Watch for official announcement: Our Second Annual Independent Football Veterans Conference April 20 - 22 at the South Point in Las Vegas. - NFL Claims Workers’ Compensation Should Cover Players’ Head Injuries - FOX: Head-trauma Lawsuits Against NFL Swell - NY Times: Giants Beat Patriots in Final Rally 21 - 17 - NJ.com: Izenberg: At Super Bowl, John Mackey's widow speaks out against a cruel, arbitrary NFL rule - FOX: NFL to air Super Bowl ad on player safety - FOX Sports: 4 NFL concussion lawsuits being combined in Philadelphia - SportingNews: Concussion lawsuits could be tip of crisis for NFL

We’ll start this post off with an inquiry that just came in today:

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I am sending this email in regards to the class action lawsuit. My name was on the list which was posted: Leroy Jones – I played with the Chargers from 1976 – 1984. I never received any information concerning the distribution of the funds as to when and how it will occur.

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The Parrish vs. Players Inc. lawsuit presented an interesting conundrum for the NFLPA under Gene Upshaw; here they were, being sued by their own membership for not paying them royalties due after years of revenues generated from video games and trading cards and other licensed items. Yet they couldn’t allow themselves to notify their retired members that they were part of a class action against… them?!! Keep in mind that this was Upshaw’s NFLPA. It didn’t take long for new Executive Director DeMaurice Smith to quickly void Berthelsen and Kessler’s tired old arguments for another appeal and move the process to the settlement that’s close to being distributed today.  Do we have to remind anyone that if Gene Upshaw was still around, retired players would still be looking at another 3 – 5 years of appeals with no end in sight? (Actually, it appears that Yes – We DO Have to Remind Some People.) And all this happened within the first few months of change in the front office.

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