The Year Ahead
This blog has only been up for almost two years. But Dave’s been personally at his battle for over 25 years. And guys like Bernie Parrish have been at it for well over 40 years – long before most of today’s players were even born (well, maybe not Brett Favre…). There’s no doubt that this past year has been an interesting one. It’s been full of a lot of ups-and-downs with a lot of side trips that can get a little distracting at times. With the economy tanking and people losing their jobs all over the country, it’s hard not to get frustrated occasionally. Tempers can flare and passions will rise. But there’s no doubt that the issues which have always been most important to the retired players are gaining more visibility than ever because of everyone’s collective efforts.
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Even with the long road ahead of us, there are a lot of things that have happened in 2009 that no one expected to see:
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- Congress holds hearings on the impact of concussions in football;
- The NFLPA appoint a new Executive Director who immediately settles the Parrish vs. NFLPA/Players Inc. class action lawsuit;
- Independent retired football players organize and hold their first Summit in Las Vegas;
- Coverage of concussions expands into the mainstream media;
- Dr. No resigns from the NFL’s “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury Committee;
- The NFL winds down its brain concussion studies;
- The NFL publicly acknowledges the seriousness of concussions and finally begins to develop new rules regarding on-field concussions;
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The NFL and the NFLPA invited “Independent Unaffiliated Players” to participate in a Meeting for the first time to discuss Retired Player problems.
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There’s a lot of positive stuff to be grateful for. So we’d like to close this year off on a light note. Here’s a video clip of an old EDS commercial – it’s a lot like any effort that involves a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas and opinions. We think it’ll put a smile on your face to start the New Year.
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Dave Pear
December 31st, 2009 at 11:51 am #
Dear Commissioner Goodell,
If only Dr. “NO” Ira Casson would have been under oath when he gave his response, (several times) consisting of one word “NO” about concussions and head injuries!
http://davepear.com/blog/2009/11/dr-no-resigns/#more-4588
Perhaps you could explain:
Goodell stated that Dr. Ira Casson and Dr. David Viano, who have led the league committee on concussions since 2007, “have graciously offered to resign from those positions and to continue to assist the committee in its important work. We have accepted those resignations and are currently identifying their replacements.”
What are Dr. “NO” Ira Casson and Dr. David Viano going to assist the committee with?
Another cover up?
Sincerely,
Dave & Heidi Pear
Jeffrey Gordon
December 31st, 2009 at 5:44 pm #
Great work, Dave. You and your gang have made a lot of progress fighting a very difficult challenge! Give yourself a brief pat on the back and enjoy your family and the end of the year.
You’ve contributed a lot, Dave – pass it on to all the other retired players!
jg
George Visger
January 1st, 2010 at 12:27 am #
Dear Commissioner Goodell -
As a survivor of 9 football-related emergency VP Shunt brain surgeries since my final season with the 49′ers in 1981 and currently still fighting the 49′ers Workers Comp carrier, The Travelers, to cover necessary medical treatment I need to survive, I also would like to know what in the hell your ‘yes men’, Drs. “No” Casson, and his sidekick, Viano, will do to assist the committee in its “important” work. Continue to discredit and cover up scientific research, such as papers submitted by Dr. Omalu in 2002, which first brought to light the correlation between repeated head trauma and long term cognitive impacts to ex-players due to build up of tau proteins? Dr. Omalu first reported this from his autopsy on Mike Webster in 2002, then on Andre Waters, Justin Stryzinski, Terry Long (all of whom committed suicide after pleading for help) and 17 of the next 18 brains of deceased NFL players he was able to study. Yet the NFL made sure these scientific papers where discredited or worse – covered up until the recent discovery of Dr. Omalu’s work by the NY Times brought Senator John Conyer into the picture requesting Dr. No and Viano to testify.
YOU excluded Dr. Omalu from the first League-wide concussion summit during the summer of 2007, even though it was his studies which discovered the link between repeated head trauma and tau protein build up in the brain. The NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) group actually dismissed Dr. Julian Bailes’ presentation of Dr. Omalu’s studies. Keep in mind, Dr. Bailes is a neurosurgeon who also happened to be the Pittsburgh Steelers team physician for nearly a decade.
You sir, can no longer play the ignorant card, though I have no doubts about your ignorance. It clearly shows when you think people are still buying into your claims of no correlation between repeated head trauma and long-term cognitive impacts on ex players.
We who have played this game, did so knowing there were some risks associated with playing. All we have ever asked is to receive what we gave to the game and our teams, 100%. To be used and discarded then forced to sue for Workers Compensation to have my brain surgeries # 2 and # 3 paid which occurred 10 hours apart while I was given last rites just 4 months after we won Super Bowl XVI was bad enough. But here it is 28 years later and I’m still fighting tooth-and-nail to be seen by Doctors and to get treatment for injuries that if I was an injured employee of K-Mart, I would have been covered since Day One.
I find it deplorable that you sit there smug with your $1 Million/month salary paid for by the owners of a multi-BILLION dollar industry while you can find no fault with the treatment of ex-players who built the industry you so readily leach from while countless players such as Mike Webster, Andre Waters, Justin Stryszinski and others have pleaded for help before dying due to football injuries as you turn a blind eye.
There was an old saying back in the day, “What goes around, comes around.” There will be a time when the final gun sounds and we all have to face the big ref in the sky. You, sir, have blood of thousands of players AND their families on your hands, as you hold the power to change the system. Continuing to plead ignorance, just as the tobacco industry did for so long, will no longer work.
You need to read the poem The Man In The Glass, it sums it all up.
Sincerely,
George Visger
San Francisco 49′ers 1980 & 1981
VP Shunt brain surgeries ’81, ’82,’ 82,’ 87, ’87, ’87, ’87, ’95, ’97
Knee surgeries ’81, ’86,’86
Gran mal seizures ’82, ’87,’ 87,’95, ’99
Bob Cook
January 4th, 2010 at 8:35 am #
For what it’s worth, I chose concussions as my No. 1 youth sports story of the year on my youth sports blog, Your Kid’s Not Going Pro.
http://trueslant.com/bobcook/2010/01/02/top-youth-sports-stories-of-the-year-part-ii-the-final-five/
You can ask Mike Leach why you don’t mess with the c-word these days.
By the way, the No. 2 story was the trial of Jason Stinson, the Louisville high school football coach indicted on reckless homicide charges after a player died during practice. He was acquitted, but Kentucky passed state laws giving athletes greater protection in the heat, and programs began falling all over themselves to make sure players got adequate water breaks (that Stinson denied water breaks was at the heart of the allegations).
Bob Cook