Dave Pear's Blog

NFLPA 2012 Florida Convention

The NFLPA just announced their 2012 convention to be held once again at the Marco Island Marriott in Florida next March. Retired players are also invited to actually mingle with active players for $250 a night! Lots of golf, fine dining and everything else… except talking about the real issues that retired players actually need to have addressed.
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So with all the lawyers that work over at the NFLPA, it seems that the only thing that gets their attention is another good lawsuit. Today, the attorneys in the earlier Eller suit – Hausfeld LLP, Zelle Hofmann, Arthur N. Bailey & Associates, Coburn & Greenbaum – filed another class action suit on behalf of retired players against the NFLPA, DeMaurice Smith, Tom Brady and Mike Vrabel. The new suit includes a new list of players – Dave is included as one of the named plaintiffs – along with an additional list of key issues that the PA will need to address.
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We’ve uploaded a copy of the new 44-page Lawsuit to Scribd for easy viewing and to make it downloadable for printing. You can also click the Enlarge icon in the center of the menu at the bottom of the viewing screen to go Full Screen for easier reading (and just hit the ESC key to close):
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Gault McElhenney Brown Et Al v NFLPA
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From retired Bengal & Buccaneer Tony Davis: Nolan Harrison III is “Senior Director of Former Player Services” who recently commented on a post by Dave Pear on Dave’s Blog. (Click HERE to read Nolan’s original remarks to Dave.) I also have some questions I would like Nolan to answer.

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In response to all these Let’s-Band-Together-and-Not-Jeopardize-What-We-Have-Accomplished cheerleaders:

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What has really been accomplished for the players prior to the early 1990’s since the last major CBA ?

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We just received this from retired Miami Dolphins Killer B’s Charles Bowser regarding his missing $10,000 Severance Check:

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Hey Robert,

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Read into it what you will but we don’t recall too many times when the NFLPA has stepped into an arbitration hearing for a retired player in the past. What we really have a problem understanding is why the NFL insists on asking for arbitration anyway. Wouldn’t it have been easier – and a whole lot smarter – just to have paid these guys their Severance Pay in the first place? (Click on the images to enlarge for easier reading.)

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Most of you have been following our recent coverage on the missing Severance Pay that more and more retired players have come to realize that they’ve never received. The NFLPA has just put together an outline of steps that former players can follow on Severance Pay. Andre Collins, Director for Player Benefits, submitted these instructions this morning.

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We swear – we’re NOT making any of this stuff up! Looks like we are now officially going into CYA time and people are coming forward with more documentation on Burt Grossman’s missing $40,000 Severance Pay. These documents just arrived this morning from Burt’s attorney, Daniel Anastasia, via Burt. We hope the PA continues to take ownership of this and starts to question the issue of Severance Pay for all the other retired players. A lot of them are also only now discovering that they haven’t been paid (including Lionel James who has gone through an almost identical stonewall process like Burt). Be sure to read our prior post this morning from Irv Cross that includes the language in the ’82 contract covering Severance from that agreement – click HERE to read it.

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I hope most of you have been following our posts on Burt Grossman’s Severance Pay debacle with the NFL. It’s just more standard business practice for the League and its owners.

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Here we go again. More on Burt Grossman’s continuing battle for his Severance Check. Burt’s attorney, Daniel Anastasia, has written a response back to the NFL Management Council’s attorney, Brook Gardiner, as well as a request to the NFLPA’s Tom Depaso to provide some assistance in his efforts to locate his money.

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Well, we knew it was going to get interesting but we had no idea HOW interesting it was going to get. After first discovering that he had $40,000 in Severance Pay owed to him since his retirement in 1994, Burt Grossman has been going through what can only be described politely as a maze of pure bureaucracy. Short of telling him ‘The dog ate the paperwork’, the NFL has fed him just about every excuse they could come up with:

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Luke ,

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For the past couple of days, we had a run of comments on an earlier post between Burt Grossman and Lionel James about their missing Severance Pay. It turns out that Burt has been going in circles with the NFL, the Eagles front office and the NFLPA trying to get the $40,000 in severance that he had coming after retiring from the Eagles in 1994 based on rules set out in the CBA. We even put him in touch with Mitchell Welch from Gay Culverhouse’s Players’ Outreach so they could see firsthand how little assistance retired players can expect once they’re out of the game. Like the old expression goes: The lights are on but no one’s home.

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One of the more common questions coming in from recently retired players (the last 10 – 15 years) has been about severance pay. In our last post, both Lionel James and Burt Grossman mentioned that they weren’t even aware of any severance pay clauses. Irv Cross sent in a response through the Comments and we decided to put it up as a general post so it would be more visible to everyone. Thanks, Irv!

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