It was 5 years ago. I remember the phone call as if it were yesterday. An Attorney in Representative Maxine Waters’ office, a man named Eric Tamarkin was on the phone. Eric was a sharp young lawyer who represented his boss very well. Eric says to me “Tony, can you call off the phone calls to our office?”
We didn’t want to take away from the University of Washington study on painkiller use in the NFL but Esquire Magazine’s Tim Wendel has also just completed their own study on the physical cost of injuries in professional football. Their deep statistical analysis of the numbers is chilling and goes hand-in-hand with the painkiller study while also making a strong case against the League’s position for an 18-game schedule.
We’ve written about the hypocrisy of the drug culture in the NFL over the past three years. On the one hand, you’ve got the Commish running around like Chicken Little enforcing the steroid bans while on the other hand, you have a large number of current and retired players surviving day-to-day on the “legal” painkillers that the NFL chooses to ignore. (Read our post The NFL Drug Culture – click HERE.) Last year, we posted a request from Washington University and ESPN for retired players to participate in an anonymous study on pain management and the use of painkillers. (Read the original request from February 2010 – click HERE.) We just heard back from John Barr this morning:
Here’s the entire half-hour Nightly Business Report episode hosted by Rick Horrow, broadcast on Seattle’s KCTS9 this past Monday evening, as discussed by Clyde Werner in yesterday’s post. It’s an incredibly revealing insight on the intricate business side of the Super Bowl and how the NFL continues to squeeze every penny of possible revenue from this global franchise.(Click on the PLAY > arrow to view and you can enlarge it to full screen by clicking the enlarge icon in the lower right corner when the video starts.)
Several of my friends from our college football days were writing each other at the end of the year and former UW Husky Clyde Werner sent a note asking us for a recommendation to a good orthopedic doctor in Seattle. Clyde ended up sending us his personal story about the injuries he’s sustained from his 8-year career in football with no disability benefits. Even worse are his final comments about his pension check. We’ve pointed out in the past that the NFLPA and the NFL perpetuated the myth that we were all going to be dead by 52 so we needed to take drastically reduced pensions early. And one more time: We were told we couldn’t receive disability benefits if we collected a pension (or vice versa) because that was the law (according to Gene Upshaw). For years – because we didn’t have the means to communicate with each other as a group – it was generally dismissed as an “urban myth” that any players had actually been advised to take early retirement pensions because of this 52 Rule. (In fact, just as the NFL now has the 88 Plan for players with dementia, we’re going to start referring to this as The NFLPA 52 Plan from now on.) More and more players keep writing in to confirm that they too were also told to take that 52 Plan. Too many to ever dismiss any longer – we were all lied to over the years. It was called F-R-A-U-D then and it’s still called fraud today.
It’s been nearly 3 years since Dave and I first ventured into blogging about professional football and what actually happens behind the scenes in the lives of those men who have played the game once they leave that field for the last time. Dave’s been at this for over 30 years since being sidelined after Superbowl XV in 1980 with a broken neck and subsequently denied his disability benefits several times – even in spite of the NFL’s own doctor declaring him to be 80%+ disabled in 1995.
. Well, it’s been a while since I first started trying to access the benefits for some football-related injuries that hospitalized me earlier this year.(Click HERE to read my earlier post about THAT exercise in futility.)I’ve still been trying to wade through all the traps*** that the NFL management has set in addition to those posed by my personal circumstances… So I thought I’d give everyone a little update on my progress (or lack thereof!):
. BY EVAN WEINER . 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 contractors 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 hasn’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 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 saying back in 1980. The League is now 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 are now getting government assistance through Social Security Disability and Medicare because they have pre-existing conditions and cannot get health benefits. The issue of our government taking care of discarded players is something that the news media has ignored for reasons known only to those who decide what “news” to cover.
Over the past few weeks, there have been some amazingly honest discussions during live NFL game broadcasts. So what’s been different from past coverage? Mainstream NFL announcers and commentators have begun to bring up those elephants in the room. And slowly, the conversation has also started shifting to include retired players who are now being vindicated by a growing wave of documented cases and scientific data on the long-term effects of concussions as a direct result of their past careers on the field. While concussions have always been a part of this physical sport, almost everyone also agrees that any dramatic changes or rules will likely make the game something completely different from what it has been.
It was 5 years ago. I remember the phone call as if it were yesterday. An Attorney in Representative Maxine Waters’ office, a man named Eric Tamarkin was on the phone. Eric was a sharp young lawyer who represented his boss very well. Eric says to me “Tony, can you call off the phone calls to our office?”
Dear Mr. Goodell and Mr. Smith:
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.
BUTTON)
