Our Monday Evening News
First item is one final reminder to get your paperwork sent in to Garden City Group to claim your piece of the GLA settlement lawsuit. If your name is on the list and you don’t have your paperwork, you’ll need to call them immediately (866) 697-5552 and leave a message with your number – they will get back to you quickly. Have them fax it to you so you can get that paperwork postmarked no later than Feb. 9, 2010 to qualify for your first of two checks. Click HERE to find the information and phone numbers that you need.
.
Over Super Bowl weekend, we also quietly posted a free viewing of the documentary Blood Equity on this site as well as the Football Summit blog. 15-year NFL veteran & 3 time Super Bowl Champion, Roman Phifer produced this film about life after football as most players live it. Click HERE to get to that post so you can watch it in its entirety online! Of course, the producers couldn’t get permission to use any actual NFL footage because of the subject so you won’t see any on-the-field material anywhere in this film.
.
And George Visger had an interview with CNN’s Stephanie Smith that aired on Friday before the Super Bowl weekend:
.
Ex-NFL players feel concussions’ long-lasting damage
February 5, 2010
(CNN) — For more than 20 years, former San Francisco 49ers lineman George Visger has lived his life out of hundreds of small yellow notebooks. In them he scrawls the minutiae of his daily life: “4:45 am left house. 2 stops to find coffee and a roll. Paper work till 9:25. 10:05 Ed called.”
.
The notebooks are the last vestige of his memory.
.
“I always have them. They sit in my back pockets,” said Visger, 51. “The movie ’50 First Dates,’ this has been my life for 28 years. I get up in the morning and I have no clue what I have to do that day. If it’s not written down it doesn’t exist.”
.
Visger said his memory began fading in 1982. During his brief, injury-shortened career playing for the 49ers, he said, a jarring tackle caused a concussion.
.
“I went into a coma and almost died,” said Visger. “At one point I was given last rites.”
.
Read the rest of the story by clicking HERE. They also have a powerful slideshow with the article on some of the other high profile concussions in the NFL.
.
And still confused by all that talk about the CBA? The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal published one of the best cheat sheets on the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
.
A few ABC’s of the CBA
Here are basics of NFL labor pact
.
By Lori Nickel of the Journal Sentinel
.
You know what the secondary looks like in the Tampa cover 2 and the four most common places to bring the blitz pressure in a 3-4 defense. But you missed the class lecture on the Collective Bargaining Agreement, didn’t you?
.
It’s OK.
.
In the coming weeks, the NFL owners and players will try to haggle out a deal or an extension on the CBA. If they don’t – and that’s highly likely – the two sides have a year to work out their differences before the NFL owners lock the stadium doors and halt play for the 2011 season, should they choose to do so.
.
Yes, it is that serious.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
.
Dave Pear
February 9th, 2010 at 9:53 am #
Thank you, George!
What about the plight of retired players and their disability claims? Concussions and brain injuries along with severe physical impairment continue to plague us.
We never here a word about the leagues plan for restitution. Every promise we hear is on the come and far into the future. In the mean time more players die off or dementia sets in and families are torn apart.
What about strokes? Chronic pain? broken bones? and the list goes on and on.
Concussions will never go away. Then Goodell hires John Madden to look into concussions and claims to have a plan to make the game less violent. Roger, that’s not possible!
Remember: Madden is the guy who made $130,000,000 from Madden video games while retired players with signed GLA agreements received not one penny! Until Bernie Parrish took the NFLPA Leadership to court and sued them. To this day, Madden hasn’t said a word; however, he did run away for two weeks on his first vacation during football season when the Players Inc. trial began. He was probably terrified he might actually have to answer questions about his involvement.
Retired players are the makers of the game but when it comes to pension/disability and medical after football as Upshaw (the former Executive Director of the NFLPA) would say by his actions, “Let ‘em eat cake.”
Click HERE.
It’s fundamentally impossible to take the injuries and violence out of football. The crime is that the NFL will not allow their retired players access to their disability benefits and for many of them, their pensions amount to not much more than a car payment (if they receive anything) and there is NO medical once you retire thanks to their actuaries’ designation of pre-existing conditions.
Concussions and brain injuries are going to become more and more transparent to Congress, to parents who allow their children to play youth football and to the public.
To date, ALL we have received are broken promises.
Regards,
Dave & Heidi Pear