Dave Pear's Blog

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Posturing has already started between the two sides in the upcoming NFL labor dispute. Although it’s still in the pre-game warm-up stage, reading between the lines and newspaper quotes shows both sides expect – or are at least positioning – for a lockout.

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The centerpiece of the battle is the percentage of revenue sharing. The real issue is not the percentage but the true gross number on which the percentage is based. It has long been whispered that the greatest untold story in sports is what NFL owners actually make, as compared to what they report. Monies paid to themselves, family members and subsidiary companies through those huge consulting fees and offshore money transfers to lower the bottom line first, thus lowering the players’ claim to their cut of the pie. And now the owners also want the players to take more money off the top to cover costs for stadiums. Is that like General Motors asking the UAW to help them finance a new car factory while also taking a pay cut?

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Picture a 259-pound young man of 21 who had lifted weights for 10 years in order to get a job with Kmart finally being hired by Kmart. Both his older brothers and father had worked at jobs below Kmart but never made it there. He had dreams of being better than all of them. During his interview, the supervisor told the young man with a wink, that there was a place for him at Kmart if he could put on 20 – 25 pounds of solid muscle without losing any speed. The caveat was it needed to be done before he started work in 3 months. Considering there were 50 others vying for his job and he had planned on buying his parents a new home and helping his older brother start a business, the young man returned to school, obtained a prescription for steroids, as he knew the supervisors request was not physically possible without chemical help. He returned to work 3 months later weighing 275 pounds while maintaining his speed as requested. Despite the fact he had fulfilled his obligation, his supervisor fired him after 6 weeks.

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But the young man never gave up on his dreams and landed a job at another Kmart store. Early in his second year working for Kmart, the young man severely inured a knee while doing his duties as a Kmart employee. One of his new supervisors told him he was not injured, convinced him to have his knee drained of 65 – 70 ccs of blood every 2-3 weeks and put him back to work. The knee failed every few weeks prior to being drained, but he reported to work every day as required and did his duties as well as he could with his injured knee. The knee failed again and required surgery, during which they removed all the cartilage but never repaired a torn Anterior Cruciate ligament which was duly noted in the medical records.

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He returned to Kmart after the knee surgery and began working in a new area of the store until he could function at his old position again. While working at his new position, he began developing severe headaches, projectile vomiting, loss of hearing and eyesight. His supervisors told him it was due to a cold, prescribed cold medicine and told him to continue working at his new position until he was healthy enough to return to his original job. He did as he was told but his conditions worsened over the course of 2½ weeks, culminating in focal point paralysis of his right arm. He again returned to his supervisors and relayed to them his paralysis of the night before. His supervisor looked in his eye with a light and told the employee his brain was hemorrhaging. So the supervisor told this employee to go home, lie down and then drive 30 minutes to a hospital later that afternoon… by himself. The young employee did as he was told and subsequently underwent emergency VP Shunt brain surgery that night.

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A very quiet news announcement hit the wires this past week that could have major repercussions for active players in upcoming contract negotiations. First, here’s the headline and a clip from the original release on Reuters:

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NFL in discussions about using chip-in-ball technology

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Tue Aug 3, 2010
By Patrick Johnston

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(The Official NFL Concussion Poster is on the left and on the right, what it might have looked like when Dr. No was still chair of the “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. Click on the posters to enlarge for viewing and printing.)

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This past year, we’ve seen some interesting changes as they relate to concussions and brain injuries. With the Congressional Committee going for the jugular on the seriousness of brain injuries as well as some hard-hitting media coverage from sports journalists like Alan Schwarz of the New York Times, we have to agree that there’s been serious movement in terms of acknowledging the reality of brain injuries. In Washington State, we saw the passage of Zach’s Law (named for Zachery Lystedt, a high school student who was paralyzed when he was sent back into a football game by his coach following a serious concussion). Zach’s Law sets a new standard for evaluation of concussions at the public school level that many other states are now beginning to follow. The NFL saw the departure of the co-chair of their “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, Ira “Dr. No” Casson, and then created a new committee now re-named the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee. To their credit, one of the new co-chairs is a well-respected REAL concussion expert, Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, who actually hails from Seattle and was instrumental in helping to draft Zach’s Law.

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Reprinted in its entirety with permission from Evan Weiner:

Discarded NFL players are often forgotten in retirement

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We were all excited when the NFL finally got rid of Ira “Dr. No” Casson as Co-Chair of the NFL’s “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. What surprised us was the selection of Dr. Richard Ellenbogen as co-chair of the newly-named NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee. Dr. Ellenbogen hails from Harborview Medical Center in Seattle as chief of neurological surgery and has been very proactive at the state level in legislation regarding concussions in youth athletics.

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George Visger was the perfect poster-boy for NFL brain concussions to contact Dr. Ellenbogen: Incredibly intelligent, well-spoken and very vocal as a perfect spokesman on the long-term damage from severe brain concussions that resulted directly from his career in professional football. George has been relentlessly involved with a two-pronged approach to the NFL’s concussion problem: The NFL needs to be held to the same standard as any employer in America when it comes to taking care of its injured employees – both active and retired – and clear rules need to be put in place to ensure worker safety both on and off the field. Last month, George proposed a detailed set of rules that address the most important issue facing the NFL, the NFLPA and its employees. The proposed rules were the result of collaboration among a group of retired players who worked with George to develop some guidelines that have been long overdue. We think they make a lot of sense and it covers ALL players with a common sense approach that only players with first-hand experience could develop.

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On a side note before we present the Visger Rules, we had sent a proposal to DeMaurice Smith several months back as the Amen Clinic trials was closing to see if the NFLPA would be interested in funding brain scans for active players BEFORE and AFTER they started their careers, as well as brain scans for all retired players. After seeing the need to continue helping the retired football players, Dr. Amen had graciously offered an incredibly discounted rate for any and all players sent to any of his clinics. Our proposal was simple: ALL active players would have a SPECT scan before starting their careers as well as when they retired; and ALL retired players would be allowed a brain scan as a new benefit. The cost would have been relatively minimal (considering all the money we see wasted every year as disclosed in the annual LM-2 filings) but the impact and effect would be invaluable to each and every player for a lifetime. George’s proposal goes even further: Each active player would also be required to have annual brain scans as an integral part of their mandatory checkup regimen. With the medical technology available today, each player and the Union could easily be provided with up-to-the-minute information on their entire physical condition that’s complete and accurate to help prevent further injuries. We felt that the proposal was the right thing to do and very pro-player (pro-employee – which is what Unions are supposed to be). Given the League’s recent gestures in this direction, the timing couldn’t have been better for the PA to initiate such a plan. After all, what could the League have to say against such a proactive move? This could easily be a high priority issue during any CBA negotiations which is why we felt it was important enough to present the idea directly to DeMaurice Smith. There has been absolutely NO response since the proposal was sent to them in April. We have no idea why this wouldn’t be a perfect issue for the Union (the retired AND active players’  Union) to take up with the League right now to show real unity by protecting all of its men – past and present. As with everything else, it seems we’re all still waiting just for a response…

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So here we are well into our third year with Dave’s Blog. When Dave first decided to document and present his experiences in dealing with his life after football, we had no idea just how many people wanted to read his story or how many – or how few – other retired players were suffering the same fate.

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Over these past couple of years, we discovered there were a lot of different but similar accounts of all the ways that retired football players have been denied their earned benefits.  Just when you thought you’d heard it all, a new one comes along.

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This past weekend, we read a post on the National Football Post about Conrad Dobler’s most recent struggles to survive after 30 surgeries – including 10 knee replacements – all while still looking after his wife, Joy, who has been a quadriplegic since 2001. (Read the article – click HERE.)

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Last week, we received a couple of copies of the current Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan (released in April 2009) from different sources. After reviewing and comparing them, we’ve confirmed that we have an accurate copy of the plan and we’re posting it here for everyone.

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We’ve uploaded the entire document on Scribd for easier access and viewing. (Click on the FULL SCREEN button to enlarge it for easier navigation – hit the ESC key to close. You can also click the DOWNLOAD button to save a PDF copy for printing and reading.)

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And just as with that NFLPA 2009 LM-2,  if you find any interesting items to point out, please feel free to share them with everyone in the Comments Section.

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We just finally managed to download and convert a copy of the entire 637-page NFLPA 2009 LM-2 that was officially filed with the Dept. of Labor on May 28, 2010. It’s another big one!

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Some interesting notes on our first cursory review:

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Memo to DeMaurice Smith,

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Your statement as recently quoted in The Charlotte Observer, “The rift we had in the past with our former players is over,” said Smith. “It is done.” is simply not true. (You can read the article by clicking HERE.) NOTHING could be further from the truth. Where did you come up with this conjecture?

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Your new appointment of Robert Smith to the disability board to replace Tom Mr. Conflict-of-Interest Condon was another example of the intent of the NFLPA Leadership to continue business as usual (also known as the Upshaw-Way-or-the-Highway). From the statements Smith is already making, he sounds even worse than Condon! (If that’s possible!)

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I feel for the “terror” today’s players must be facing regarding a work stoppage. (To read the Sporting News article ‘NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith: ‘A lot of players are terrified’ about a work stoppage’ – Click HERE.) Luckily, I was able to support myself and family these last 28 years on the $65,000 plus partial playoff money (another $14,000) I made while a member of San Francisco 49′ers team in ’81. Shoot, if I wasn’t such an economically suave 23-year old when I was injured, I never would have survived the next 7 brain surgeries over the years. (The fact I had to sue for Workers Comp to get brain surgeries #2 and #3 paid did help keep the creditors at bay for a while.)

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I can remember times when I had $3.85/day to eat on during the late 80′s. I had 4 emergency VP Shunt brain surgeries in one 10-month period while I was back in school full time trying to finish my biology degree, bouncing in bars at night for $10/hr, swinging a hammer during the day in between classes as a general contractor and carpenter, and working as a live-in counselor at a Crisis Intervention Shelter for runaway youths (Diogenese Youth Services in Sacramento). I did two 28 hour shifts/week living in the home with up to 6 runaway youths at a time, while manning a 24 hr/day hotline. I was paid for 24 hours/shift as they thought you could get 4 hours sleep per night some how. All this for $150/shift, and I was thankful I could pay the bills doing something to help others. That $300/week made the difference between eating or not. I was forced to quit that job during the 1987 four-brain-surgery-run, as I couldn’t remember where I parked my truck, much less be responsible for living with and counseling 6 at-risk youths at one time. Luckily, the anger management issues I developed from the brain surgeries where looked upon as an asset when pursuing bouncing jobs and I was able to demand a premium wage.

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Today’s players need to wake up, give back to the community and thank God and the older guys for paving the way for their lucrative careers, instead of whining when they aren’t guaranteed more than last years players. BEFORE they ever even step on the field!

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Retiree dispute declared ‘done’

NFL Players Association chief says he has worked hard to address the complaints of former players.

By Charles Chandler

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Clarification on the 1993 CBA and the Commencement of Revenue Sharing

Dear Mr. Smith:

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You state the following:

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Aaron Hewitt: Dave at Home

Yesterday, I was reading a recent article on Bleacher Report titled Dear NFL: Eight Changes That Need to Be Made Now (click HERE to read their eight changes). It got me thinking again about the real changes that need to be made for retired players:

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Dear  NFL, NFLPA, NFL Retirement board,

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NFLPA Lawyers Door

It seems that the NFLPA was under the rule of lawyers for decades when departed Executive Director Gene Upshaw ran the place. We’ve covered many of the lawyers inside over the past couple of years. And current Executive Director DeMaurice Smith recently alluded to the conflict of interest posed by the Groom Law Group with regard to the players’ pension plans; they wrote the plan and they represented BOTH the NFLPA AND the NFL when it came to defending the plan. (Click HERE to see the Super Bowl announcement.)

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Then you have Jeffrey Kessler who fought against the retired players in the Parrish GLA lawsuit by representing the NFLPA (who’s SUPPOSED to be representing the retired players’ interests – got that?!) and then turns around to represent the Union in the recent American Needle antitrust case in the Supreme Court. You also have CAA superagent Tom Condon who makes the big bucks representing many of the active players in their contracts with the League while also supposedly looking after retired players’ interests by serving for years as one of the 3 NFLPA representatives on the Disability Committee (most applicants get turned down for full benefits). And last but not least, you have NFLPA General Counsel, Richard Berthelsen, who’s been there as long as the wallpaper advising Upshaw over the years.

Gene Berthelsen

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