A couple of recent articles caught our attention today, one of them discussing the Madden Curse – what happens when you find yourself featured on the cover of the latest edition of Electronic Arts Madden Football:
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To Grace Or Not to Grace The Cover: Is Madden Curse For Real?
Would you trust your brain or your money with this man?
We have no idea how anyone missed this little tidbit from the Congressional hearings on brain concussions in the NFL. The media rightfully focused on stirring comments made by former Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ owner Gay Culverhouse regarding the complete lack of advocacy for the players when it comes to brain injuries: The team doctors are hired by the owners and are employed to protect their investment; many of the coaches and owners often play golf with the team doctors in their free time. Tampa Bay Online covered Ms. Culverhouse’s testimony closely and the last paragraph in their story says a lot about just how seriously Roger Goodell plans on looking into brain concussions.
AAA
Culverhouse: NFL doctors aren’t advocates for players
4/17/2009 Subject: Madden not paying retired players while collecting over $100 million in royalties off the retired players’ backs – Did Madden scramble your identity to keep from paying you?
The retired NFL players who were used in Madden EA video games will be suing Madden and EA for using us in those games without compensating us. Madden’s agent Sandy Montag boasts he and Madden collected over $100,000,000 in royalties while paying the retired NFL players used in those games absolutelynothing. Madden knows that the ugly truthful litigation is coming and is probably factoring that into his retirement. I doubt he wants to answer all those fans who will be asking, “Why, John Madden? Why did you screw all those retired players over, you seemed like such a friendly, good-natured buffoon?”
We probably won’t use Manatt Phelps and Phillips and McKool Smith, the attorneys who obtained a $28.1 million verdict for us against the NFLPA for “scrambling retired players identities” in those video games. The jury found it a “grossly fraudulent” action taken so they wouldn’t have to pay the retired players. That case Parrish v NFLPA Case No. 07 0943 WHA carries $21 million in punitive damages and is being appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which doesn’t mean the decision has been overturned nor does it lessen the verdict found by the jury. In my opinion, Madden should have been included in our licensing suit against the NFLPA and so should Electronic Arts.
Irregularities in the trial may even bring about a retrial that will allow the award to be in the $100+ million range where it should have been instead of only $28.1 million. The case is already being retried in the media by Richard Berthelsen and Jeffery Kessler. Regardless of their propaganda, the case has nothing to do with the issue of the number of high profile players not signing what the Judge William Alsup calls a “masterpiece of obfuscating.” That “masterpiece of obfuscation” is the Group Licensing Agreements (GLA) drafted by the NFLPA’s Richard Berthelsen and Jeffery Kessler. The “grossly fraudulent obfuscation” – that GLA – is the issue that lost the NFLPA the $28.1 million. Our side of the trial was warned by Judge Alsup that if we talked to the press about the case he would hold us in contempt. On the other hand, Berthelsen and Kessler seem to be exempt from spinning their previously defeated arguments to try to win them in media articles before the 9th Circuit Court hears the case. Worse yet, they’re now using publications where they have spent over $281,000 over the last several years for NFLPA advertising. So they’re not only retrying the case in the media, they’re actually paying the media to retry the case as an advertisement in the court of public opinion to try to influence the 9th Circuit Court. Are those actions contemptuous? It seems to me that most of what they do is contemptuous. Rigging a union election is contemptuous and it is also illegal.
2,062 retired NFL players participated in our lawsuit with only 12 retired players opting out, 10 of whom work for the defendant – the NFLPA. That’s an amazing vote of endorsement by the retired NFL players.
The Congressional Confirmation Hearings for Eric Holder as Attorney General are going on right now. Most of the retired players have expressed their negative views about this mouthpiece and lobbyist for the NFL. Their fears of Holder running interference with ongoing Congressional investigations into the NFL’s mistreatment of its retired players need to be brought to the forefront to ensure that Holder will be forced to recuse himself from anything to do with the NFL. Better yet – after looking at some of the press coverage on the things he’s been involved with over the years, perhaps he shouldn’t be confirmed.
No doubt, Holder is one of the best lawyers money can buy… But surely there are better, more ethical attorneys (is that an oxymoron?) for the job?
With that, there’s no one better informed on this nomination than Bernie Parrish. After leading a successful, years-long class-action lawsuit against the NFLPA/Players Inc. that concluded last November, Bernie’s been focusing a lot of his scrutiny on the Eric Holder nomination. Bernie’s comments are added below the video clip:
We don’t know how many of you remember the kids’ series of books, “Where’s Waldo?“. But we’re sure it’s Where’s John Madden? time now. (We had a clip on the blog just before the trial started. Click HERE to read it.)
Mark Kriegel of FOXsports just wrote a powerful piece about the recent Players Inc. lawsuit victory and how the normally boisterous Madden has mysteriously vanished since the beginning of the trial. Calls to NBC, Electronic Arts as well as to his agent have resulted in mostly dodgy comments, with each of them pointing Kriegel to the other. And absolutely no one seems to know where John Madden has gone. Kriegel also starts digging into the idea that perhaps this is as good a time as any for madden – and everyone else along with him in the NFL and NFLPA – to finally step up to the plate and do the right thing for the retired players. There were 481 comments when we found the article and the vote for Madden to do the right thing was overwhelmingly 72% FOR vs. 28% AGAINSTDoes John Madden have a duty to speak out (With a Total of 65,102 people voting so far.)
From the article on FOXsports:
Jack Youngblood, another tough guy plaintiff, also professes an undying admiration for the former coach. Madden once said that Youngblood – a Rams defensive end who once played with a broken leg – “personified the All-Madden team.”
Dave was actually watching a bit of football on Sunday afternoon when he heard Al Michaels mention that his co-anchor, John Madden, was off on a two-week “vacation.” Coincidentally, the NFLPA/Players Inc. trial happens to be starting on Monday, October 20th. Even though he’s apparently not subpoenaed to testify, it’s rather mysterious that he’d take a couple of weeks off while the trial is running. Perhaps he just want to dodge some interesting questions.
So Sports Illustrated decided to have a little fun this morning on their SI.com website, comparing John Madden to legendary high-school slacker Ferris Bueller (played by Matthew Broderick in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – click HERE to read about the movie). And just click on the picture below to go to Sports Illustrated’s story.
SI's John Madden vs Ferris Bueller
And here’s a clip straight from the official NBC Press Release:
Like many of us, Jeff Nixon’s been following the class action lawsuit between players (mostly retired) against the NFLPA an its, subsidiary, Players, Inc. The trial starts October 20th in San Francisco.
John Madden Introduced by His Favorite Sandwich
A LITTLE BACKGROUND: Among the people in the middle of this case is, of course, John Madden. Liked and disliked equally within NFL circles, Madden leveraged his successes as a coach with Al Davis’ Oakland Raiders, he went on to be a regular on NBC Sunday Night Football for a long second career. In 1988, he signed a contract with Electronic Arts to put his name on the wildly successful video game, Madden NFL. The game has generated incredible revenues and profits and is now at the center of the class-action lawsuit involving claims of fraud, misrepresentation and just plain-old thievery.
The majority of retired players have filed suit to recover royalties and damages as a result of what appears to be a consistent pattern of ensuring that EA paid as few of the players their due as possible (leaving more for those who WERE getting paid). Mounting evidence convinced a judge to allow the trial to move forward this past September 12th but the trial was postponed until the October 20th date as a result of Gene Upshaw’s quick disappearance from the scene in August. There’s no doubt that the NFLPA has already spent a small fortune in their attempts to prevent this case from going to trial and becoming public. We think this trial may be a watershed moment and valuable in supporting the long-standing claims of how the majority of retired players have been systematically robbed on virtually every front that involved any money. And it looks like anyone who’s been riding on this runaway bus – maybe it’s the Madden Cruiser – is complicit in the scheme. If you’re not part of solution, then maybe you’re part of the problem. While he may or may not have known everything that went on with the lopsided licensing deals, most of the players feel that Madden probably had some idea of why he was making so much money. (HINT: Not his good looks!)
