former defensive back, Duerson, was on the board which said no to Atkins football degenerative claim in 2006. Duerson's suicide in February 2011 raises questions according to the brief filed about Duerson's competence in light of statements that came out after the suicide that he had memory loss and difficulties spelling words.
The NFL and the NFLPA have had more than a half century of issues.
The NFLPA formed in 1956 with help from Creighton Miller, the first General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Unhappy players in Cleveland and Green Bay assembled a network of "player reps" on each team. The players included Don Shula (Colts), Frank Gifford (Giants), and Norm Van Brocklin (Rams) to represent their teams. The Chicago Bears players did not have a representative. The players first meeting was held in New York in the fall of 1956, after the owners ignored the players' attempts to discuss their requests. The players asked for minimum salaries of $5,000 per season, injury pay, uniform per diems, and for teams to supply their own equipment.
Nothing happened but the players got a big break in 1957 when, the first lawsuit involving professional football and antitrust was filed, Radovich v. NFL, which significantly altered player rights within the league. The case involved a player/coach, George Radovich, who sued the league because the NFL effectively prevented him from attaining employment in the NFL or affiliated leagues, such as the Pacific Coast League, which was in existence at the time. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the NFL was exempted from the antitrust laws, and was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the trial court, holding professional football subject to the antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court decision changed life for NFL owners. The players could now sue the league on antitrust grounds which they threatened to do. The owners and players settled with the players receiving minimum salaries of $5,000, $50 payment for preseason games, medical coverage for injuries, and a pension.
But the players didn't get what they agreed to and spend the 1958 season chasing the owners to live up to the agreement. The deal was finally signed in 1959.
The players did catch another break when Lamar Hunt started the American Football league and for some college players, they were able to play the NFL off against the AFL in getting some leverage for their initial contract. The AFL-NFL war over established players began in earnest when Pete Gogolak, a kicker on the Buffalo Bills signed a deal with the New York Giants in 1966. What was good for Gogolak and two NFL quarterbacks John Brodie and Roman Gabriel along with Mike Ditka who were been pursued by AFL Commissioner Al Davis to sign with his league was not good for the owners of either league. Brodie, Gabriel and Ditka got raises from their NFL teams. The AFL and NFL announced their intent to merge on June 8, 1966.
The National Football League Players Association wanted to fight the merger but didn't have the funding to do so.
The NFLPA has always been weak and the owners have always known that. The two leagues may have merged, but the player associations did not, as the players on the 16 NFL teams were NFLPA members and the players on the 10 AFL teams were American Football League Players Association members. This caused a major problem in subsequent negotiations as the NFLPA would come to a tentative agreement with the owners on certain collective bargaining issues (such as minimum salaries, retirement age) then the owners would bargain with the AFLPA, who accepted lower terms, which wasn't good for NFLPA members.
There was a brief lockout and a 20-day strike in 1970 that ended just before the 1970 All Star game and which did not result in the cancellation of regular or post-season games, the NFL and NFLPA signed a four-year contract, the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of the NFL, which raised player salary minimums to $12,500 for rookies and $13,000 for veterans, added dental insurance, improved the pension, gave players the right to have agents, gave players representation on the Retirement Board, and provided for impartial arbitration of injury grievances.
(Retired players from that era are still battling the NFL and the NFLPA and the retirement board over injury grievances and the complaining have caught the attention of Congress)
In 1974, the previous CBA was coming to an end. Players were demanding the elimination of the Rozelle Rule and the option clause which kept a player tied to his team in perpetuity unless another team was willing to give up number one draft picks or players to sign a free agent among other things. On July 1, the players went on strike, and were prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out. The sit-out led to the cancellation of the New York Jets game at New Haven, the first game ever canceled due to a labor impasse. However, by the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines, breaking down union solidarity. On August 11, Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period, instead pursuing the issue through the John Mackey case. The 42-day strike ended that day with nothing gained.
The NFLPA won the Mackey vs. NFL antitrust lawsuit in 1977, but players received only limited free agency with compensation under a new CBA.
On September 21, 1982, NFL players went on strike. It was the longest strike in professional sports in the U.S. at the time and lasted until November 17. The owners responded by locking the players out at the commencement of the strike. During the strike, only 126 of the 224 scheduled regular-season games were played, forcing the league to change the format of post-season play to include 16 teams instead of the usual 10 teams. The players held two "All-Star" games to raise some funding for players without a paycheck. The players got more money but two goals were not met, a form of free agency and more pension money.
The owners were not going to let that happen 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 canceled the third week's schedule and resumed with the week four match ups.
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.
"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. Casserly 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 Jets 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."
The players did not get much though in post career benefits. They got their "Money Now" and didn't worry about the long term affect that football would have on their health.
After the conclusion of the 1987 players’ strike, the NFLPA filed an antitrust suit against the owners on October 15, 1987, seeking an injunction against the continuation of the NFL’s player reservation system, and asking for free agency. In (Marvin) Powell (v NFL), filed in the same jurisdiction that heard the Mackey case a decade earlier, the NFLPA claimed that, absent a new agreement, the NFL could not rely upon any “labor exemption” to immunize its player choice and movement restrictions from antitrust laws. Essentially the case considered whether the non statutory labor exemption would continue to protect the RFR system after the expiration of the CBA, and for how long the protection would be extended. In the first phase of the Powell I trial, the NFL argued for exemption based on the theory that the RFR system was entitled to absolute immunity as the subject of mandatory bargaining affecting only parties to the employment relationship. Additionally, the league conversely argued that the survival doctrine, which suggested that the non statutory labor exemption in effect during the term of a CBA survives the expiration of such CBA providing that the conduct at issue was protected during the term of the agreement, protecting the system from antitrust laws indefinitely following the expiration of the CBA.
The absolute immunity theory was rejected by the District Court of Minnesota, which spent more time focusing on the survival doctrine theory, using the Mackey test to determine whether the 1982 CBA qualified for the non statutory labor exemption. Despite the claims of the players that the 1982 CBA was not the product of arm’s length bargaining, the court found that the contrary to be true, and considered whether the CBA then “survived” its expiration due to the fact that it was reached through collective, arm’s length bargaining. The court determined that the CBA would in fact survive the exemption, but still had to determine the length of time such an exemption remains effective.
In January 1988, the district court ruled that the exemption survives the expiration of a CBA, but terminates when the employer and the union reach a bargaining impasse on an issue. Judge David Doty’s decision analyzed the positions of the parties and rejected both arguments, ruling that the “labor exemption related to a mandatory bargaining subject survived expiration of the collective bargaining agreement until the parties reach impasse as to that issue.” Doty indicated an unwillingness to apply the non statutory exemption fully, and ruled that he would not extend “blanket protection to union-employer agreements merely because the challenged activity arises within the context of mandatory collective bargaining.” The decision ultimately favored the owners, allowing them to implement new or different employment terms reasonably contemplated within the scope of the parties’ bargaining history. In Powell I, however, the court could not determine whether the parties had in fact reached an impasse, as it was awaiting an NLRB ruling on NFL charges that the players’ union was not bargaining in good faith.
The NLRB ruled in April 1988, dismissing the owner’s charges of bad faith bargaining, and finding the NFLPA was not required to continue to meet and bargain with the NFL because the parties had reached an impasse in negotiations. In June of 1988, after hearing the motions, the court rendered its decision that the parties had in fact reached an impasse over the free agency issue and that the system of restraints on player movement was now subject to antitrust laws.
The NFLPA decertified in 1989. It no longer represented NFL players and would never do so in the future. (The 2011 NFL complaint to the National Labor Relations Board pointed out that the present NFLPA had decertification as a tool in their toolkit and planned to use it all along in bargaining with the owners and would blow up collective bargaining talks and run to court.)
The players sought an injunction against the use of the RFR system in Powell II, and the owner’s contested the injunction and the court’s earlier ruling. The court ruled that the non statutory labor exemption no longer protected the RFR system from antitrust review, but agreed with the owners that it had no legal authority by which to grant an injunction. Thus the first two phases of Powell set the stage for Powell III, to determine whether the RFR system did in fact violate antitrust laws.
In the final phase of Powell, the NFL filed an interlocutory appeal in the 8th Circuit seeking an order reviving the exemption, reiterating its earlier argument that the labor law should prevail. The players argued that an agreement with the League would in essence overturn the court’s earlier decision in Mackey. The court determined that both parties have a continuing obligation to bargain with one another in furtherance of the collective bargaining process and to maintain a peaceful labor relationship. Further, upon impasse, the courts ruled that the League may exercise its discretion in implementing new or different employment terms within the scope of the parties’ pre-impasse proposals. Finally, the court disagreed with the ruling in Powell II, and ruled to allow the players to unilaterally generate an impasse in order to subvert the non statutory labor exemption and to pursue an antitrust suit for damages. The court then determined that the exemption would survive until a collective bargaining relationship no longer existed, forcing the players back into a bargaining process in which they historically operated at a disadvantage. The court instead suggested that the players resolve a dispute by 1) collective bargaining, 2) using economic force, or 3) reporting their claims to the NLRB.
The NFL appealed and Doty’s finding was overruled. In November 1989, the Appeals court reversed the earlier court’s ruling stating that as long as the players had a union that they could not sue under the antitrust laws (according to rulings involving the dual approach of collective bargaining and antitrust laws). The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals found that, since bargaining was continuing, the labor exemption was still in effect, and overturned Doty’s view and found the restraints in Powell were “exempted from antitrust scrutiny as the exemption survived impasse.” The court ruled that these practices remained within the non statutory labor exemption as long as the NFL and NFLPA maintained an “ongoing collective bargaining relationship”, and that the players could not pursue antitrust claims during collective bargaining. A federal jury subsequently awarded damages and unrestricted free agency to four plaintiffs. Thus, in the aftermath of Powell, the NFLPA decertified, and challenged the NFL’s restraints on antitrust grounds, setting the stage for further litigation.
In 1988, the Washington Redskins signed Wilbur Marshall, paying a steep price ($6 million for 5 years) for his contract, and having to give up their first-round draft choices in 1988 and 1999 as compensation to the Chicago Bears — a penalty that discouraged future deals. In effect, the player’s old team maintains the right of first refusal whereby it can match any offer made to the player by another club, and any team which ultimately signs the player must compensate the old team with draft choices, costing teams at least two first round draft choices to sign most top level free agents, such as what occurred with Wilbur Marshall.
McNeil v. National Football League with Freeman McNeil of Jets as lead plaintiff, involved free agency and related antitrust claims. Prior to the trial in June 1992, the parties filed a number of pretrial motions, the most important of which was the players’ motion for partial summary judgment to strike the owners’ labor exemption defense. The players argued that because the union had officially been decertified, the non statutory labor exemption no longer barred an antitrust challenge to Plan B, thus allowing the jury to consider the case under the Sherman Act. Further, the players’ argued that by abandoning the union they had been placed at a significant bargaining disadvantage, as the owners had used the player association’s non-union status to strip the players of insurance benefits and to extend the playing season. In its defense, the NFL relied on competitive balance arguments saying that the restrictions on free agency were necessary. The League also claimed that the NFLPA continued to function as the official bargaining representative for the players despite decertification, and, regardless of the union’s status as certified or decertified, the non statutory labor exemption still remained in effect.
In the Powell case, the court provided no guidance as to a specific time or event that would eliminate the exemption, and that the court rejected the owners’ contention that the exemption should extend indefinitely. Moreover, the court rejected the owner’s claims that the NFLPA and the players’ union separation via decertification was not valid considering that the NLRB did not decertify the NFLPA. Both parties moved for summary judgment on several fronts. The NFL denied that it could act as a monopoly and violate the Sherman Act, as it was simply a conglomeration of co-owners that were engaged in the common business of producing and marketing professional football for entertainment; the court rejected this claim. Moreover, the NFL claimed that Plan B did not violate antitrust laws, and even if it did the players were not entitled to any damages. The court denied the owners’ motion, holding the owners liable for “antitrust damages from the date the collective bargaining relationship between the union and the league was terminated, but agreeing with the owners that the League was not itself a monopoly. The court did, however, deny the players’ motion for summary judgment concerning the application of the per se rule.
The sides even argued over the jury selection, which was comprised of eight women, none of whom watched professional football. The NFL realized that the odds were not in their favor, and continued to try to convince the jury that under Plan B all parties flourished and that unrestricted free agency would financially ruin many teams in the league. In September 1992, the jury verdict in the McNeil case found that the NFL owners’ restrictions in Plan B were unreasonable restraints of trade in violation of the Sherman Act. The jury also ruled that Plan B resulted in many players being under compensated, and that competitive balance could be preserved with a more liberal system. The jury awarded damages to four of the eight plaintiffs (not McNeil) totaling $543,000 (which was trebled to $1.63 million as per antitrust laws). While damages to the players were minimal, the case opened the door for free agency in football. However, total free agency was not approved by the courts, which ruled that some restrictions were necessary to maintain competitive balance.
The jury’s verdict effectively destroyed Plan B, sending the parties back to the bargaining table. Settlement talks began because both sides had leverage and something to lose. Both sides were victorious, in that the players were freed from Plan B, but did not get unrestricted free agency. The NFL had a few choices: implement another plan that was sufficiently different than Plan B (because only Plan B was enjoined), or it could hope for a reversal on appeal of the McNeil case and continue with Plan B.
Although both parties returned to the bargaining table, they were soon engaged in further legal disputes involving the noncompetitive effects of the League on its players. Aware that it would take time for the McNeil ruling to take effect, the players involved in the dispute remained unsigned at the time of the verdict (September 1992). These players subsequently filed suit, Jackson v. NFL, attempting to be freed from operating under the Plan B system and seeking damages for financial injuries suffered due to the restrictive nature of the system. The case was lead by Keith Jackson of the Philadelphia Eagles, and the remaining nine players involved in the suit included D.J. Dozier, Thomas Everett, Louis Lipps, Stephone Paige, Joseph Phillips, Webster Slaughter, Natu Tuatagoloa, Garin Veris, and Leon White. Before the court could rule on the case, six of the ten players were either released or traded, leaving only four players restricted by Plan B. The court allowed the players five days to sign contracts with other clubs, all of which did, and, because there were no other players that were unsigned or were restricted by Plan B. As such, the case was dismissed by Judge Doty, and left the league with the sense that the courts were now behind the players.
Following the McNeil verdict, a new antitrust lawsuit was filed on behalf of all NFL players – White v. NFL challenging the continued implementation of these or similar unreasonable restraints on competition for player services. The White case was lead by Reggie White, a tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles, who filed the case on behalf of himself and any other player who would play or played in the NFL. The case sought to permanently enjoin the future enforcement of Plan B or any other system, the draft, preseason pay, and the NFL owners’ refusal of negotiating individual benefit packages. In January 1993, the NFL owners agreed to a global settlement of the White class action and other player suits, which granted NFL players, for the first time, the opportunity to be unrestricted free agents, with substantial increases in compensation in a now competitive market. These settlements resulted in payments of $195 million in damages. In exchange for these substantial benefits, the NFL players’ class agreed to a salary cap system.
There was a poison pill in the settlement that kept labor peace for 18 years.
The owners had a salary cap and the players would become free agents after four years of work instead of six seasons. The final year of the collective bargaining agreement, if either side pulled out of the pact, would see players free agency start at six years while the owners would cede the salary cap. That clause was important because neither side wanted to give up a significant piece of leverage as the most players never even get to four years service and the owners could control players costs.
The owners blew up the contract in May 2008 after a number of extensions. The owners no longer wanted to share nearly 60 percent of the industry's revenues with the players.
The post 1993 era players would enjoy far better post career pension and health benefits than those who were in the league before the 1993 season if they got vested. But former players are not getting too much help from the NFL and the NFLPA (or whatever form that the association is claiming today — this was a group who swore in the 1990s that it would never again represent NFL players and yet reformed) — Are all NFL players going to get real post retirement health benefits and if a player is physically disabled because of an injury or injuries suffered on the field, will the players association take care of medical bills or will the disability board turn down the former player forcing that player to seek government programs to pay for medical bills when the owners and players finally get a new agreement--which will happen eventually.
Will the NFL retirement and disability board take care of them? In the case of Johnny Unitas and many other players, they answer was no. Apparently players had a choice, retirement benefits or disability benefits. In Unitas' case, the retirement checks stopped when he took disability payments.
What happens if an NFL career lasts just a year before benefits really kick in? Who takes care of that player if in that one year of NFL play something happens that won't kick up until years after the career is done but can be traced back to football?
Will the United States Government be responsible for football related injuries? The answer to that question is yes and it doesn't matter if you are for health care or against it or you want social security or are looking to gut the system. That's why Congress is taking a closer look at the violent world of football.
One former player is claiming that owners don't want to pay medical and disability payments to former players and that the players association has gone along with the owners and not helped disabled players.
Another question. Is the Department of Labor's assertion that the NFL Retirement and Disability Board paying more attention to hiring lawyers and spending money there instead on former players with disabilities true?
The players should be looking into that.
The National Football League Players Association has put out some information saying it has spent $13 million or so to help out disabled players. A little while ago, the former Interim Director of the NFLPA Richard Berthelsen who was the association's general counsel for years took issue with the comment that the former Executive Director, the late Gene Upshaw, did very little to help out former players like John Mackey in times of need. Berthelsen said nobody did more for Mackey than Upshaw. The league and the players have a program, Plan 88 (Mackey's old number with the Baltimore Colts) that was added to the Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2007 providing eligible retired players with up to $88,000 per year for medical and custodial care resulting from dementia or Alzheimer's.
Mackey, the former President of the National Football League Players Association, is suffering from front temporal dementia. The NFL Players Association initially refused to pay a disability income due because some doctors have concluded there is no proven link between brain injury and playing football.
The battle between former players and the football industry over whether playing football causes brain injuries continues.
The "Big Game" in Minneapolis is just a part of the clash between owners, players and retired players in the major ongoing football battles.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
TUESDAY, 05 APRIL 2011 11:46
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Portions of this column are by Evan Weiner and Heather Rascher from ''A Business History of Professional Football,'' unpublished manuscript (2005).
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfls-big-game-against-the-players-starts-this-week-in-minneapolis
The biggest game on the NFL season starts on April 6 when National Football League owners and the remnants of the now defunct National Football League Players Association face off in a Minneapolis courtroom. In a script that looks like a sequel to the days after the National Football League Players Association imploded in October 1987 when the NFLPA decided to sue NFL owners for free agency, the NFLPA is back in a Minneapolis courthouse and suing NFL owners. Ten players, including one college player who was not even a part of the defunct NFLPA, Von Miller, are suing the league in an antitrust action hoping the court will lift the owners lockout.
Miller's name is on the suit but he is planning to attend the National Football League Draft, an act that restrictions the freedom of college players in finding jobs. The only reason the draft is legal is through collective bargaining. The owners and players have agreed to a draft. Miller plans to be in the courtroom while New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees, one of the 10 plaintiffs, will not attend the opening day festivities. Brees will be at a golf fundraiser.
Brees last week was sounded a conciliatory note to retired and discarded players after being blasted by Sam Huff for criticizing former players who are down and out because of football related injuries. Brees apparently learned well from the late Gene Upshaw (who was the NFLPA Executive Director) who once said that the association could not worry about every problem. While the NFL and the NFLPA duke it out in Minneapolis, the former NFLPA may be involved in another action as former New Orleans and Miami defensive back Gene Atkins is suing the NFL's retirement board after being denied additional health benefits by the group which included the late Dave Duerson. The former defensive back, Duerson, was on the board which said no to Atkins football degenerative claim in 2006. Duerson's suicide in February 2011 raises questions according to the brief filed about Duerson's competence in light of statements that came out after the suicide that he had memory loss and difficulties spelling words.
The NFL and the NFLPA have had more than a half century of issues.
The NFLPA formed in 1956 with help from Creighton Miller, the first General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Unhappy players in Cleveland and Green Bay assembled a network of "player reps" on each team. The players included Don Shula (Colts), Frank Gifford (Giants), and Norm Van Brocklin (Rams) to represent their teams. The Chicago Bears players did not have a representative. The players first meeting was held in New York in the fall of 1956, after the owners ignored the players' attempts to discuss their requests. The players asked for minimum salaries of $5,000 per season, injury pay, uniform per diems, and for teams to supply their own equipment.
Nothing happened but the players got a big break in 1957 when, the first lawsuit involving professional football and antitrust was filed, Radovich v. NFL, which significantly altered player rights within the league. The case involved a player/coach, George Radovich, who sued the league because the NFL effectively prevented him from attaining employment in the NFL or affiliated leagues, such as the Pacific Coast League, which was in existence at the time. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the NFL was exempted from the antitrust laws, and was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the trial court, holding professional football subject to the antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court decision changed life for NFL owners. The players could now sue the league on antitrust grounds which they threatened to do. The owners and players settled with the players receiving minimum salaries of $5,000, $50 payment for preseason games, medical coverage for injuries, and a pension.
But the players didn't get what they agreed to and spend the 1958 season chasing the owners to live up to the agreement. The deal was finally signed in 1959.
The players did catch another break when Lamar Hunt started the American Football league and for some college players, they were able to play the NFL off against the AFL in getting some leverage for their initial contract. The AFL-NFL war over established players began in earnest when Pete Gogolak, a kicker on the Buffalo Bills signed a deal with the New York Giants in 1966. What was good for Gogolak and two NFL quarterbacks John Brodie and Roman Gabriel along with Mike Ditka who were been pursued by AFL Commissioner Al Davis to sign with his league was not good for the owners of either league. Brodie, Gabriel and Ditka got raises from their NFL teams. The AFL and NFL announced their intent to merge on June 8, 1966.
The National Football League Players Association wanted to fight the merger but didn't have the funding to do so.
The NFLPA has always been weak and the owners have always known that. The two leagues may have merged, but the player associations did not, as the players on the 16 NFL teams were NFLPA members and the players on the 10 AFL teams were American Football League Players Association members. This caused a major problem in subsequent negotiations as the NFLPA would come to a tentative agreement with the owners on certain collective bargaining issues (such as minimum salaries, retirement age) then the owners would bargain with the AFLPA, who accepted lower terms, which wasn't good for NFLPA members.
There was a brief lockout and a 20-day strike in 1970 that ended just before the 1970 All Star game and which did not result in the cancellation of regular or post-season games, the NFL and NFLPA signed a four-year contract, the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of the NFL, which raised player salary minimums to $12,500 for rookies and $13,000 for veterans, added dental insurance, improved the pension, gave players the right to have agents, gave players representation on the Retirement Board, and provided for impartial arbitration of injury grievances.
(Retired players from that era are still battling the NFL and the NFLPA and the retirement board over injury grievances and the complaining have caught the attention of Congress)
In 1974, the previous CBA was coming to an end. Players were demanding the elimination of the Rozelle Rule and the option clause which kept a player tied to his team in perpetuity unless another team was willing to give up number one draft picks or players to sign a free agent among other things. On July 1, the players went on strike, and were prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out. The sit-out led to the cancellation of the New York Jets game at New Haven, the first game ever canceled due to a labor impasse. However, by the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines, breaking down union solidarity. On August 11, Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period, instead pursuing the issue through the John Mackey case. The 42-day strike ended that day with nothing gained.
The NFLPA won the Mackey vs. NFL antitrust lawsuit in 1977, but players received only limited free agency with compensation under a new CBA.
On September 21, 1982, NFL players went on strike. It was the longest strike in professional sports in the U.S. at the time and lasted until November 17. The owners responded by locking the players out at the commencement of the strike. During the strike, only 126 of the 224 scheduled regular-season games were played, forcing the league to change the format of post-season play to include 16 teams instead of the usual 10 teams. The players held two "All-Star" games to raise some funding for players without a paycheck. The players got more money but two goals were not met, a form of free agency and more pension money.
The owners were not going to let that happen 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 canceled the third week's schedule and resumed with the week four match ups.
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.
"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. Casserly 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 Jets 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."
The players did not get much though in post career benefits. They got their "Money Now" and didn't worry about the long term affect that football would have on their health.
After the conclusion of the 1987 players’ strike, the NFLPA filed an antitrust suit against the owners on October 15, 1987, seeking an injunction against the continuation of the NFL’s player reservation system, and asking for free agency. In (Marvin) Powell (v NFL), filed in the same jurisdiction that heard the Mackey case a decade earlier, the NFLPA claimed that, absent a new agreement, the NFL could not rely upon any “labor exemption” to immunize its player choice and movement restrictions from antitrust laws. Essentially the case considered whether the non statutory labor exemption would continue to protect the RFR system after the expiration of the CBA, and for how long the protection would be extended. In the first phase of the Powell I trial, the NFL argued for exemption based on the theory that the RFR system was entitled to absolute immunity as the subject of mandatory bargaining affecting only parties to the employment relationship. Additionally, the league conversely argued that the survival doctrine, which suggested that the non statutory labor exemption in effect during the term of a CBA survives the expiration of such CBA providing that the conduct at issue was protected during the term of the agreement, protecting the system from antitrust laws indefinitely following the expiration of the CBA.
The absolute immunity theory was rejected by the District Court of Minnesota, which spent more time focusing on the survival doctrine theory, using the Mackey test to determine whether the 1982 CBA qualified for the non statutory labor exemption. Despite the claims of the players that the 1982 CBA was not the product of arm’s length bargaining, the court found that the contrary to be true, and considered whether the CBA then “survived” its expiration due to the fact that it was reached through collective, arm’s length bargaining. The court determined that the CBA would in fact survive the exemption, but still had to determine the length of time such an exemption remains effective.
In January 1988, the district court ruled that the exemption survives the expiration of a CBA, but terminates when the employer and the union reach a bargaining impasse on an issue. Judge David Doty’s decision analyzed the positions of the parties and rejected both arguments, ruling that the “labor exemption related to a mandatory bargaining subject survived expiration of the collective bargaining agreement until the parties reach impasse as to that issue.” Doty indicated an unwillingness to apply the non statutory exemption fully, and ruled that he would not extend “blanket protection to union-employer agreements merely because the challenged activity arises within the context of mandatory collective bargaining.” The decision ultimately favored the owners, allowing them to implement new or different employment terms reasonably contemplated within the scope of the parties’ bargaining history. In Powell I, however, the court could not determine whether the parties had in fact reached an impasse, as it was awaiting an NLRB ruling on NFL charges that the players’ union was not bargaining in good faith.
The NLRB ruled in April 1988, dismissing the owner’s charges of bad faith bargaining, and finding the NFLPA was not required to continue to meet and bargain with the NFL because the parties had reached an impasse in negotiations. In June of 1988, after hearing the motions, the court rendered its decision that the parties had in fact reached an impasse over the free agency issue and that the system of restraints on player movement was now subject to antitrust laws.
The NFLPA decertified in 1989. It no longer represented NFL players and would never do so in the future. (The 2011 NFL complaint to the National Labor Relations Board pointed out that the present NFLPA had decertification as a tool in their toolkit and planned to use it all along in bargaining with the owners and would blow up collective bargaining talks and run to court.)
The players sought an injunction against the use of the RFR system in Powell II, and the owner’s contested the injunction and the court’s earlier ruling. The court ruled that the non statutory labor exemption no longer protected the RFR system from antitrust review, but agreed with the owners that it had no legal authority by which to grant an injunction. Thus the first two phases of Powell set the stage for Powell III, to determine whether the RFR system did in fact violate antitrust laws.
In the final phase of Powell, the NFL filed an interlocutory appeal in the 8th Circuit seeking an order reviving the exemption, reiterating its earlier argument that the labor law should prevail. The players argued that an agreement with the League would in essence overturn the court’s earlier decision in Mackey. The court determined that both parties have a continuing obligation to bargain with one another in furtherance of the collective bargaining process and to maintain a peaceful labor relationship. Further, upon impasse, the courts ruled that the League may exercise its discretion in implementing new or different employment terms within the scope of the parties’ pre-impasse proposals. Finally, the court disagreed with the ruling in Powell II, and ruled to allow the players to unilaterally generate an impasse in order to subvert the non statutory labor exemption and to pursue an antitrust suit for damages. The court then determined that the exemption would survive until a collective bargaining relationship no longer existed, forcing the players back into a bargaining process in which they historically operated at a disadvantage. The court instead suggested that the players resolve a dispute by 1) collective bargaining, 2) using economic force, or 3) reporting their claims to the NLRB.
The NFL appealed and Doty’s finding was overruled. In November 1989, the Appeals court reversed the earlier court’s ruling stating that as long as the players had a union that they could not sue under the antitrust laws (according to rulings involving the dual approach of collective bargaining and antitrust laws). The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals found that, since bargaining was continuing, the labor exemption was still in effect, and overturned Doty’s view and found the restraints in Powell were “exempted from antitrust scrutiny as the exemption survived impasse.” The court ruled that these practices remained within the non statutory labor exemption as long as the NFL and NFLPA maintained an “ongoing collective bargaining relationship”, and that the players could not pursue antitrust claims during collective bargaining. A federal jury subsequently awarded damages and unrestricted free agency to four plaintiffs. Thus, in the aftermath of Powell, the NFLPA decertified, and challenged the NFL’s restraints on antitrust grounds, setting the stage for further litigation.
In 1988, the Washington Redskins signed Wilbur Marshall, paying a steep price ($6 million for 5 years) for his contract, and having to give up their first-round draft choices in 1988 and 1999 as compensation to the Chicago Bears — a penalty that discouraged future deals. In effect, the player’s old team maintains the right of first refusal whereby it can match any offer made to the player by another club, and any team which ultimately signs the player must compensate the old team with draft choices, costing teams at least two first round draft choices to sign most top level free agents, such as what occurred with Wilbur Marshall.
McNeil v. National Football League with Freeman McNeil of Jets as lead plaintiff, involved free agency and related antitrust claims. Prior to the trial in June 1992, the parties filed a number of pretrial motions, the most important of which was the players’ motion for partial summary judgment to strike the owners’ labor exemption defense. The players argued that because the union had officially been decertified, the non statutory labor exemption no longer barred an antitrust challenge to Plan B, thus allowing the jury to consider the case under the Sherman Act. Further, the players’ argued that by abandoning the union they had been placed at a significant bargaining disadvantage, as the owners had used the player association’s non-union status to strip the players of insurance benefits and to extend the playing season. In its defense, the NFL relied on competitive balance arguments saying that the restrictions on free agency were necessary. The League also claimed that the NFLPA continued to function as the official bargaining representative for the players despite decertification, and, regardless of the union’s status as certified or decertified, the non statutory labor exemption still remained in effect.
In the Powell case, the court provided no guidance as to a specific time or event that would eliminate the exemption, and that the court rejected the owners’ contention that the exemption should extend indefinitely. Moreover, the court rejected the owner’s claims that the NFLPA and the players’ union separation via decertification was not valid considering that the NLRB did not decertify the NFLPA. Both parties moved for summary judgment on several fronts. The NFL denied that it could act as a monopoly and violate the Sherman Act, as it was simply a conglomeration of co-owners that were engaged in the common business of producing and marketing professional football for entertainment; the court rejected this claim. Moreover, the NFL claimed that Plan B did not violate antitrust laws, and even if it did the players were not entitled to any damages. The court denied the owners’ motion, holding the owners liable for “antitrust damages from the date the collective bargaining relationship between the union and the league was terminated, but agreeing with the owners that the League was not itself a monopoly. The court did, however, deny the players’ motion for summary judgment concerning the application of the per se rule.
The sides even argued over the jury selection, which was comprised of eight women, none of whom watched professional football. The NFL realized that the odds were not in their favor, and continued to try to convince the jury that under Plan B all parties flourished and that unrestricted free agency would financially ruin many teams in the league. In September 1992, the jury verdict in the McNeil case found that the NFL owners’ restrictions in Plan B were unreasonable restraints of trade in violation of the Sherman Act. The jury also ruled that Plan B resulted in many players being under compensated, and that competitive balance could be preserved with a more liberal system. The jury awarded damages to four of the eight plaintiffs (not McNeil) totaling $543,000 (which was trebled to $1.63 million as per antitrust laws). While damages to the players were minimal, the case opened the door for free agency in football. However, total free agency was not approved by the courts, which ruled that some restrictions were necessary to maintain competitive balance.
The jury’s verdict effectively destroyed Plan B, sending the parties back to the bargaining table. Settlement talks began because both sides had leverage and something to lose. Both sides were victorious, in that the players were freed from Plan B, but did not get unrestricted free agency. The NFL had a few choices: implement another plan that was sufficiently different than Plan B (because only Plan B was enjoined), or it could hope for a reversal on appeal of the McNeil case and continue with Plan B.
Although both parties returned to the bargaining table, they were soon engaged in further legal disputes involving the noncompetitive effects of the League on its players. Aware that it would take time for the McNeil ruling to take effect, the players involved in the dispute remained unsigned at the time of the verdict (September 1992). These players subsequently filed suit, Jackson v. NFL, attempting to be freed from operating under the Plan B system and seeking damages for financial injuries suffered due to the restrictive nature of the system. The case was lead by Keith Jackson of the Philadelphia Eagles, and the remaining nine players involved in the suit included D.J. Dozier, Thomas Everett, Louis Lipps, Stephone Paige, Joseph Phillips, Webster Slaughter, Natu Tuatagoloa, Garin Veris, and Leon White. Before the court could rule on the case, six of the ten players were either released or traded, leaving only four players restricted by Plan B. The court allowed the players five days to sign contracts with other clubs, all of which did, and, because there were no other players that were unsigned or were restricted by Plan B. As such, the case was dismissed by Judge Doty, and left the league with the sense that the courts were now behind the players.
Following the McNeil verdict, a new antitrust lawsuit was filed on behalf of all NFL players – White v. NFL challenging the continued implementation of these or similar unreasonable restraints on competition for player services. The White case was lead by Reggie White, a tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles, who filed the case on behalf of himself and any other player who would play or played in the NFL. The case sought to permanently enjoin the future enforcement of Plan B or any other system, the draft, preseason pay, and the NFL owners’ refusal of negotiating individual benefit packages. In January 1993, the NFL owners agreed to a global settlement of the White class action and other player suits, which granted NFL players, for the first time, the opportunity to be unrestricted free agents, with substantial increases in compensation in a now competitive market. These settlements resulted in payments of $195 million in damages. In exchange for these substantial benefits, the NFL players’ class agreed to a salary cap system.
There was a poison pill in the settlement that kept labor peace for 18 years.
The owners had a salary cap and the players would become free agents after four years of work instead of six seasons. The final year of the collective bargaining agreement, if either side pulled out of the pact, would see players free agency start at six years while the owners would cede the salary cap. That clause was important because neither side wanted to give up a significant piece of leverage as the most players never even get to four years service and the owners could control players costs.
The owners blew up the contract in May 2008 after a number of extensions. The owners no longer wanted to share nearly 60 percent of the industry's revenues with the players.
The post 1993 era players would enjoy far better post career pension and health benefits than those who were in the league before the 1993 season if they got vested. But former players are not getting too much help from the NFL and the NFLPA (or whatever form that the association is claiming today — this was a group who swore in the 1990s that it would never again represent NFL players and yet reformed) — Are all NFL players going to get real post retirement health benefits and if a player is physically disabled because of an injury or injuries suffered on the field, will the players association take care of medical bills or will the disability board turn down the former player forcing that player to seek government programs to pay for medical bills when the owners and players finally get a new agreement--which will happen eventually.
Will the NFL retirement and disability board take care of them? In the case of Johnny Unitas and many other players, they answer was no. Apparently players had a choice, retirement benefits or disability benefits. In Unitas' case, the retirement checks stopped when he took disability payments.
What happens if an NFL career lasts just a year before benefits really kick in? Who takes care of that player if in that one year of NFL play something happens that won't kick up until years after the career is done but can be traced back to football?
Will the United States Government be responsible for football related injuries? The answer to that question is yes and it doesn't matter if you are for health care or against it or you want social security or are looking to gut the system. That's why Congress is taking a closer look at the violent world of football.
One former player is claiming that owners don't want to pay medical and disability payments to former players and that the players association has gone along with the owners and not helped disabled players.
Another question. Is the Department of Labor's assertion that the NFL Retirement and Disability Board paying more attention to hiring lawyers and spending money there instead on former players with disabilities true?
The players should be looking into that.
The National Football League Players Association has put out some information saying it has spent $13 million or so to help out disabled players. A little while ago, the former Interim Director of the NFLPA Richard Berthelsen who was the association's general counsel for years took issue with the comment that the former Executive Director, the late Gene Upshaw, did very little to help out former players like John Mackey in times of need. Berthelsen said nobody did more for Mackey than Upshaw. The league and the players have a program, Plan 88 (Mackey's old number with the Baltimore Colts) that was added to the Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2007 providing eligible retired players with up to $88,000 per year for medical and custodial care resulting from dementia or Alzheimer's.
Mackey, the former President of the National Football League Players Association, is suffering from front temporal dementia. The NFL Players Association initially refused to pay a disability income due because some doctors have concluded there is no proven link between brain injury and playing football.
The battle between former players and the football industry over whether playing football causes brain injuries continues.
The "Big Game" in Minneapolis is just a part of the clash between owners, players and retired players in the major ongoing football battles.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Monday, February 21, 2011
American people deserve answer to NFL’s billion dollar healthcare question
Monday, 21 February 2011 11:49
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/american-people-deserve-answer-to-nfls-billion-dollar-healthcare-question
There is a major question that the "American People" should be asking in the ongoing labor dispute between National Football League owners and the National Football League Players Association as the two sides head to a March 4th lockout. Are the players association's negotiators asking for a change in post career health benefits or are the reps asking for status quo? Status quo means that qualified former pros get health care for just five years following their last game. That is important for the "American People" to know because the "American People" are picking up the cost of taking care of broken down former pros that cannot get health insurance and instead are living on social security disability and Medicare.
The cost to the American taxpayer? Higher than a billion dollars.
Working conditions in the National Football League, whether Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and other like minded people and politicians care for it or not, is collectively bargained. Players can bargain for rights with owners like other workers in many other businesses. NFL owners need help with their businesses from the players for antitrust reasons as well and know it.
The only reason there is a National Football League Draft of college players is due to an agreement between the owners and players to hold the draft which is essentially an illegal restraint of trade. Salaries are just part of the agreement and because there has always been a let's get the most money available at one time possible attitude that trumps any thought of what life is like in the post football career life of an NFL player. It is just an afterthought somewhere down the road.
The players association has done a very poor job of taking care of members in the football after life. Players now get five years medical benefits after their playing careers and then they are out on their own. There are countless stories of broken down football players on the public dole after the cheering stops.
Because of pre-existing conditions — which were more than likely caused by their job playing football — a majority of players are uninsurable and go on the public dole.
There has been some buzz that the players may be asking for 10 years worth of post career health benefits but that is probably too little a time period as the real health problems seem really hit when a player is in his 40s. But the players have not discussed what they want from the owners publicly.
Perhaps it is time for Congress to really hold legitimate hearings, whether it is either the House or Senate Oversight and Government Reform Committee or the House or Senate Judiciary Committee and find out why players leaving an industry that brings in billions upon billions of dollars worth of revenue without a real post career benefit package.
Politicians love talking about what the "American People" want or hearing from the "American People" but rarely do they really listen or take care of the real needs of the "American People." To those on both sides of the aisle, the "American People" would like to know why the responsibility of taking care of the former employees or the players of America's sports popular spectator sport in pro football's afterlife.
Not every player gets a multimillion dollar contract and the average career doesn't even last three seasons. But the medical needs of both average players and the superstars start not long after a career is done. The players joke that the initials NFL mean "Not For Long" and it appears they are right.
The present talks between the owners and players are following a natural progression. The owners want to reduce the players take of the gross revenue and knock down salaries by 18 percent on average. The owners would like to increase the regular season by two games to 18 and also have a rookie wage scale. The players want to keep status quo. They are disagreeing and both sides are saber rattling.
It is the status quo that is a problem for American taxpayers. It is a problem that House member Lamar Smith (R-TX) doesn't think needs governmental intervention.
Representative Smith is incorrect.
NFL owners (along with those of the American Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the American Basketball League) were given an antirust exemption on September 30, 1961 that put a lot of money into the then 14 owners pocket. The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 allowed the National Football League to sell the television rights of all 14 members to a television network. Within a year, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle cut the league's first national TV deal and that opened the floodgates of money into what was nothing more than a mom and pop store operation.
The then two-year old American Football League had a national TV deal with the struggling American Broadcasting Company. The new league flew under the radar and inked the deal with ABC selling all eight of the league's franchises as one. AFL founder Lamar Hunt "borrowed" bundling his league's franchise as one and selling the TV rights to one company from Branch Rickey's Continental Baseball League.
Rickey's league never got off the ground, but there was an assumption that the Continental League would get the same rights as the American League and the National League and could sell the 12-team TV package as one entity because of the 1922 decision by the United States Supreme Court which ruled that baseball was a game in the Baltimore Terrapins (of the Federal League) suit against the National League.
The NFL's 1964 deal with CBS' William Paley spurred NBC's David Sarnoff to underwrite a lot of the costs of Hunt's AFL after Sarnoff lost the bidding for NFL TV rights to Paley. Sarnoff gave the AFL money to compete with the NFL. By 1966, owners in both leagues decided that a bidding war for players' services was becoming too cost and agreed to merge.
The NFL and AFL announced an intention to merge on June 8, 1966. Congress had to sign off on the merger (which was an anti-competition truce). Senator Russell Long and Representative Hale Boggs, both of Louisiana, traded their no votes to yes after Rozelle assured them New Orleans would get an expansion team. Congress passed the legislation as a rider on an anti-inflation bill and it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in October, 1966.
The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the merger go ahead built the National Football League into a multi billion dollar enterprise. (The same act didn't help the other entities — The NBA could not get a TV deal after the 1961-62 season when the NBC deal ended. In 1964, ABC picked up NBA telecasts following a two-year absence from national TV. The NBA flew under the radar screen as well and was considered a mom and pop operation. The American Basketball League lasted for just one full year, 1961-62 and folded on December 31, 1962. The National Hockey League didn't have a TV deal at the time of the passage of the 1961 Broadcast Act. There was a story in Sports Illustrated which claimed NHL owners ended a deal that was in place with CBS from 1956-60 because the league owners decided they didn't want to give the players a share of the television revenues. The NHL returned to network TV in 1966.)
Congress needs to get involved with the NFL-NFLPA talks for a myriad of reasons. The discarded player post career health benefit issue and its cost to the "American People" is enormous and demands attention.
"There is more to come on the NFL shifting of health costs to the public, especially to State and Federal Disability programs, namely Social Security," said Mel Owens, a former linebacker with the Los Angeles Rams from 1981-89 and now a practicing disability lawyer. "This will be the next big issue.
Remember, these players, as a group, are the most injured in society. They all have major orthopedic, internal and neurological injuries, and the most significant part of this is their age — they are all under 40-years of age when they leave the game. This puts the burden and cost on the government for many years, having to deal with the results of their injuries, such as multiple joint replacements, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, dementia and early onset of Alzheimer's.
By the insurance companies own cost estimate relative to the players injuries is over a billion dollars. This is their number not anyone else's. The NFL is circumventing their responsibility and liability by shifting the long term disability cost to the State and Federal Government, thus driving up the cost of insurance for every person in America.
It's time to call on Congress to act."
Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he is beginning to snoop around which means there could be some Senate hearings on the issue down the road.
Why the players association has never taken care of former members in the football afterlife is open to some conjecture. There are two theories as to why that happened. 1) Player agents wanted to make a quick buck and pushed for money over long term issues such as pensions and health benefits and wanted to get as much money as possible in representing a player fearing that players taking less money and leaving money for future health care would result in less commission for them because there would be less money available for salaries. 2) The late Gene Upshaw, who was the Executive Director of the NFLPA, always made it a point to please players who were paying his salary and his responsibility was to that pool of players from year to year. Upshaw seemed to distance himself from the retired players until push came to shove when it came to light that former association president John Mackey was suffering from a brain injury and needed assistance. Retired or discarded players have used Upshaw quotes such as "what are we supposed to do, fix every injury of every player?" to support their contention that the association didn't care about the retired guys.
Both the NFL and NFLPA were shamed into creating the "88 Plan", named after Mackey's uniform number, in 2005 which provides up to $88,000 for institutional care and up to $50,000 in custodial care for players who are suffering from serious illnesses which may have been caused by football injuries. As of last October, the two sides had given a little less than $10 million to 132 former players. That $10 million figure is about one-one hundredth short of what Owens says is needed to take care of the former players.
Congress needs to haul in owners, members of the players association and agents and get everyone to testify under oath just exactly has happened over the decades of labor negotiations and collective bargaining agreements that has caused the "American people" to be so involved with the football afterlife.
Representative Lamar Smith was not correct in stating that the NFL and the NFLPA should be left to settle their differences. Both sides have agreed to outside help, mediation, and the NFL filed an unfair labor practice grievance at the NFLPA with the National Labor Relations Board. The "American People", the people that Representative Smith and 434 other members of the House along with the 100 members of the Senate who do "the people's business", deserve to know why former football players are not being covered by the industry that is flowing in money that those disabled former players helped build.
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, 21 February 2011 11:49
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/american-people-deserve-answer-to-nfls-billion-dollar-healthcare-question
There is a major question that the "American People" should be asking in the ongoing labor dispute between National Football League owners and the National Football League Players Association as the two sides head to a March 4th lockout. Are the players association's negotiators asking for a change in post career health benefits or are the reps asking for status quo? Status quo means that qualified former pros get health care for just five years following their last game. That is important for the "American People" to know because the "American People" are picking up the cost of taking care of broken down former pros that cannot get health insurance and instead are living on social security disability and Medicare.
The cost to the American taxpayer? Higher than a billion dollars.
Working conditions in the National Football League, whether Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and other like minded people and politicians care for it or not, is collectively bargained. Players can bargain for rights with owners like other workers in many other businesses. NFL owners need help with their businesses from the players for antitrust reasons as well and know it.
The only reason there is a National Football League Draft of college players is due to an agreement between the owners and players to hold the draft which is essentially an illegal restraint of trade. Salaries are just part of the agreement and because there has always been a let's get the most money available at one time possible attitude that trumps any thought of what life is like in the post football career life of an NFL player. It is just an afterthought somewhere down the road.
The players association has done a very poor job of taking care of members in the football after life. Players now get five years medical benefits after their playing careers and then they are out on their own. There are countless stories of broken down football players on the public dole after the cheering stops.
Because of pre-existing conditions — which were more than likely caused by their job playing football — a majority of players are uninsurable and go on the public dole.
There has been some buzz that the players may be asking for 10 years worth of post career health benefits but that is probably too little a time period as the real health problems seem really hit when a player is in his 40s. But the players have not discussed what they want from the owners publicly.
Perhaps it is time for Congress to really hold legitimate hearings, whether it is either the House or Senate Oversight and Government Reform Committee or the House or Senate Judiciary Committee and find out why players leaving an industry that brings in billions upon billions of dollars worth of revenue without a real post career benefit package.
Politicians love talking about what the "American People" want or hearing from the "American People" but rarely do they really listen or take care of the real needs of the "American People." To those on both sides of the aisle, the "American People" would like to know why the responsibility of taking care of the former employees or the players of America's sports popular spectator sport in pro football's afterlife.
Not every player gets a multimillion dollar contract and the average career doesn't even last three seasons. But the medical needs of both average players and the superstars start not long after a career is done. The players joke that the initials NFL mean "Not For Long" and it appears they are right.
The present talks between the owners and players are following a natural progression. The owners want to reduce the players take of the gross revenue and knock down salaries by 18 percent on average. The owners would like to increase the regular season by two games to 18 and also have a rookie wage scale. The players want to keep status quo. They are disagreeing and both sides are saber rattling.
It is the status quo that is a problem for American taxpayers. It is a problem that House member Lamar Smith (R-TX) doesn't think needs governmental intervention.
Representative Smith is incorrect.
NFL owners (along with those of the American Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and the American Basketball League) were given an antirust exemption on September 30, 1961 that put a lot of money into the then 14 owners pocket. The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 allowed the National Football League to sell the television rights of all 14 members to a television network. Within a year, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle cut the league's first national TV deal and that opened the floodgates of money into what was nothing more than a mom and pop store operation.
The then two-year old American Football League had a national TV deal with the struggling American Broadcasting Company. The new league flew under the radar and inked the deal with ABC selling all eight of the league's franchises as one. AFL founder Lamar Hunt "borrowed" bundling his league's franchise as one and selling the TV rights to one company from Branch Rickey's Continental Baseball League.
Rickey's league never got off the ground, but there was an assumption that the Continental League would get the same rights as the American League and the National League and could sell the 12-team TV package as one entity because of the 1922 decision by the United States Supreme Court which ruled that baseball was a game in the Baltimore Terrapins (of the Federal League) suit against the National League.
The NFL's 1964 deal with CBS' William Paley spurred NBC's David Sarnoff to underwrite a lot of the costs of Hunt's AFL after Sarnoff lost the bidding for NFL TV rights to Paley. Sarnoff gave the AFL money to compete with the NFL. By 1966, owners in both leagues decided that a bidding war for players' services was becoming too cost and agreed to merge.
The NFL and AFL announced an intention to merge on June 8, 1966. Congress had to sign off on the merger (which was an anti-competition truce). Senator Russell Long and Representative Hale Boggs, both of Louisiana, traded their no votes to yes after Rozelle assured them New Orleans would get an expansion team. Congress passed the legislation as a rider on an anti-inflation bill and it was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in October, 1966.
The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the merger go ahead built the National Football League into a multi billion dollar enterprise. (The same act didn't help the other entities — The NBA could not get a TV deal after the 1961-62 season when the NBC deal ended. In 1964, ABC picked up NBA telecasts following a two-year absence from national TV. The NBA flew under the radar screen as well and was considered a mom and pop operation. The American Basketball League lasted for just one full year, 1961-62 and folded on December 31, 1962. The National Hockey League didn't have a TV deal at the time of the passage of the 1961 Broadcast Act. There was a story in Sports Illustrated which claimed NHL owners ended a deal that was in place with CBS from 1956-60 because the league owners decided they didn't want to give the players a share of the television revenues. The NHL returned to network TV in 1966.)
Congress needs to get involved with the NFL-NFLPA talks for a myriad of reasons. The discarded player post career health benefit issue and its cost to the "American People" is enormous and demands attention.
"There is more to come on the NFL shifting of health costs to the public, especially to State and Federal Disability programs, namely Social Security," said Mel Owens, a former linebacker with the Los Angeles Rams from 1981-89 and now a practicing disability lawyer. "This will be the next big issue.
Remember, these players, as a group, are the most injured in society. They all have major orthopedic, internal and neurological injuries, and the most significant part of this is their age — they are all under 40-years of age when they leave the game. This puts the burden and cost on the government for many years, having to deal with the results of their injuries, such as multiple joint replacements, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, dementia and early onset of Alzheimer's.
By the insurance companies own cost estimate relative to the players injuries is over a billion dollars. This is their number not anyone else's. The NFL is circumventing their responsibility and liability by shifting the long term disability cost to the State and Federal Government, thus driving up the cost of insurance for every person in America.
It's time to call on Congress to act."
Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he is beginning to snoop around which means there could be some Senate hearings on the issue down the road.
Why the players association has never taken care of former members in the football afterlife is open to some conjecture. There are two theories as to why that happened. 1) Player agents wanted to make a quick buck and pushed for money over long term issues such as pensions and health benefits and wanted to get as much money as possible in representing a player fearing that players taking less money and leaving money for future health care would result in less commission for them because there would be less money available for salaries. 2) The late Gene Upshaw, who was the Executive Director of the NFLPA, always made it a point to please players who were paying his salary and his responsibility was to that pool of players from year to year. Upshaw seemed to distance himself from the retired players until push came to shove when it came to light that former association president John Mackey was suffering from a brain injury and needed assistance. Retired or discarded players have used Upshaw quotes such as "what are we supposed to do, fix every injury of every player?" to support their contention that the association didn't care about the retired guys.
Both the NFL and NFLPA were shamed into creating the "88 Plan", named after Mackey's uniform number, in 2005 which provides up to $88,000 for institutional care and up to $50,000 in custodial care for players who are suffering from serious illnesses which may have been caused by football injuries. As of last October, the two sides had given a little less than $10 million to 132 former players. That $10 million figure is about one-one hundredth short of what Owens says is needed to take care of the former players.
Congress needs to haul in owners, members of the players association and agents and get everyone to testify under oath just exactly has happened over the decades of labor negotiations and collective bargaining agreements that has caused the "American people" to be so involved with the football afterlife.
Representative Lamar Smith was not correct in stating that the NFL and the NFLPA should be left to settle their differences. Both sides have agreed to outside help, mediation, and the NFL filed an unfair labor practice grievance at the NFLPA with the National Labor Relations Board. The "American People", the people that Representative Smith and 434 other members of the House along with the 100 members of the Senate who do "the people's business", deserve to know why former football players are not being covered by the industry that is flowing in money that those disabled former players helped build.
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
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Lamar Smith should talk to Jon Runyan before keeping Congress out of NFL labor dispute
WEDNESDAY, 09 FEBRUARY 2011 11:39
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/lamar-smith-should-talk-to-jon-runyan-before-keeping-congress-out-of-nfl-labor-dispute
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Should Congress get involved in the collective bargaining agreement talks between the National Football League owners and the National Football League Players Association? The answer is yes because Congress and two Presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson actually created the conditions which made today's NFL a financial behemoth with the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the 1966 AFL-NFL merger. The two pieces of legislation gave the National Football League vast antitrust exemptions. Two other bills signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, which changed cable TV rules and the 1986 reform of the tax code also paid dividends for NFL owners.
The NFL seems to rake in more than $9 billion annually although the league refuses to open both team and league financial records. The publicly-owned, non-profit Green Bay Packers franchise announced a $9.8 million profit for the calendar year ending on March 31, 2010. But that is down significantly from 2007 when the franchise announced a profit of $34.2 million. Revenues are up but so are salaries since then.
Still, the NFL's smallest market is making a nice profit.
Additionally, there are a good number of former NFL players who are on government assistance whether it is living on social security disability insurance or Medicare. The "discarded" players have pre-existing conditions from football injuries and are uninsurable. Like it or not, these players are living on the government dole because the National Football League Players Association leadership never thought much about the players futures once they left the game.
The Super Bowl is designated as a "National Special Security Event" which activates involvement from the United States Secret Service (the group in charge of the event security), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (which handles law enforcement) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chair of House Judiciary Committee, said Congress should stay out of the NFL's CBA negotiations. "That is a business dispute. The owners and players are both literally and figuratively big boys and do not need Congress to referee every dispute for them."
Congressman Smith is wrong.
In 2005, Congress decided to look into Major League Baseball's drug testing policy for steroids and other banned performance enhancement drugs after the International Olympic Committee put pressure on elected officials because baseball would not send big name players to the IOC's biannual sports event. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform swung into action after the release of Jose Canseco's book when he accused some of baseball's biggest names of using steroids.
In 2007, the NFL Network was scheduled to show the New York Giants-New England Patriots game on the final Saturday night of the season. New England was 15-0 and was bidding for a perfect season. The NFL Network was struggling to gain carriage agreements with big multiple system operators in the cable TV world. The game would be available on the NFL Network and a few over the air TV stations in Boston and New York by the lack of NFL Network cable penetration meant most of the country would not see the contest.
The United States Senate, led by Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter and Vermont's Patrick Leahy stepped in and threatened to look at remedies if the NFL did not make the game available beyond the NFL Network and local stations in New York and Boston. The remedies started with the Senate Judicial Committee examining the various NFL antitrust exemptions which could have included the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the various additions tacked onto that legislation over the years.
Not surprisingly, the NFL opposition to make the game widely available to protect the NFL Network or force cable operators to take the NFL Network folded and the NFL allowed the game to put the game on CBS and NBC.
Here is a suggestion for Congressman Smith. Have lunch with fellow Republican Congressman Jon Runyan from New Jersey and a former offensive tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles and ask him about the business of the NFL. How Congress gave the league the tools for big TV deals, the 1966 merger, legislation that allowed owners to play city against city to get sweetheart stadium leases in the late 1980s and beyond. Congressman Runyan also must have first hand knowledge of the sad football stories that continue to surface such as this which was e-mailed to this reporter.
"My husband (name protected) played in the mid 70's to 80. We just saw results of neck MRI yesterday. — Not good, but helps explain severe headaches.
He remembers the game the injury took place and he could not move his legs and arms the next day. The teams reassuring remark to him was, get better because you have to play the next week!
"Five years ago he was diagnosed with brain damage. Trying to get NFL to agree there's physical, long term injuries in past NFL players is nearly impossible. They just keep appointing another committee to look into matter."
Congressman Runyan was once a member of the National Football League Players Association.
Here is what Congress did to build the National Football League. Before the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act, the Mara's New York Giants, George Halas' Chicago Bears and Daniel Reeves's Los Angeles Rams were getting the lion share of the television money which was available in those days. Green Bay, which was the league's smallest market, was struggling to get some money for the team's TV rights. Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Cellar got the Sports Broadcast Act through the House in almost record time, while Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver got the Senate to agree with the House quickly and President Kennedy signed the bill almost immediately.
The NFL, which was 14 separate businesses, became one entity for TV purposes which was clearly a violation of antitrust laws.
NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was able to get William Paley's CBS and David Sarnoff's NBC to bid on the 14-team league's games. CBS won the bid. In 1964, CBS extended the NFL deal with Rozelle. Sarnoff was livid and called the American Football League's New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin, who was working with MCA-TV and supplying some to NBC, and wanted to even the score. NBC gave the AFL a huge TV deal which gave the league the wherewithal to sign big time college stars. Werblin's Jets signed Joe Namath.
Both NFL and AFL owners began to complain that a bidding war was ruining their business and decided a merger was necessary to halt rising salaries. By the summer of 1966, Rozelle was summoned to do what commissioners do.
Lobby Congress.
Initially neither Louisiana Senator Russell Long nor Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs were too interested in supporting the proposed merger. New Orleans was not getting either an NFL or AFL franchise and they didn't see the need to merge. Rozelle got Long and Boggs to sign on for the merger by promising New Orleans a team in 1967. There were a few other details that needed to be cleaned up. One of the NFL-AFL proposals was to realign franchises so that New York and the San Francisco Bay Area would remain one franchise markets. The merged leagues agreed to move the Jets from Queens to Los Angeles, Reeves would take his Rams to San Diego. Barron Hilton's Chargers would leave San Diego and relocate to New Orleans and Oakland would lose the Raiders with that franchise ending up in the Pacific Northwest in either Seattle or Portland, Oregon.
The NFL's old best friend in Congress, Emanuel Cellar said no to that idea. Werblin's Jets paid $10 million to the Mara Giants for the right to share the New York territory while Raiders owners gave $8 million to the San Francisco 49ers ownership because the team "invaded" the 49ers territory. New Orleans got an expansion team and Cincinnati ended up with an AFL expansion team although NFL owners collected the AFL expansion fee.
Those two acts of Congress propelled the NFL into the sports stratosphere in the United States and created the Super Bowl, or the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.
There is more than a century's worth of history of monitoring football in Washington. President Theodore Roosevelt is credited with saving football from extinction in 1905.
If Representative Smith or Representative Runyon wants a brief history of Roosevelt's involvement in the game, they should go to the Theodore Roosevelt Association website and read up on Roosevelt's involvement with the sport although the website version is slightly whitewashed. In 1905, 18 players died as a result of injuries suffered during college football games, many others were badly injured but Roosevelt wanted the game to continue.
"Strange as it may seem, high school football, college football, and even the Super Bowl might not exist today if President Theodore Roosevelt had not taken a hand in preserving the game. As originally played on college campuses, the game was extremely rough, including slugging, gang tackling and unsportsmanlike behavior. Quite a number of players died (18 in just the year 1905 alone, with 20 times fewer players than there are today). Interest in becoming a football player was declining!," blurts out the website.
"But Roosevelt saw merit in the game. It built bodies and could build character, a sense of team and never giving up. Ten of the Rough Riders, the soldiers who fought with him in Cuba, gave their occupations as football players when they enlisted in 1898.
"So in 1905, President Roosevelt summoned representatives of the Big Three (Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the universities who first played the game and who also set the rules of play) to the White House. In his best table-thumping style, Theodore Roosevelt convinced them that the rules needed to be changed to eliminate the foul play and brutality.
"As a result, the American Football Rules Committee was formed and, in 1906, plays designed to open up the game and make it less dangerous to play were introduced. Some of the changes made included, the introduction of the forward pass, the distance to be gained for a first down increased from five to ten yards, all mass formations and gang tackling were banned.
"Football became less dangerous to play, injuries and deaths decreased, and it became more fun to watch."
Congressman Smith is wrong. If Congressman Tom Davis in 2005 could call hearings before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to talk about steroids usage in baseball, if Congress can call a hearing on college football's Bowl Championship Series (and by the way, big time college sports has a tax exemption and antitrust protection thanks to Congress), Congressman Smith could haul NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith before his committee and ask what is going on with the lockout (which is being underwritten by various over-the-air, cable and satellite TV networks — FOX's Rupert Murdoch, now Comcast's NBC and Sumner Redstone's CBS are using public airwaves ad money while Disney's ESPN and DirecTV are using both subscriber fees and advertising dollars in guaranteeing NFL owners money in 2011 whether or not games are played. It would be interesting to see Rep. Smith's committee haul in Murdoch, Redstone, and others and explain them to explain away their decisions and whether giving NFL owners money to support a lockout is the best use of public airwaves licenses or in the cable/satellite TV area, whether using subscriber fees to underwrite a lockout is ethical, especially when most subscribers never watch the NFL games if ratings are to be believed.)
There is also the question as to why the American people, there is that political term that politicians love to say, are paying for health care for discarded players. The GOP is gung ho about repealing the Affordable Health Care for America Act, perhaps they could find some time as they control House committees and ask those involved in the NFL why the American people are paying for health benefits for discarded NFL players.
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
WEDNESDAY, 09 FEBRUARY 2011 11:39
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/lamar-smith-should-talk-to-jon-runyan-before-keeping-congress-out-of-nfl-labor-dispute
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Should Congress get involved in the collective bargaining agreement talks between the National Football League owners and the National Football League Players Association? The answer is yes because Congress and two Presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson actually created the conditions which made today's NFL a financial behemoth with the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the 1966 AFL-NFL merger. The two pieces of legislation gave the National Football League vast antitrust exemptions. Two other bills signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, which changed cable TV rules and the 1986 reform of the tax code also paid dividends for NFL owners.
The NFL seems to rake in more than $9 billion annually although the league refuses to open both team and league financial records. The publicly-owned, non-profit Green Bay Packers franchise announced a $9.8 million profit for the calendar year ending on March 31, 2010. But that is down significantly from 2007 when the franchise announced a profit of $34.2 million. Revenues are up but so are salaries since then.
Still, the NFL's smallest market is making a nice profit.
Additionally, there are a good number of former NFL players who are on government assistance whether it is living on social security disability insurance or Medicare. The "discarded" players have pre-existing conditions from football injuries and are uninsurable. Like it or not, these players are living on the government dole because the National Football League Players Association leadership never thought much about the players futures once they left the game.
The Super Bowl is designated as a "National Special Security Event" which activates involvement from the United States Secret Service (the group in charge of the event security), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (which handles law enforcement) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chair of House Judiciary Committee, said Congress should stay out of the NFL's CBA negotiations. "That is a business dispute. The owners and players are both literally and figuratively big boys and do not need Congress to referee every dispute for them."
Congressman Smith is wrong.
In 2005, Congress decided to look into Major League Baseball's drug testing policy for steroids and other banned performance enhancement drugs after the International Olympic Committee put pressure on elected officials because baseball would not send big name players to the IOC's biannual sports event. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform swung into action after the release of Jose Canseco's book when he accused some of baseball's biggest names of using steroids.
In 2007, the NFL Network was scheduled to show the New York Giants-New England Patriots game on the final Saturday night of the season. New England was 15-0 and was bidding for a perfect season. The NFL Network was struggling to gain carriage agreements with big multiple system operators in the cable TV world. The game would be available on the NFL Network and a few over the air TV stations in Boston and New York by the lack of NFL Network cable penetration meant most of the country would not see the contest.
The United States Senate, led by Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter and Vermont's Patrick Leahy stepped in and threatened to look at remedies if the NFL did not make the game available beyond the NFL Network and local stations in New York and Boston. The remedies started with the Senate Judicial Committee examining the various NFL antitrust exemptions which could have included the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and the various additions tacked onto that legislation over the years.
Not surprisingly, the NFL opposition to make the game widely available to protect the NFL Network or force cable operators to take the NFL Network folded and the NFL allowed the game to put the game on CBS and NBC.
Here is a suggestion for Congressman Smith. Have lunch with fellow Republican Congressman Jon Runyan from New Jersey and a former offensive tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles and ask him about the business of the NFL. How Congress gave the league the tools for big TV deals, the 1966 merger, legislation that allowed owners to play city against city to get sweetheart stadium leases in the late 1980s and beyond. Congressman Runyan also must have first hand knowledge of the sad football stories that continue to surface such as this which was e-mailed to this reporter.
"My husband (name protected) played in the mid 70's to 80. We just saw results of neck MRI yesterday. — Not good, but helps explain severe headaches.
He remembers the game the injury took place and he could not move his legs and arms the next day. The teams reassuring remark to him was, get better because you have to play the next week!
"Five years ago he was diagnosed with brain damage. Trying to get NFL to agree there's physical, long term injuries in past NFL players is nearly impossible. They just keep appointing another committee to look into matter."
Congressman Runyan was once a member of the National Football League Players Association.
Here is what Congress did to build the National Football League. Before the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act, the Mara's New York Giants, George Halas' Chicago Bears and Daniel Reeves's Los Angeles Rams were getting the lion share of the television money which was available in those days. Green Bay, which was the league's smallest market, was struggling to get some money for the team's TV rights. Brooklyn Congressman Emanuel Cellar got the Sports Broadcast Act through the House in almost record time, while Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver got the Senate to agree with the House quickly and President Kennedy signed the bill almost immediately.
The NFL, which was 14 separate businesses, became one entity for TV purposes which was clearly a violation of antitrust laws.
NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was able to get William Paley's CBS and David Sarnoff's NBC to bid on the 14-team league's games. CBS won the bid. In 1964, CBS extended the NFL deal with Rozelle. Sarnoff was livid and called the American Football League's New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin, who was working with MCA-TV and supplying some to NBC, and wanted to even the score. NBC gave the AFL a huge TV deal which gave the league the wherewithal to sign big time college stars. Werblin's Jets signed Joe Namath.
Both NFL and AFL owners began to complain that a bidding war was ruining their business and decided a merger was necessary to halt rising salaries. By the summer of 1966, Rozelle was summoned to do what commissioners do.
Lobby Congress.
Initially neither Louisiana Senator Russell Long nor Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs were too interested in supporting the proposed merger. New Orleans was not getting either an NFL or AFL franchise and they didn't see the need to merge. Rozelle got Long and Boggs to sign on for the merger by promising New Orleans a team in 1967. There were a few other details that needed to be cleaned up. One of the NFL-AFL proposals was to realign franchises so that New York and the San Francisco Bay Area would remain one franchise markets. The merged leagues agreed to move the Jets from Queens to Los Angeles, Reeves would take his Rams to San Diego. Barron Hilton's Chargers would leave San Diego and relocate to New Orleans and Oakland would lose the Raiders with that franchise ending up in the Pacific Northwest in either Seattle or Portland, Oregon.
The NFL's old best friend in Congress, Emanuel Cellar said no to that idea. Werblin's Jets paid $10 million to the Mara Giants for the right to share the New York territory while Raiders owners gave $8 million to the San Francisco 49ers ownership because the team "invaded" the 49ers territory. New Orleans got an expansion team and Cincinnati ended up with an AFL expansion team although NFL owners collected the AFL expansion fee.
Those two acts of Congress propelled the NFL into the sports stratosphere in the United States and created the Super Bowl, or the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.
There is more than a century's worth of history of monitoring football in Washington. President Theodore Roosevelt is credited with saving football from extinction in 1905.
If Representative Smith or Representative Runyon wants a brief history of Roosevelt's involvement in the game, they should go to the Theodore Roosevelt Association website and read up on Roosevelt's involvement with the sport although the website version is slightly whitewashed. In 1905, 18 players died as a result of injuries suffered during college football games, many others were badly injured but Roosevelt wanted the game to continue.
"Strange as it may seem, high school football, college football, and even the Super Bowl might not exist today if President Theodore Roosevelt had not taken a hand in preserving the game. As originally played on college campuses, the game was extremely rough, including slugging, gang tackling and unsportsmanlike behavior. Quite a number of players died (18 in just the year 1905 alone, with 20 times fewer players than there are today). Interest in becoming a football player was declining!," blurts out the website.
"But Roosevelt saw merit in the game. It built bodies and could build character, a sense of team and never giving up. Ten of the Rough Riders, the soldiers who fought with him in Cuba, gave their occupations as football players when they enlisted in 1898.
"So in 1905, President Roosevelt summoned representatives of the Big Three (Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the universities who first played the game and who also set the rules of play) to the White House. In his best table-thumping style, Theodore Roosevelt convinced them that the rules needed to be changed to eliminate the foul play and brutality.
"As a result, the American Football Rules Committee was formed and, in 1906, plays designed to open up the game and make it less dangerous to play were introduced. Some of the changes made included, the introduction of the forward pass, the distance to be gained for a first down increased from five to ten yards, all mass formations and gang tackling were banned.
"Football became less dangerous to play, injuries and deaths decreased, and it became more fun to watch."
Congressman Smith is wrong. If Congressman Tom Davis in 2005 could call hearings before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to talk about steroids usage in baseball, if Congress can call a hearing on college football's Bowl Championship Series (and by the way, big time college sports has a tax exemption and antitrust protection thanks to Congress), Congressman Smith could haul NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith before his committee and ask what is going on with the lockout (which is being underwritten by various over-the-air, cable and satellite TV networks — FOX's Rupert Murdoch, now Comcast's NBC and Sumner Redstone's CBS are using public airwaves ad money while Disney's ESPN and DirecTV are using both subscriber fees and advertising dollars in guaranteeing NFL owners money in 2011 whether or not games are played. It would be interesting to see Rep. Smith's committee haul in Murdoch, Redstone, and others and explain them to explain away their decisions and whether giving NFL owners money to support a lockout is the best use of public airwaves licenses or in the cable/satellite TV area, whether using subscriber fees to underwrite a lockout is ethical, especially when most subscribers never watch the NFL games if ratings are to be believed.)
There is also the question as to why the American people, there is that political term that politicians love to say, are paying for health care for discarded players. The GOP is gung ho about repealing the Affordable Health Care for America Act, perhaps they could find some time as they control House committees and ask those involved in the NFL why the American people are paying for health benefits for discarded NFL players.
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
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Did the NFL want to take care of discarded players benefits back in 1992?
WEDNESDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2010 15:06
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/did-the-nfl-want-to-take-care-of-discarded-players-benefits-back-in-1992
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
For New York Giants backers, this Sunday's contest against the Washington Redskins could be the team's final game for a long, long time. The National Football League's Collective Bargaining Agreement ends on March 3 and should the owners and players not reach an agreement, the NFL's off season will be silent except for the annual draft which will take place as scheduled.
There will be no free agency, no mini-camps, no organized team activities, no overlooked in the draft college kids signing up with teams and no training camp until the owners and players reach an accord. Meanwhile the players will challenge the legitimacy of the owners' war chest, which is being stuffed with money from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (FOX), General Electric's NBC, Summer Redstone's CBS, Disney's ESPN and DirecTV. The players filed a complaint to Special Master of the National Football League Stephen Burbank, a University of Pennsylvania law professor. Burbank was appointed by a federal court in 2002 to handle disputes between the owners and players.
The players could decertify the association, which means that the NFLPA could go to court and ask for an injunction to end the lockout. The argument would be that the players are independent contractor and not part of the association. The owners plan to end players benefits as soon as the lockout starts.
The dispute comes down to money. The NFL owners want to cut back revenues given to the players from 59 to 48 percent and cut salaries by 18 percent. But there are some other issues such as pensions and health benefits. Health benefits should emerge as a major issue, but it isn't.
Week after week, National Football League players are getting hurt in alarming numbers. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers, who was cleared to play against the Giants last Sunday, has had two concussions this year. A concussion is a brain injury. Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Austin Collie is done for the season after getting his "bell rung" again. The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick is on the field because of a head injury that 2010 Eagles starting quarterback Kevin Kolb went down with a head injury.
If there is a fortunate part of all the head injuries that have occurred is that the NFL is somewhat more diligent in taking care of head injuries than the league was say back in 1980. The league is urging players who have suffered head injuries to come forward and if a teammate notices something awry with a player he suspects has suffered a head injury to speak up.
But football players, being tough, macho guys who succumb to peer pressure get on the field as soon as they are "well enough" to perform.
Football players have "sucked it up" since the game was invented and suffered life changing injuries as a result of their actions on the field. A lot of NFL players now are getting government assistance through social security disability and Medicare because they have pre-existing conditions and cannot get health benefits. The government taking care of discarded players issue that the news media has ignored for whatever reason known only to those who decide what "news" to cover.
Here is a question that the discarded players should be asking. Did the NFL's collective bargaining negotiator Harold Henderson in 1992 propose that the league take care of old players who had no medical coverage and that the players association decided that free agency for the players was more important? A good number of former players who are uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions think it is solely the responsibility of present-day NFL owners to take care of them. However, the owners and players association collective bargained working conditions and the players association failed to protect their membership's future health needs in the 1982 and 1987 collective bargaining agreements.
The players association took the money always.
The wife of a 1960s-era player though thinks NFL owners should be responsible for health issues that were caused by injuries on the field because "the fact that the players were required to play with injuries that could and did cause long-term damage and sometimes death, does make them legally responsible." The former player wife added that she hope someone will come along and take on the NFL owners to get help for those in bad shape. "Attorneys will take a closer look at the notion that the retired players (many who did not even participate in collective bargaining) signed their rights away in the process of collective bargaining. In that same vein, once the players retire, they have no voice and are unable to restate their cause, particularly with all the current evidence of trauma and even death caused by concussions."
Head injuries have always been a part of the NFL. The 1940 Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon told NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Packers coach Vince Lombardi along with the CBS Director of Sports Bill McPhail at a Los Angeles bar prior to the 1967 American Football League-National Football League Championship Game (now known as the "first" Super Bowl) that head injuries began to rise once face guards were put onto helmets which occurred in 1955.
The National Football League Players Association during the Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw days when they led the players has always been about money and free agency with scant mention of benefits. The NFLPA website on the collective bargaining page confirms the notion.
"A simplistic account of the 1974 and 1982 bargaining efforts would say that the players fell short of their goals on both occasions. In 1974, they set out to achieve free agency, but the 1977 CBA restricted free agent movement almost as much as the old system. In 1982, they set out to achieve a defined percentage of the gross revenues and a "pay for performance" system, but the old system continued along with improved benefits.
"A more enlightened view of those negotiations, however, was that the battle was never going to be won in the short term. The owners, who had their way for most of the league's history, were a powerful group that always stuck together in dealings with the players. Because they shared most of their revenues, they were unlike the Major League Baseball owners, whose internal conflicts made them less than a united front when dealing with the players union. The NFL owners could always outlast the players, since players had short careers and an inherent fear of making careers even shorter "by taking a stand."
"These realities were proven again in 1987, when the NFLPA opened negotiations for a new CBA to succeed the 1982 agreement. A lot had happened in the interim. Ed Garvey left his job as Executive Director to enter politics. Gene Upshaw, who had served as NFLPA President during the 1982 strike, was a natural choice to succeed Garvey since he had experience as a player and union leader and also as a negotiator of the 1977 and 1982 agreements. The player reps unanimously elected Upshaw as Executive Director in June of 1983, and the organization changed significantly thereafter.
"Gene's primary objective was simple — he wanted to have the players determine the goals of the organization. He worked closely with Jeff Van Note (NFLPA President 1983), Tom Condon (NFLPA President 1984-1986) and Marvin Powell (NFLPA President 1986-1988) to meet with and poll the players on their bargaining objectives in preparation for the expiration of the 1982 CBA in 1987. The results of a league-wide player survey taken in 1986 made clear that the players viewed free agency as their highest priority. This was not surprising, since only one player even got an offer from another club during the entire term of the 1982 CBA, despite the fact that over 500 players had become "free agents" under the system.
"While benefits were improved in the 1982 CBA, players still had no choice as to where they would play since the system essentially prohibited free agent movement. At the same time, revenue disparities increased among the teams to the point where, unlike in 1982, an owner could increase his revenues through luxury box sales and other sources if he could assemble a winning team. In other words, free agency could work for players in 1987 if they could ever force owners to agree to it. That, however, would not be easy."
In November 2010, the owners made a proposal to help out the former and discarded players even though NFL owners have no legal obligation to give them more money or provide health benefits. The league and the players association have been talking about taking care of the former players health benefits but the associations' turned down a deal that might have covered about 2,500 of 3,200 players because the association's reps didn't feel that TransAmerica would insure 700 of the discarded players because of pre-existing conditions. The NFLPA wanted all 3,200 players insured.
Rogers, Collie, Kolb have better benefits than the players who played in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The players finally got better benefits in the 1993 collective bargaining agreement but that only took care of players who were fortunate enough to be on the team rosters in 1993.
The retired and discarded players should be asking whether Harold Henderson and the NFL really did make a proposal in 1992 to take care of them. And if that was on the table, what happened to the proposal?
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, 29 DECEMBER 2010 15:06
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/did-the-nfl-want-to-take-care-of-discarded-players-benefits-back-in-1992
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
For New York Giants backers, this Sunday's contest against the Washington Redskins could be the team's final game for a long, long time. The National Football League's Collective Bargaining Agreement ends on March 3 and should the owners and players not reach an agreement, the NFL's off season will be silent except for the annual draft which will take place as scheduled.
There will be no free agency, no mini-camps, no organized team activities, no overlooked in the draft college kids signing up with teams and no training camp until the owners and players reach an accord. Meanwhile the players will challenge the legitimacy of the owners' war chest, which is being stuffed with money from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (FOX), General Electric's NBC, Summer Redstone's CBS, Disney's ESPN and DirecTV. The players filed a complaint to Special Master of the National Football League Stephen Burbank, a University of Pennsylvania law professor. Burbank was appointed by a federal court in 2002 to handle disputes between the owners and players.
The players could decertify the association, which means that the NFLPA could go to court and ask for an injunction to end the lockout. The argument would be that the players are independent contractor and not part of the association. The owners plan to end players benefits as soon as the lockout starts.
The dispute comes down to money. The NFL owners want to cut back revenues given to the players from 59 to 48 percent and cut salaries by 18 percent. But there are some other issues such as pensions and health benefits. Health benefits should emerge as a major issue, but it isn't.
Week after week, National Football League players are getting hurt in alarming numbers. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers, who was cleared to play against the Giants last Sunday, has had two concussions this year. A concussion is a brain injury. Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Austin Collie is done for the season after getting his "bell rung" again. The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick is on the field because of a head injury that 2010 Eagles starting quarterback Kevin Kolb went down with a head injury.
If there is a fortunate part of all the head injuries that have occurred is that the NFL is somewhat more diligent in taking care of head injuries than the league was say back in 1980. The league is urging players who have suffered head injuries to come forward and if a teammate notices something awry with a player he suspects has suffered a head injury to speak up.
But football players, being tough, macho guys who succumb to peer pressure get on the field as soon as they are "well enough" to perform.
Football players have "sucked it up" since the game was invented and suffered life changing injuries as a result of their actions on the field. A lot of NFL players now are getting government assistance through social security disability and Medicare because they have pre-existing conditions and cannot get health benefits. The government taking care of discarded players issue that the news media has ignored for whatever reason known only to those who decide what "news" to cover.
Here is a question that the discarded players should be asking. Did the NFL's collective bargaining negotiator Harold Henderson in 1992 propose that the league take care of old players who had no medical coverage and that the players association decided that free agency for the players was more important? A good number of former players who are uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions think it is solely the responsibility of present-day NFL owners to take care of them. However, the owners and players association collective bargained working conditions and the players association failed to protect their membership's future health needs in the 1982 and 1987 collective bargaining agreements.
The players association took the money always.
The wife of a 1960s-era player though thinks NFL owners should be responsible for health issues that were caused by injuries on the field because "the fact that the players were required to play with injuries that could and did cause long-term damage and sometimes death, does make them legally responsible." The former player wife added that she hope someone will come along and take on the NFL owners to get help for those in bad shape. "Attorneys will take a closer look at the notion that the retired players (many who did not even participate in collective bargaining) signed their rights away in the process of collective bargaining. In that same vein, once the players retire, they have no voice and are unable to restate their cause, particularly with all the current evidence of trauma and even death caused by concussions."
Head injuries have always been a part of the NFL. The 1940 Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon told NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Packers coach Vince Lombardi along with the CBS Director of Sports Bill McPhail at a Los Angeles bar prior to the 1967 American Football League-National Football League Championship Game (now known as the "first" Super Bowl) that head injuries began to rise once face guards were put onto helmets which occurred in 1955.
The National Football League Players Association during the Ed Garvey and Gene Upshaw days when they led the players has always been about money and free agency with scant mention of benefits. The NFLPA website on the collective bargaining page confirms the notion.
"A simplistic account of the 1974 and 1982 bargaining efforts would say that the players fell short of their goals on both occasions. In 1974, they set out to achieve free agency, but the 1977 CBA restricted free agent movement almost as much as the old system. In 1982, they set out to achieve a defined percentage of the gross revenues and a "pay for performance" system, but the old system continued along with improved benefits.
"A more enlightened view of those negotiations, however, was that the battle was never going to be won in the short term. The owners, who had their way for most of the league's history, were a powerful group that always stuck together in dealings with the players. Because they shared most of their revenues, they were unlike the Major League Baseball owners, whose internal conflicts made them less than a united front when dealing with the players union. The NFL owners could always outlast the players, since players had short careers and an inherent fear of making careers even shorter "by taking a stand."
"These realities were proven again in 1987, when the NFLPA opened negotiations for a new CBA to succeed the 1982 agreement. A lot had happened in the interim. Ed Garvey left his job as Executive Director to enter politics. Gene Upshaw, who had served as NFLPA President during the 1982 strike, was a natural choice to succeed Garvey since he had experience as a player and union leader and also as a negotiator of the 1977 and 1982 agreements. The player reps unanimously elected Upshaw as Executive Director in June of 1983, and the organization changed significantly thereafter.
"Gene's primary objective was simple — he wanted to have the players determine the goals of the organization. He worked closely with Jeff Van Note (NFLPA President 1983), Tom Condon (NFLPA President 1984-1986) and Marvin Powell (NFLPA President 1986-1988) to meet with and poll the players on their bargaining objectives in preparation for the expiration of the 1982 CBA in 1987. The results of a league-wide player survey taken in 1986 made clear that the players viewed free agency as their highest priority. This was not surprising, since only one player even got an offer from another club during the entire term of the 1982 CBA, despite the fact that over 500 players had become "free agents" under the system.
"While benefits were improved in the 1982 CBA, players still had no choice as to where they would play since the system essentially prohibited free agent movement. At the same time, revenue disparities increased among the teams to the point where, unlike in 1982, an owner could increase his revenues through luxury box sales and other sources if he could assemble a winning team. In other words, free agency could work for players in 1987 if they could ever force owners to agree to it. That, however, would not be easy."
In November 2010, the owners made a proposal to help out the former and discarded players even though NFL owners have no legal obligation to give them more money or provide health benefits. The league and the players association have been talking about taking care of the former players health benefits but the associations' turned down a deal that might have covered about 2,500 of 3,200 players because the association's reps didn't feel that TransAmerica would insure 700 of the discarded players because of pre-existing conditions. The NFLPA wanted all 3,200 players insured.
Rogers, Collie, Kolb have better benefits than the players who played in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The players finally got better benefits in the 1993 collective bargaining agreement but that only took care of players who were fortunate enough to be on the team rosters in 1993.
The retired and discarded players should be asking whether Harold Henderson and the NFL really did make a proposal in 1992 to take care of them. And if that was on the table, what happened to the proposal?
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
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