As the current football season continues to heat up on its way to Super Bowl XLV, the rhetoric is also cranking up on both sides of the fence as to whether or not the League and the NFLPA will actually have a CBA in place or if the owners will be locking the players out of the next season. On the retired players’ end of things, the storyline continues to be, “Keep waiting – we CAN’T do anything until AFTER the CBA is a done deal.”
. 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.
For the first time, the NFL and the NFLPA extended an invitation to “The Independent Retired Players” to attend and participate in a meeting called to discuss the problems that continue to plague Retirees. Bob Grant, an Independent Activist and Advocate for our cause, was asked to attend on behalf of the Retired Players.
How time flies. It’s been over 6 months since NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell first announced his tour back in September to hear all about retired players’ grievances. (That story first appeared HERE.) You may remember that this tour was announced with great fanfare and press last year as Roger Goodell’s opportunity to speak and listen to the retired players across the country. If the reports have been accurate, it sounds like the Commish managed to visit a staggering 6 NFL cities out of a total of 32 teams (?!!) before all press releases stopped.
You may recall that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was asked if he was the chair of the Retirement Board (clickHEREto read that earlier post). The answer is that under the terms of the Bell/Rozelle NFL Retirement Plan, he serves as a non-voting, ex-officio chair. However, at the Baltimore Sports Symposium, Sarah Gaunt informed us that Harold Henderson – NFL attorney – is the chair. (Read about Henderson’s antics in a previous postHERE.) With that, we’ll close for the weekend with some fun from an old classic from Abbott and Costello: Who’s on First?
Our good friend and player advocate, disability attorney John Hogan, was able to attend that Symposium held at the Baltimore School of Law on Thursday. Here are his notes from that day:
The University of Baltimore School of Law held their first Annual Sports Law Symposium today. This year’s conference was From Rookie to Retirement: The NFL Universe in the New Economy and you can read the agenda on their site HERE. Here’s a list of the speakers (the usual suspects) and their topics: continue reading »
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s Traveling Snow Job – er, Snow Show – will be arriving in Newport Beach CA on Jan. 14th, 2009. And, of course, even after major media coverage and objections by the majority of retired players and their families, it’s still a closed meeting. No spouses, no caregivers, no representatives and no media once again. However, traveling along with the Commissioner will be his lawyer, Harold Henderson, and probably a couple of his PR flaks to make sure no one misspeaks.
Many of you older players probably remember Johnny Carson as Karnak the Magnificent, supreme prognosticator of the airwaves. Karnak could simply hold an envelope up to his turban and read its contents and predict the future with incredible accuracy much to the amusement of his audience. Well, we’re going to try and pull a Karnak here after reading a recent e-mail announcement from the NFL. First, here’s the e-mail (our emphasis in RED):
It was obvious after the meeting that the NFL’s in house attorney, Harold Henderson, tried to do an end run with his attempts to get real information to the retired players. Here’s the follow up on our Snowing in Dallas (click HERE to read that) post about Commissioner Goodell’s visit to Dallas. Many of you were well aware ahead of time that John Wooten had invited John Hogan to the meeting in Dallas. As a courtesy, we decided not to publicize his trip, with hopes that John Hogan would be given some time to actually address many of the issues he has personally encountered with the NFLPA’s disability program (or lack thereof). But that was not to be. John was initially turned away from the “closed” meeting and then allowed to take a seat but was told he couldn’t address the group about his findings and ideas. John left the meeting before it finished and then received an interesting e-mail from John Wooten (after we posted Snowing in Dallas) denying he had invited John Hogan to attend. What was more interesting however was another e-mail that came in after Wooten sent that e-mail out to John Hogan AND Harold Henderson. Henderson then sent a short and terse e-mail back to John Wooten and it sure looks like he doesn’t know too much about the Internet and e-mail either (like our good friends at Akin Gump!). Looks like Henderson clicked on that REPLY ALL button and sent his message out to John Wooten as well as John Hogan and several other people in the NFL organization: Jeff Pash, Peter Abitante and Deborah Pugliese). Pash is an Executive VP and an attorney, Abitante is their PR flak (?!!) and Pugliese is Goodell’s secretary. Now why would Henderson have to keep their PR counsel informed? Here’s the e-mail:
With Gene Upshaw now gone to a different place, the NFLPA and its management have a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring about a lot of long overdue changes. We can only hope that everyone sees it that way and will take advantage of the short window that’s now open in a vacuum that comes from decades under an unchallenged dictatorship. Without the need to get into mudslinging and finger-pointing, I think everyone will agree that no one can fill Gene Upshaw’s shoes for better or for worse. He takes with him his own way of doing things and – without a well-groomed heir apparent in place – most of us believe that many of the reasons behind the old way of doing things will also be lost forever.
So the opportunity that’s staring us in the face right now is a rare chance to get a lot of the right things done that couldn’t be done before. Especially some of those things that made absolutely no sense other than “because I said so.”
As the current football season continues to heat up on its way to Super Bowl XLV, the rhetoric is also cranking up on both sides of the fence as to whether or not the League and the NFLPA will actually have a CBA in place or if the owners will be locking the players out of the next season. On the retired players’ end of things, the storyline continues to be, “Keep waiting – we CAN’T do anything until AFTER the CBA is a done deal.”
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.
For the first time, the NFL and the NFLPA extended an invitation to “The Independent Retired Players” to attend and participate in a meeting called to discuss the problems that continue to plague Retirees. Bob Grant, an Independent Activist and Advocate for our cause, was asked to attend on behalf of the Retired Players.
