By Phil Sheridan
Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist
Posted on Thu, Aug. 10, 2006
Roger Goodell has an opportunity to be more than just the guy who slipped into the driver's seat after Paul Tagliabue set the cruise control.
The NFL's next commissioner was selected Tuesday, just three days after a former New York Giants linebacker named Harry Carson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Carson, who had become dour in regard to the Hall after being passed over for years, said something in his speech that Goodell would do well to heed.
"As a Hall of Famer," Carson said, "I want to implore the NFL and its union to look at the product that you have up on this stage. These are great individuals. The honor of making it into the Hall of Fame is great, but it was even greater to have the opportunity to play in a league" in which thousands of players had come before him.
"I would hope that the leaders of the NFL, the future commissioner, and the players' association do a much better job of looking out for those individuals," he said.
"You've got to look out for 'em. If we made the league what it is, you have to take better care of your own."
Carson's words brought to mind a conversation with Andre Waters from a couple of months back. The former Eagles safety is living in Florida, working with at-risk young people.
"I wake up in pain every day," Waters said. "The way I played the game, I sacrificed my body on every play. I wasn't thinking about the future. There are days I can't even walk, and I know a lot of guys feel the same way."
Waters, 44, said he could associate some of his aches and pains with specific collisions from his NFL career.
The subject came up when Waters was reminiscing about the tumultuous 1987 players' strike and its aftermath, when a series of lawsuits led to free agency.
The league and the players' union then negotiated a collective-bargaining agreement that made the two sides partners. The owners got a salary cap and the players were guaranteed a set percentage of league revenue.
The first cap, in 1994, was just under $36 million - for an entire team.
The cap this season is about $102 million. With the potential for revenue from new technologies and international markets, that number is going to increase every year.
No one knows where the ceiling is.
Waters' point was that the guys who battled for the system that has benefited everyone were mostly out of the league before the payoff came. And there were generations before them, players who made virtually nothing to build the league from scratch and who aren't even on the radar.
Tagliabue has been rightly praised for his role in growing the league's revenues. He was never a very exciting or controversial figure, but was relentlessly effective at keeping a sometimes contentious group of owners united and working toward greater wealth for all.
Now comes Goodell, unanimously elected on just the fifth ballot. He has the closest thing any NFL commissioner has had to a mandate. In other words, if the owners like this guy that much, he should be able to push for progress on a pet issue or two.
At his news conference after being elected, Goodell said he had three priorities: the game itself, strengthening the 32 teams, and "innovation," which he defined as new ways to market and deliver the NFL product. In other words, he sounded like a guy content to leave the controls where Tagliabue set them and keep the money flowing in.
And that's fine. But if Goodell wants to be more than a caretaker, he can listen to Carson and Waters and hundreds of other former players. He can do something because it is right and decent, not just because it is profitable.
Goodell could work to divert some tiny tributary of the rushing river of revenue toward the men who ruined their bodies to make that river flow.
Football is not like most sports. A retired baseball player or professional golfer or basketball player does not wake up with his bones screaming from 20-year-old collisions. Some hockey players probably do.
Every former football player does.
It isn't that the NFL and the players' union haven't done good things for ex-players. There is a pension plan and money available for major health and financial crises. The union helps players go back to college and finish their degrees.
But the dollar amounts involved are modest when measured against the numbers the NFL is bringing in. The owners and the current players are sharing a pie bigger than anyone could have imagined even 20 years ago.
It wouldn't hurt anyone to share a bigger slice with the men whose shoulders the league stands on now.
________________________________________
Post a question or comment for Phil Sheridan at http://go.philly.com/asksheridan, or by email at psheridan@phillynews.com.
Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist
Posted on Thu, Aug. 10, 2006
Roger Goodell has an opportunity to be more than just the guy who slipped into the driver's seat after Paul Tagliabue set the cruise control.
The NFL's next commissioner was selected Tuesday, just three days after a former New York Giants linebacker named Harry Carson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Carson, who had become dour in regard to the Hall after being passed over for years, said something in his speech that Goodell would do well to heed.
"As a Hall of Famer," Carson said, "I want to implore the NFL and its union to look at the product that you have up on this stage. These are great individuals. The honor of making it into the Hall of Fame is great, but it was even greater to have the opportunity to play in a league" in which thousands of players had come before him.
"I would hope that the leaders of the NFL, the future commissioner, and the players' association do a much better job of looking out for those individuals," he said.
"You've got to look out for 'em. If we made the league what it is, you have to take better care of your own."
Carson's words brought to mind a conversation with Andre Waters from a couple of months back. The former Eagles safety is living in Florida, working with at-risk young people.
"I wake up in pain every day," Waters said. "The way I played the game, I sacrificed my body on every play. I wasn't thinking about the future. There are days I can't even walk, and I know a lot of guys feel the same way."
Waters, 44, said he could associate some of his aches and pains with specific collisions from his NFL career.
The subject came up when Waters was reminiscing about the tumultuous 1987 players' strike and its aftermath, when a series of lawsuits led to free agency.
The league and the players' union then negotiated a collective-bargaining agreement that made the two sides partners. The owners got a salary cap and the players were guaranteed a set percentage of league revenue.
The first cap, in 1994, was just under $36 million - for an entire team.
The cap this season is about $102 million. With the potential for revenue from new technologies and international markets, that number is going to increase every year.
No one knows where the ceiling is.
Waters' point was that the guys who battled for the system that has benefited everyone were mostly out of the league before the payoff came. And there were generations before them, players who made virtually nothing to build the league from scratch and who aren't even on the radar.
Tagliabue has been rightly praised for his role in growing the league's revenues. He was never a very exciting or controversial figure, but was relentlessly effective at keeping a sometimes contentious group of owners united and working toward greater wealth for all.
Now comes Goodell, unanimously elected on just the fifth ballot. He has the closest thing any NFL commissioner has had to a mandate. In other words, if the owners like this guy that much, he should be able to push for progress on a pet issue or two.
At his news conference after being elected, Goodell said he had three priorities: the game itself, strengthening the 32 teams, and "innovation," which he defined as new ways to market and deliver the NFL product. In other words, he sounded like a guy content to leave the controls where Tagliabue set them and keep the money flowing in.
And that's fine. But if Goodell wants to be more than a caretaker, he can listen to Carson and Waters and hundreds of other former players. He can do something because it is right and decent, not just because it is profitable.
Goodell could work to divert some tiny tributary of the rushing river of revenue toward the men who ruined their bodies to make that river flow.
Football is not like most sports. A retired baseball player or professional golfer or basketball player does not wake up with his bones screaming from 20-year-old collisions. Some hockey players probably do.
Every former football player does.
It isn't that the NFL and the players' union haven't done good things for ex-players. There is a pension plan and money available for major health and financial crises. The union helps players go back to college and finish their degrees.
But the dollar amounts involved are modest when measured against the numbers the NFL is bringing in. The owners and the current players are sharing a pie bigger than anyone could have imagined even 20 years ago.
It wouldn't hurt anyone to share a bigger slice with the men whose shoulders the league stands on now.
________________________________________
Post a question or comment for Phil Sheridan at http://go.philly.com/asksheridan, or by email at psheridan@phillynews.com.
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