Some of you still remember those Congressional Hearings from last year into the NFL and NFLPA’s disability mess. During those hearings, Gene Upshaw had the details from private disability application hearings for 9 retired players’ cases (Dave’s case was one of them) publicly posted on the NFLPA’s website is that infamous White Paper. As soon as we discovered what they had done, we wrote about it and it was taken down very quickly (click HERE and HERE to read those earlier posts). It was just another dirty-tricks-as-usual tactic to get even with some of the players who spoke up during those hearings. You would think that would have been the end of it. But it was only recently that we happened to be reviewing the Congressional Judiciary Committee’s final report on their website that we discovered one of the Exhibits under the NFL hearings (Exhibit A) contained the same information from the NFLPA’s original White Paper, including all that personal disability data for each of those 9 retired players’ hearings! (Below is a screenshot of the earlier page with Exhibit A available.)

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Dave's Post-Op Scar

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Chalk up another one for the old guys! Retired players are so sick and tired of getting ripped off every time they turn around. We recently came across an article that Electronic Arts was partnering with The Weather Channel to pay them for weather statistics to make Madden Football X more “realistic” – but they DON’T want to pay the retired football players themselves for their stats in order to make the game more “realistic”. I wonder when they’re planning on screwing around with the weather so they won’t have to pay for that either. Read all about the weather by clicking HERE.

So when you use the retired players’ likenesses right down to their race, size and stats, is that realistic enough for you, EA? But you don’t want to pay for that and you want to pay for the weather? Recently, EA announced that they were no longer going to be using retired players in their video games. Ha!

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New Preliminary Order Approving Settlement Proposal

Two heads are better than one and more players’ eyes reading this preliminary order are better than just a few lawyers. We’re hoping that the new order just filed on Tuesday will eliminate some of the one-sided language of the earlier proposed settlement draft (among other things, the original proposed settlement had language inserted to quash any future litigation by recipients of the settlement! Click HERE to view all of those documents in an earlier post). Also note the proposed time line for sending in comments and objections as well as the new payout schedule on Page 4. Things are now pushed out to November.

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We’re just simply going to post an order from Judge Alsup that was sent out on Aug. 7, 2009 and the answer from Bernie Parrish filed after that. Bernie informs us that in no way is he trying to hold up or stop the settlement from getting into the hands of the retired players. His concerns have been with some of the terms in the settlement agreement and the way in which it was written and proposed. We’ve never quite understood why documents coming out of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP kept omitting Bernie Parrish’s name from all court filings and orders when Bernie was clearly always the original lead plaintiff (even as Kessler & Co. continued to do so right through the proposed settlement documents). (Click on each page to enlarge for easier reading.)

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We recently found an article from R.V. Murphy outlining most of the history and events between the NFL and the players leading up to the current dust-up. Most people today – younger players included – know little if anything about the early years that led up to the formation of the players Union – the NFLPA – and the often contentious nature of this decades-long drama. When we first sent this piece around, some retired players who have actually been through much of this history told us that they also discovered a few things they hadn’t realized or understood over the years. Murphy’s article covers the early years through the strike of 1987 and into the present, including diverse topics from the history of the Union to the wide range in salaries.

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"We'll name this one Gene!"

Dave went into the OR around 7:30 this morning and a couple of hours later, he was already in recovery. As we had detailed earlier, the doctor removed 4 screws and anchors, as well as two metal pins. The screws had been implanted in 2007 to keep things stable so his fusion could set. In the meantime, the screws started to cause a lot of problems and became painful over the past year. And some bone fragments were also sending sharp pains down his right leg, causing a lot of numbness in his knee. So the bone fragments were also cleaned out as part of the procedure.

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Hey folks -

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Dave is scheduled for another round of surgery early tomorrow morning (Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m. and they have to be there at 5:30!). Probably another $90,000+ worth of surgery that Medicare is having to pay for once again since his Union and his so-called disability benefits refuse to pay for any of  it. This will be Dave’s 9th procedure under the knife (the eighth on his spine and neck).

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Pro Football Players Re-Unification Project

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Most of our readers know by now that Dave’s been in this fight for over 25 years with his Union, the NFLPA, to get justice for himself and his retired brothers. There’s just so much material to go through that the sheer volume can sometimes get overwhelming. The worst part is that it seems almost everything you look at is just another bad chapter in a never-ending novel on the abuse that’s been heaped on the majority of retired players for decades. (We wrote about this in earlier posts – click HERE and HERE and HERE.) After a while, it’s easy to get numb and to start overlooking stuff that’s been right under your nose all along.

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