How about the $100 million+ a year the NFL manages to funnel into its Youth Football programs across the country?

Then we hear that the NFLPA – along with the NFL – has quickly found over $2.5 million to send to Haitian earthquake relief. And let’s not forget the $1 million the NFLPA just committed to the Martin Luther King memorial.

So let’s see: Just this past year alone, they managed to find at least $117.5 million under the seat cushions of their office couches for everything BUT the retired players. Yet guys like Dwight Harrison have to live in a mold-infested FEMA trailer in our own country. And Dave Pear is found to be 80%+ disabled by the Disability Board’s OWN doctor and STILL gets denied his rightful benefits?

That $117.5 million is 5X what was awarded to the retired players when the NFLPA was convicted of stealing what belonged to them. If you do the math, that would mean the 2,000 guys could have received an average of $50,000 apiece instead of $10,000. Or how about this one: 10,000 retired players could have received an average of $11,000 each. Maybe not a whole lot of money to some people but sure a heck of a lot more than most of these guys have ever received in the past from their Union or their former employer.

We need to keep reminding people about what they announce on airplanes before the plane takes off. They remind you to: “Be sure to buckle your seat belts and place your oxygen mask on first before turning to help the person sitting next to you.” In other words, you’re no good to anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself first.

And the NFLPA has the arrogance to re-name its Dire Need Fund and its building after Gene Upshaw? Is that like re-naming the Holocaust Museum the Adolph Hitler Holocaust Museum? What’s wrong with this picture, Mr. Smith?

RobertinSeattle

Are you aware that Gene Upshaw threatened a member of the NFL Hall of Fame, Joe DeLamielleure, with the quote to a Philadelphia newspaper, “I’d like to break his damn neck”? The reason for the threat? Joe dared to tell the the truth about the joke of a pension Gene Upshaw “negotiated” – no doubt with a wink and a nod to the League officials across the table.

Mr. Smith, we understand Gene Upshaw knew that every dollar that didn’t go toward pensions, disability or post career medical/dental was a dollar that could be split between the active players and the League. Whittle down retirement benefits and the pie is much bigger to split every year. As way too many of us can attest, the active players Gene Upshaw represented (as you do now) are one play away from a retirement that offers no medical benefits, an impossible disability plan and a pension plan that is embarrassing (with vesting rules that make it available to less than half who ever played the game).

How can you claim to represent “all the players” when you name anything of value after Gene Upshaw?

Bruce Jarvis
Buffalo Bills
1971 – 1974