Sunday, July 23, 2006
By Todd Christensen
Daily Herald
In 10 days I will be celebrating the dreaded 50th birthday.
No, I am not of a mind to purchase a Porsche, start wearing FUBU togs, blond my hair or get a 21-year-old girlfriend. But yes, I am certain that among the gifts I will receive will include reading glasses, support hose, a truss, a rocking chair, Milk of Magnesia and of course, the altogether-famous Geritol.
In all candor, I think I have prepared for this reasonably well, at least from a psychological standpoint. I read an interview with Gregory Peck years back in which he was queried as to whether or not he was disappointed that he was no longer a leading man and was instead relegated to the curmudgeon roles or was forced to play the grandfather. His response was downright profound: "I am not afraid to age, as I wish to feel the evolution of the seasons."
A little less deep but just as poignant was Gene Simmons, lead singer of KISS who, after watching a number of cohorts OD proclaimed, "Any day above ground is a good day."
But there are many of my brethren who do not have such a sanguine vantage point on life for a specific reason. I say "brethren" because I am referring to the NFL retired players. With the recent collective bargaining agreement between the NFL management and the NFL Players Association, there are literally billions of dollars to go around. This year, there will be a salary cap that will exceed three billion dollars league-wide, which means that the average salary for an NFL player will be nearly $2 million. Because of the multi-billion dollar television contract, there is not a single team that is not in the black before a single fanny is in the seats or a ticket sold. The NFL is the Gold Standard for professional sports, by far the most profitable and most popular.
Then it would stand to reason that they would take care of their own, but that has not been the case. There is no plan for health insurance for arguably the most dangerous sport, nor is there a pension that bears merit. Last year the average payout to an NFL vested retiree was less than $14,500. The poverty level, depending upon which information you garner, is somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000.
To give you a comparison, baseball's average pension payout last year was a little over $34,000 per player. To give further evidence as to this damning discrepancy, at age 62 a 10-year veteran of Major League Baseball will accrue an annual stipend of $175,000. The same 10-year veteran from the NFL will be looking at $32,000.
This is a collective embarrassment to the NFL as a whole, but because it is not front-page news it has not been addressed. Certainly, management is to blame, but the real culprit is the
Oh? In any other union, you can see pensions, severance pay and retirement benefits are commensurate with contemporary dollars whereas in the NFL you have players that are receiving 1960 dollars and trying to make ends meet. And with the average career at 3.6 years and the median tenure just a little less than six, isn't it incumbent upon such a legislative body to assist "those who built the game?"
Ethics and justice would indicate a resounding affirmative response, not to mention the fact that considerable funds are available. But as yet this necessary and deserved endowment has yet to come to fruition.
Brigham Young once said, "When you have enough to eat and wear, you have self-respect, and when you have self-respect, you have enough." No one is asking for a handout or for something that was not earned, in some cases, by literal blood and sweat. No one resents the bounty afforded the contemporary player. I went through two NFL strikes in hopes of improving the lot for athletes I knew were not even in the circuit yet. But the time has come for this unconscionable oversight to be rectified by the powers-that-be so that those who built the game and pioneered what is now the monolith known as the National Football League are proffered what is deserved.
In Proverbs 3:27 we read, "Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it."
Or as Spike Lee might say succinctly to Gene Upshaw, "Do the right thing!"
Todd Christensen, a former BYU running back and Oakland Raider All-Pro tight end, lives in
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D2.
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