The answer? Not the National Football League, current NFL players, or the NFL Players Association. While much has been accomplished for today's NFL players, little has been done to assist the players who built the NFL. The league, the players and the NFL Players Association have all failed to address inequities in pension and disability benefits between today's players and the league's retired players.
Thanks to a collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the NFLPA, the league pays its rookies a minimum of $225,000 per year. The NFL pays veteran players a minimum salary between $300,000 and $750,000, depending on a player's years in the league. In 1970 the minimum salary was $12,500 – the equivalent of about $60,000 in today's dollars – and $13,000 – the equivalent of about $62,000 in today's dollars – for veterans.
There is as much disparity in pension benefits. According to a 2001 article in USA Today, former Philadelphia Eagles’ linebacker Chuck Bednarik – whose Hall of Fame career spanned 1949 to1962 – receives just $1,400 a month in pension benefits. Darrell Green – whose career spanned 20 seasons during the NFL’s modern, affluent era – will earn a monthly pension of $5,805 when he reaches his 55th birthday.
In the 2001 article, USA Today reported on the efforts of former NFL stars like Bednarik and Jim Brown to improve the pension benefits for retired players. In the article, former Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe was quoted as saying of retired players, “You can’t be bitter. You pave the way, and hopefully you make it better for the next guy.”
One of those who paved the way for Sharpe was John Mackey, the Baltimore Colts’ Hall of Fame tight end who, as president of the NFLPA, put his own career on the line to gain free agency and better salaries and benefits for NFL players. In 2001, at age 59, Mackey was diagnosed with football-induced dementia. His successful business career ended – and with a monthly pension benefit of just $1,900 – his means of earning a living has been reduced to the occasional autograph session or card show.
To its credit, the NFLPA has established a Player Assistance Trust (PAT) to assist players such as Mackey. However, the NFLPA has limited the amount of money for which each player is eligible – up to $10,000 for medical problems and $7,500 for financial crises. At the same time the NFLPA’s Player Assistance Trust was limiting payments to retired players, it was accepting applications from and awarding grants to non-profit organizations unaffiliated with the purpose of the trust – that is, to assist retired players. Only recently – when retired players called this practice into question – did the NFLPA temporarily suspend this practice.
John Unitas, arguably the best quarterback in NFL history and the man who put the NFL on the television map with his performance in the 1958 NFL Championship Game, eventually lost the use of his right hand as the result of a football injury. The NFL’s disability plan, however, limits disability claims to those filed within 12 years after a player’s final season, or by age 45. Unitas’ efforts to obtain disability payments from the league, widely chronicled in Sports Illustrated and other publications, were unsuccessful.
In fact, according to a March 2005 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, only 232 of more than 3,500 NFLPA members receive disability benefits – 104 get partial payments of at least $1,500 per month and 128 get full disability payments of at least $4,000 per month. Attorney Doug Ell, legal counsel for the NFL’s Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retirement and Disability Plan – who appears to have made it his personal mission to defend the plan against claims by retired players – contends in the Post-Gazette article, “We'll continue to be unable to make everybody happy."
Yet the University of North Carolina’s Center for the Study of Retired Athletes found – in its 2001 study of 2,552 retired NFL players and in current research – that players who sustained three or more concussions during their careers are three to four times more likely to suffer from cognitive impairment and/or depression. These players are just as likely to get Alzheimer's disease 10 years younger than the national average age.
Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, who played on the legendary Pittsburgh Steelers’ teams of the 1970s, was one of those affected players. Webster’s football-related illnesses included brain trauma, pre-Parkinson’s, post-concussion syndrome and frontal lobe syndrome that rendered him unable to work. When his 1999 claim for full disability benefits was rejected, he was in debt and homeless. In 2002, at the age of 50, Webster suffered a heart attack and died. In April 2005, a federal judge ordered the NFL to pay Webster’s estate full disability benefits plus interest, retroactive to March 1991, when Webster became totally and permanently disabled.
In USA Today’s 2001 article, the NFLPA’s benefits director was quoted as saying, “…the reality is, there wasn’t much money for pensions in the early days because there wasn’t much money, period.” Today – with $24 billion television contracts in place – the NFL can surely afford better pension and disability benefits for retired players. It is time for the NFL, the players and the NFLPA to stand up for the game's retired players.
Thanks to a collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the NFLPA, the league pays its rookies a minimum of $225,000 per year. The NFL pays veteran players a minimum salary between $300,000 and $750,000, depending on a player's years in the league. In 1970 the minimum salary was $12,500 – the equivalent of about $60,000 in today's dollars – and $13,000 – the equivalent of about $62,000 in today's dollars – for veterans.
There is as much disparity in pension benefits. According to a 2001 article in USA Today, former Philadelphia Eagles’ linebacker Chuck Bednarik – whose Hall of Fame career spanned 1949 to1962 – receives just $1,400 a month in pension benefits. Darrell Green – whose career spanned 20 seasons during the NFL’s modern, affluent era – will earn a monthly pension of $5,805 when he reaches his 55th birthday.
In the 2001 article, USA Today reported on the efforts of former NFL stars like Bednarik and Jim Brown to improve the pension benefits for retired players. In the article, former Baltimore Ravens and Denver Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe was quoted as saying of retired players, “You can’t be bitter. You pave the way, and hopefully you make it better for the next guy.”
One of those who paved the way for Sharpe was John Mackey, the Baltimore Colts’ Hall of Fame tight end who, as president of the NFLPA, put his own career on the line to gain free agency and better salaries and benefits for NFL players. In 2001, at age 59, Mackey was diagnosed with football-induced dementia. His successful business career ended – and with a monthly pension benefit of just $1,900 – his means of earning a living has been reduced to the occasional autograph session or card show.
To its credit, the NFLPA has established a Player Assistance Trust (PAT) to assist players such as Mackey. However, the NFLPA has limited the amount of money for which each player is eligible – up to $10,000 for medical problems and $7,500 for financial crises. At the same time the NFLPA’s Player Assistance Trust was limiting payments to retired players, it was accepting applications from and awarding grants to non-profit organizations unaffiliated with the purpose of the trust – that is, to assist retired players. Only recently – when retired players called this practice into question – did the NFLPA temporarily suspend this practice.
John Unitas, arguably the best quarterback in NFL history and the man who put the NFL on the television map with his performance in the 1958 NFL Championship Game, eventually lost the use of his right hand as the result of a football injury. The NFL’s disability plan, however, limits disability claims to those filed within 12 years after a player’s final season, or by age 45. Unitas’ efforts to obtain disability payments from the league, widely chronicled in Sports Illustrated and other publications, were unsuccessful.
In fact, according to a March 2005 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, only 232 of more than 3,500 NFLPA members receive disability benefits – 104 get partial payments of at least $1,500 per month and 128 get full disability payments of at least $4,000 per month. Attorney Doug Ell, legal counsel for the NFL’s Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retirement and Disability Plan – who appears to have made it his personal mission to defend the plan against claims by retired players – contends in the Post-Gazette article, “We'll continue to be unable to make everybody happy."
Yet the University of North Carolina’s Center for the Study of Retired Athletes found – in its 2001 study of 2,552 retired NFL players and in current research – that players who sustained three or more concussions during their careers are three to four times more likely to suffer from cognitive impairment and/or depression. These players are just as likely to get Alzheimer's disease 10 years younger than the national average age.
Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, who played on the legendary Pittsburgh Steelers’ teams of the 1970s, was one of those affected players. Webster’s football-related illnesses included brain trauma, pre-Parkinson’s, post-concussion syndrome and frontal lobe syndrome that rendered him unable to work. When his 1999 claim for full disability benefits was rejected, he was in debt and homeless. In 2002, at the age of 50, Webster suffered a heart attack and died. In April 2005, a federal judge ordered the NFL to pay Webster’s estate full disability benefits plus interest, retroactive to March 1991, when Webster became totally and permanently disabled.
In USA Today’s 2001 article, the NFLPA’s benefits director was quoted as saying, “…the reality is, there wasn’t much money for pensions in the early days because there wasn’t much money, period.” Today – with $24 billion television contracts in place – the NFL can surely afford better pension and disability benefits for retired players. It is time for the NFL, the players and the NFLPA to stand up for the game's retired players.
