Dave Pear's Blog

We understand that this past Wednesday evening, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was given an Impact Award at the Sports Legacy Institute‘s Third Annual Impact Awards held in Boston MA. SLI has been involved with Boston University in the forensic study of the long-term effects of concussions on athletes’ brains. Many players have already pledged their brains to the Institute for study after they die. The award was to “recognize the NFL’s new advocacy and educational programs on youth sports concussions.” Of course, a year earlier, the NFL had donated $1 million to the Sports Legacy Institute Boston University School of Medicine’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Many of you have been following our friend, George Visger’s recent brain shunt emergency this past weekend. The good news is that George made a strong recovery from this recent episode and we’re posting more details that have just come in from George below. As gory and complex as some of it may sound, most people generally know little about these procedures which actually happen more frequently than get reported. The Washington Post ran another series recently on brain injuries in sports and provided detailed information and graphics on hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and the shunt surgery that’s used to alleviate the problem.

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At the beginning of May, I had mailed and posted a series of questions to Mary-Ann Fleming, the NFL’s Director of Player Benefits. (Click HERE to read the original questions I’d submitted.) A week later, I received a short letter from them informing me that she was away on business and then on vacation. Nearly a month after sending out my first letter, I finally received a 3-page response via FedEx. (By the way, what’s the deal with all that? No one gets back to me quickly and when you do, there are no answers to my questions. You take over 2 years to finally decide to send me a second reimbursement check for $202.68 as your share of a $60,000 surgery. Yet you have paid assistants to respond that you’re away on vacation. And everything’s done by FedEx – at our plan’s expense, no less.)

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Before everyone and their brother jumps in to try and take credit for it, DeMaurice Smith and his crew have been working with the NFL to protect retired players’ disability benefits during a potential lockout in 2010. So De Smith was right – without the express agreement of the NFL, retired players’ benefits could have been severely impacted by a lockout.

AAA

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It ‘s almost comical when you look at the bill of goods the NFL and the Alumni are now trying to sell to Retired Players and the Public.

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First of all, we want to congratulate George Martin for his appointment as the Executive Director of the NFL Alumni Association; George was selected from a broad range of talented candidates with hats in the ring. George steps into this newly-created, salaried position at the Alumni. The choice was appropriate and George Martin is well-liked.
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Today’s official NFL press announcement from the Associated Press also included the following warm-and-fuzzy-aw-shucks clip on retired players (really, who actually sits down and writes this crap?):
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The owners also met with George Martin, who has been hired by the NFL Alumni Association, a group that plans to be the lone voice for retired players. Those players have had their representation fragmented by many groups, and Goodell believes working with one organization will be a positive development.
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”One thing I’ve heard coming out of meetings with retired players was that they want an independent organization that is focused entirely on retired players,” Goodell said. ”Now we can have an entity that is independent that can identify issues that are priorities for retired players.
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”Retired players are an asset. They’re wonderful ambassadors for the game, they mean so much to fans. To be able to cooperate with them to provide opportunities for them, this is a great development for us.”
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Read the rest of the article as published in the New York Times by clicking HERE.
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With that, we want to step into a short and simple civics lesson:

Democracy vs. Dictatorship

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Once in a while, we run across a piece so well-written and easy-to-understand that to try and improve on it would be a waste of time. The following is a recent post written by Jordan Kobritz in The Seymour Herald (out of Seymour, Tennessee) and we’re posting the entire piece with the kind permission of Herald Publisher Joe Karl.

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One of the presentations that drew a lot of attention during The Summit was from Bruce Laird of Fourth and Goal. Fourth and Goal has been in ongoing discussions with the NFL to use the NFL Alumni organization as a possible platform for advocacy of disability and pension reform. At the conclusion of The Summit, the group voted to continue moving forward without embracing any single organization at this early stage while encouraging and supporting all organizations that will advance retired players’ issues. (You can look at the evolving Summit blog by clicking HERE and you’ll find Bruce Laird’s presentation under the PowerPoints tab – or click HERE.)

Bernie Parrish has already voiced some of his strong opinions in no uncertain terms (HERE and HERE) and this is definitely going to make it a very hot summer topic. There’s no middle ground or gray area on this one. Do the retired players embrace an existing organization that has been looked on as another business-as-usual club for elite members or will they be embracing an organization that’s been reborn into something that can actually serve the membership at large with complete transparency and representation for each and every one of its members? Only time will tell and everyone’s watching closely.

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The news has been incredibly blunt in these hard times: Medicare and Social Security could be hitting the wall in 8 years. It’s going to hit everyone hard, especially the baby boomers and those who can ill afford to lose it. For many, what little assistance they might get from Medicare and SSI is all they have to fall back on. And many of us have friends and family who have already been totally wiped out financially by a medical catastrophe.

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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.”

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Dear Larry -

I received your first letter of May 14, 2008 by overnight courier after we posted details of that anonymous comment that originated from within your law firm. Your letter arrived over the weekend just before I went in for my hip replacement surgery. I appreciated your honesty in acknowledging this activity from one of your staff as well as your taking responsibility for this underhanded attempt to threaten our efforts.

While it fell short of making an outright apology, your letter certainly helped to highlight the ongoing range of attitudes and emotions on the different sides in this long-running struggle of disabled retired NFL players and those who vehemently oppose our efforts. If this gives you a small glimpse into the feelings of just a few people, then I can only hope that you and others might begin to understand what it will take to bring everyone to the table to resolve this issue once and for all. While there may be a few who have ulterior motives and agendas, we truly believe that most people understand and empathize with those of us who have sacrificed everything for the game in the past to make football what it is today. Whenever our story gets heard, the general opinion is a resounding ‘Why? Why is this happening to the men who helped to build this sport when the business grosses billions every year even as rookies continue to get signed up for multimillion dollar contracts even before they hit a field?’

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This is an older post from humor news site, The Onion:

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In our previous post about Jon Roehlk’s Dire Need assistance from the NFL Alumni, we were hoping to find out more about how and why he was qualified to receive financial aid. We’ve received some more information about Jon’s background and his unusual history with the NFL and the AFL. As we also said, we hold no animosity or personal grudge towards him and his family. We understand Jon’s a nice guy according to people who have talked with him, so all our best to Jon. That said, here’s the story so far (and I’m actually quoting much of it from one source so we can be fair) and some additional commentary after this:

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Well, it was bound to happen. While a lot of our friends who read Dave’s blog enjoyed the new Gene Marie Antoinette Upshaw look, a lot of folks have already written in asking about that “Let ‘em eat cake!” comment. Besides – it’s another opportunity to post that picture again, so here’s the story behind the cake comment!

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Monthly pension paid to Hall of Famer Herb Adderley for his 12 years of service - $126.85!

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