Heroes

At a recent event honoring Jonathan Ogden, the Baltimore Ravens’ first Hall of Fame member, Ogden was described as a hero for his accomplishments on and off the field. His football career speaks for itself – first draft choice of the Baltimore Ravens, 11 Pro Bowls in his 12-year career, a Super Bowl victory, among other honors. And through the Jonathan Ogden Foundation, he has been a source of support and encouragement to many underprivileged and underrepresented in Maryland.

During the event, I was reminded that the word “hero” is used frequently – perhaps too frequently – in reference to athletes and athletics. With no disrespect to Jonathan Ogden – or, for that matter, to any of us who’ve been described as heroes for our achievements in sports – I’d argue there are others who are far more deserving of the word “hero”.

On November 16, for example, I had the privilege of participating in a football game between former NFL players and the Wounded Warrior Amputee football team. The team comprises veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who’ve lost a limb and who are determined that the loss will not curtail their athletic careers. Brian Mitchell quarterbacked a team of former NFL players – Roy Jefferson, Garo Yepremian, Mike Bass, Larry Brown, Mack Alston, Pat Fischer, Eric Hipple, Ron Saul, among others – and I’ve got to tell you, the WWAF team was a formidable opponent.

Beyond the football field, though, these young men – and hundreds of thousands of others – have accomplished even greater feats. They volunteered for military service at a time when our nation was involved in two wars, in theaters far from home. They were deployed time and time again, engaging an enemy that was often unseen and enduring some of the most challenging conditions imaginable. And, like generations before them, they gave life and limb for our nation.

Heroes.

Pro football has its share of heroes. They’re men like Pat Tillman, Roger Staubach, Rocky Bleier, Art Donovan, Ralph Heywood and a host of others who delayed or interrupted their football careers to serve in World War II, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and other military engagements. In this month of November, when we celebrate both Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, let’s remember these heroes and the many others who serve in harm’s way, and give thanks for them.

Have a safe and secure Thanksgiving Day.

Bruce Laird
President, Fourth & Goal
Baltimore Colts, 1972-1981
San Diego Chargers, 1982-1983

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A Culture of Bullying?

A Culture of Bullying?

The recent turmoil surrounding the Miami Dolphins has triggered discussions about bullying among teammates, criticism of what some believe is a culture rampant in the NFL, even questions about what it means to be a man. The NFL’s investigation into Jonathan Martin’s abrupt departure from the Dolphins, alleged bullying of Martin by Richie Incognito, and Incognito’s suspension will no doubt be thorough. Until the findings are released, we won’t know much more about the interaction between Incognito and Martin or about the culture in the Dolphins’ organization.

For myself, the allegations of bullying caused me to look back on my own years as a member of the Baltimore Colts. Ted Marchibroda’s mantra was a simple one – “What have you done today to help Colt Football win?” – but it conveyed the message that each player mattered. It didn’t matter whether you were a starter or a backup; whether you came from a football powerhouse or a school with a struggling football program; whether your background was privileged or underprivileged; whether your playing style was cerebral, freelance or scrappy; whether you were an introvert or an extrovert; whether you were black or white; whether you were Catholic or Protestant, agnostic or atheist; whether you grew up in Pascagoula, Mississippi; Enid, Oklahoma; Stinson Beach, California; or Scituate, Massachusetts – you were an integral part of the team and had an important role to play.

That’s not to say there weren’t disagreements. Any time you have a group of folks from diverse backgrounds, with different personalities, there are bound to be conflicts. But those conflicts – whether blown plays and missed assignments on the field or the occasional transgression off the field – were dealt with through humor, with “Bonehead of the Week” Awards. You knew you let your teammates down, you knew you let yourself down, but you weren’t torn down, harassed or humiliated. We worked together, we lived together, we played together and we won together.

I’ve been around the NFL for more than 40 years – as a player, a player rep, an officer of the NFLPA’s former player organization, a member of NFL Alumni, a member of the media covering the Baltimore Ravens, and as president of Fourth & Goal, the first organization dedicated to raising money and advocating for retired players. I’ve seen the game grow beyond what I ever could have imagined.

In my day, the Colts held training camp at a local college, practiced in a temporary practice facility – for several years, a Catholic seminary – before moving into Memorial Stadium once the Baltimore Orioles’ season ended. Lunch was brought in by a locker room volunteer or a secretary, typically from a local deli or KFC. Our locker room was equipped with one amenity – foosball. Yet the coaches were in touch with the players. (My defensive coordinator Maxie Baughan even hosted a chili supper for the defense every season.) They knew when a player had an issue or was struggling and they addressed it in a humane manner. One example – when a defensive teammate of mine was struggling, Coach Marchibroda dispatched me and another teammate to visit with the troubled player to see what we could do to help him.

Today’s NFL teams are largely self-contained. Training camp is often held at the team’s year-round practice facility. An in-house cafeteria provides meals, often under the supervision of a nutritionist. Given that physical set-up, coaches and players interact even more closely every day than we did. So it’s difficult for me to comprehend how a modern-era coach, trainer, or club official could be unaware of bullying or harassment of a player or players.

If what we’ve heard about the culture in the Dolphins’ locker room is true, there’s work to be done – even if that culture is confined to one team and one organization. The NFL has been committed to player safety on the field. Here’s an opportunity for the league to extend that commitment to the locker room, to ensure a safe environment there. My teammate Joe Ehrmann, dubbed “The Greatest Coach in America” by Parade Magazine, is already involved with numerous teams and there are other former players and coaches, like Tony Dungy, who are doing what they can to mentor young players. Still, I believe there’s room for – and a need for – many more of us to be involved. I encourage the NFL to do just that – bring more of us into the fold. As I’ve said for years, retired players are an asset to the league.

Bruce Laird
President, Fourth & Goal
Baltimore Colts, 1972-1981
San Diego Chargers, 1982-1983

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Was It Worth It?

October 10, 2013 by Kelly Lytle, son of former Broncos RB Rob Lytle

 

Frontline aired its provocative documentary League of Denial on Tuesday evening. League of Denial offers insights into the NFL’s concussion crisis with, for me, painstaking detail. It took me three sittings to finish. The subject matter was too frustrating and too close to home to absorb in a single viewing. After Dad died, my family and I donated his brain to the Sports Legacy Institute (SLI) to help advance their research into concussions, brain injuries, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). If you’ve seen the documentary, there is a segment that discusses the difficulties Chris Nowinski, SLI’s co-founder and executive director, faces when he phones the families of recently diseased players and asks about the possibility of acquiring that player’s brain for medical examination. Our family was one that Chris called, and we are thankful he did. The doctors and families in the two-hour documentary are not strangers. They are part of an extended family, one connected by the physical and mental havoc wreaked on former players by CTE.

 

More...

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"League of Denial"

Among the revelations of Frontline’s League of Denial, broadcast on PBS recently, were these:

• In 1994, then-Commissioner Paul Tagliabue created the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee and named Elliott Pellman, a rheumatologist who had no experience with brain trauma, to head the committee. The Committee subsequently published 16 papers diminishing, even dismissing the link between the game and long-lasting brain issues.
• In 1994, Tagliabue claimed the concussion issue was “one of these pack journalism issues, frankly.”
• In 1994, Dr. Pellman described concussions as “part of the profession, an occupational risk.”

Nineteen ninety-four – nearly 20 years ago.

Think about that.

In 1994, Tom McHale was entering the eighth year of his nine-year NFL career. He played 13 of the 16 games that season for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Fourteen years later, on May 25, 2008, Tom McHale would die of an accidental drug overdose at age 45. In January 2009, he would become the sixth former National Football League player to be posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by repetitive brain trauma.

Maybe the damage to Tom’s brain had been done by 1994. Maybe research wouldn’t have reversed the downward spiral Tom endured in his last few years. Just maybe Tom’s widow Lisa and his three sons – and Tom himself – might have found some comfort, some peace of mind, even some help, knowing that the depression and drug dependency Tom experienced had C.T.E. at its root.

They – and we – will never know.

Here’s one more revelation from Frontline’s League of Denial:

• In 1999, the NFL Retirement Board determined that Mike Webster was “totally and permanently” disabled as “the result of head injuries he suffered as a football player.” Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada, authors of the just-released book, League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth, recently uncovered the ruling, which had never been made public.

Nineteen ninety-nine – 14 years ago.

To date, 45 of the 46 NFL players’ brains examined by Dr. Ann McKee have had C.T.E. Other players’ brains – including that of Chris Henry, the 26-year-old Cincinnati Bengal who was the first active player to be diagnosed with C.T.E. – have been examined and C.T.E. has been diagnosed at West Virginia University’s Brain Injury Research Center, the National Institutes of Health and other institutions.

As I look back over my career of nearly 40 years as a player and a coach in the NFL, I remember many – teammates, opponents, peers, even players I coached, like Tom McHale – who developed neurological ailments that we now know are linked to repetitive hits to the head. And I can’t help but wonder how many of those lives might have been made better, perhaps even been saved, if the Mild Tramautic Brain Injury Committee had done its job in 1994, or if the 1999 NFL Retirement Board ruling had been made public. How many might not have suffered if a well-qualified neurologist had been named to hear the Mild Tramautic Brain Injury Committee instead of a rheumatologist? How quickly might we have learned that the term “Mild Traumatic Brain Injury” is an oxymoron?

One more question: “How many more lives will be diminished or lost?”

Maxie Baughan
Fourth & Goal Board of Directors
Philadelphia Eagles, 1960-1965
Los Angeles Rams, 1966-1970
Washington Redskins, 1971, 1974
Assistant Coach, Georgia Tech, 1972-1973
Defensive Coordinator, Baltimore Colts, 1975-1979
Defensive Coordinator, Detroit Lions, 1980-1982
Head Football Coach, Cornell University, 1983-1988
Linebackers Coach, Minnesota Vikings, 1990-1993
Linebackers Coach, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 1994-1995
Linebackers Coach, Baltimore Ravens, 1996-1998

Maxie Baughan on Tom McHale

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Payton's Place

Today marks the kickoff of the 2013 National Football League regular season, and this weekend marks the return of New Orleans Saints Head Coach Sean Payton to the sidelines. Payton, you may remember, was suspended for the entire 2012 season for his role in the Saints bounty scandal. 

Yesterday, the front page of USA Today’s sports section featured a lengthy article about the coach and a large photo with the caption, The Payton Saint of New Orleans. In a town where, according to USA Today, football is a religion, I suppose it’s no surprise that Payton’s return is described in Biblical terms:

·          

• Writer Lolis Eric Elie, a New Orleans native: “The return of Sean Payton is like the return of John the Baptist. Our return to a black and gold Super Bowl would be like the return of Christ himself.”

• Saints’ fan Lori Cavagnaro, wearing a “RedempSean” T-shirt:  “Every business pays incentives.”

• A sign hanging in Snake & Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge: “NFL, Geaux (expletive) Yourself”.

• Former Saints’ quarterback Bobby Hebert: “Sean Payton doesn’t walk on water, but people feel like maybe he can walk on it far enough to cross the Mississippi River.”

And Sean Payton himself is quoted as saying, “I think all any fan wants is a chance, and I’m sure they felt a year ago the penalty was one in which it was unfair and prevented their team from having a chance to win…”

Unfair?

Payton was suspended – along with defensive coordinator Gregg Williams (indefinitely), general manager Mickey Loomis (eight games), and assistant coach Joe Vitt (six games) – for a bounty scheme in which players were encouraged to injure opponents.

I’d call that system unfair. In fact, I’ve got a few other “un-” words for the bounty scheme – unwarranted, unethical, unconscionable. And, having waited to hear an apology or some remorse from Payton, another “un-” word comes to mind – unrepentant.

It’s important to remember that the goal of what some describe as an “incentive” was to target and deliberately injure players on opposing teams – and at times, the Saints succeeded. Now I’ve been in business a long time – since my first NFL off-season in 1973 – and have yet to encounter an “incentive” system in which a company deliberately attempts to physically harm specific employees of its competitors. 

Quite frankly, as Payton’s return is being likened to the “Second Coming” of Jesus Christ, I’m having a hard time envisioning Jesus sending out the Apostles to chop block, head butt or kneecap non-believers.

At a time when we are seeing more and more compelling evidence of links between head trauma and diseases like ALS, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and CTE; when we are witnessing players dealing with, even dying from, these diseases; when player safety measures are being implemented at every level of football, how can the Saints’ organization and its fans close their eyes to the ramifications of the team’s bounty system?

If Sean Payton is indeed – as Saints quarterback Drew Brees stated – “a leader of men”, I’d encourage the coach to accept responsibility for the actions of the men he led in the bounty scandal. To fail to do so is to demonstrate disrespect for the game, the league and the rules, as well as complete and utter disregard for the players his team targeted.

Bruce Laird
President, Fourth & Goal
Baltimore Colts, 1972-1981
San Diego Chargers, 1982-1982

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"At Least I Can Hide My Own Easter Eggs"

“At Least I Can Hide My Own Easter Eggs”

That’s what Ralph Heywood told his wife, Suzie, when he learned he had Alzheimer’s. The four-year NFL veteran maintained his sense of humor, along with his determination and grit, throughout his battle with Alzheimer’s – the last battle of this decorated career Marine Corps officer’s life.

Ralph’s doctors – including a geriatric specialist – believed his illness was related to football.

That should be no surprise to those of us who’ve followed the news in recent years as researchers have linked head trauma – like that we experienced in football – to Alzheimer’s, dementia, ALS, and Parkinson’s.

Recently, USA Todaypublished an article on concussions among youths. The newspaper’s online version headlined the article with a focus on the medical aspects, “Doctors more concerned about kids' repeat concussions” with the subhead, “Studies show recovery from a second concussion is longer if it follows soon after a first.” Yet the print edition inexplicably dismissed the effects of head trauma by titling the same article, “Keep your head over concussions”. A call-out in the print article quoted a pediatric neuropsychologist who said, “I am so happy to have raised awareness, but I think we’re driving people over the edge.”

Driving people over the edge?

Take Cincinnati Bengals’ owner Mike Brown, for example, contending that the link between concussion and dementia is unproven. According to Brown, “It's not only not proven, it's merely speculation that this is something that creates some form of dementia late in life. Our statistics—the ones I've seen anyway—don't show that. Yet there's a lot of talk.”

The statistics I’ve seen show that former NFL players are anywhere from 30 to 40 percent more likely to suffer from dementia, Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s – diseases that have been linked to head trauma. It’s true that some NFL retirees who’ve been afflicted with these ailments were never diagnosed with a concussion. Does that suggest there’s no link between concussion and such illnesses? Or that diagnostic techniques and concussion awareness have improved in recent years? Or that any head trauma – not necessarily considered a concussion – can damage the brain?

Mr. Brown seemed to support, if not wholeheartedly endorse, the cautious approach the NFL has adopted. According to Brown, “Whether the alarm that is up and about today is deserved is in my mind a good thing because it makes us play it safe, but I'm not convinced that anybody really knows what concussions bring, what they mean later in life, if anything.”

If you’ve seen the toll on teammates who are suffering the ramifications of concussion or head trauma – or on their family members and friends who are caring for the teammates – you may agree that head trauma is more likely “driving people over the edge.” Clearly we have a long way to go, to educate the uninformed.

At least Ralph Heywood could hide his own Easter eggs.

Bruce Laird
President, Fourth & Goal
Baltimore Colts, 1972-1981
San Diego Chargers, 1982-1983

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Art Donovan

 

We lost Art Donovan last night. The world lost a member of the Colts 1958 and 1959 NFL Championships, an NFL Hall of Fame player, a successful businessman, a character, a favorite of David Letterman’s, and an advocate for retired players.

I lost a mentor and friend.

Art had been retired for 11 years by the time I was drafted by the Baltimore Colts in 1972. When I reported to training camp that July, I discovered the former Baltimore Colts were still very much a part of the Colts’ family. Unlike some NFL franchises today, the Colts welcomed their retired players to training camp and practice, even hosting them at a bull roast, games and other events with active players. 

That’s how I first met Art Donovan.

He was holding court, as he so often did, at the bull roast my rookie year, regaling his teammates and mine with stories of his exploits as an Irish Catholic kid growing up in The Bronx, his service as a U.S. Marine in World War II’s most devastating battles in the Pacific Theater, his escapades in pro football, his tales of running a country club and a liquor store, and his second career as a frequent guest of David Letterman.

“Who is this man?” I wondered.

I soon came to know Arthur J. Donovan and throughout our friendship of 41 years, he surprised me not only with his sharp wit, but also with his kindness, his generosity, his spirit, his commitment, and his enjoyment of life. Art became a mentor to me and to other Colts, entertaining us with his stories, guiding us with his wisdom and holding us accountable. He treated with respect each person he encountered, whether it was a young fan seeking his autograph, a patron at his liquor store or country club, a teammate or friend, or a secretary in the Colts’ front office.

Artie was an active and outspoken member of the NFLPA retired players’ chapter in Baltimore. If he’d had his way, in fact, he’d have marched down to the NFLPA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to confront the union leadership over a number of issues.

And, perhaps most importantly, he fully supported Fourth & Goal and our efforts on behalf of retired players.

Just one example: 

Most would be surprised to learn that he shunned the accolades. When we approached him in 2007, proposing that we honor him at an event to raise funds for Fourth & Goal, he balked…until we assured him that the money raised would go to benefit retired players in need. That event, in September 2007, was a memorable evening, not only because it raised more than $100,000 for Fourth & Goal and retired NFL players, but also because of the tributes to him by speakers like the New York Giants’ Frank Gifford and Artie’s Colts’ teammate Raymond Berry, and most notably because of the way Artie himself ended the evening.

After the highlight reel and all of the accolades, Art got up to speak. He proudly acknowledged his sister Joan and her very successful – and apparently very lucrative – career on Wall Street. Then he reminded her that he was her only living relative, bring howls of laughter to Joan Donovan and to the audience. He talked about his parents, his childhood in The Bronx, his time at Boston College, and his experiences as a U.S. Marine in World War II's brutal battles in the Pacific. And he talked about Dorothy -- the love of his life -- and the family they raised together. Then he ended the evening with an Irish song.

It was an evening I’ll never forget – and I’d bet that most of the 1,000 other folks in the room that night would say the same thing.

Like many who knew Artie, I have many more stories about this man – and many more examples of his influence – than there is time to tell.

So I’ll end with this:

Tonight, heaven is a little more lively a place. I’m envisioning Art sitting down with a Schlitz – his beer of choice – and entertaining an appreciative audience with his tales.

Here on earth, he’ll live on in our memories…oh, how he will live on!

RIP, my friend.

Bruce Laird
President, Fourth & Goal
Baltimore Colts, 1972-1981
San Diego Chargers, 1982-1983

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