Heavy pressure: NFL players struggle with weight game

Since the 1980s, NFL players have packed on the pounds, but is the league's emphasis on weight harmful?

By Carlos Frias, William M. Hartnett
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 29, 2006

Brad Culpepper got benched.

He was playing pretty well. He wasn't injured and he hadn't broken any of the Chicago Bears' team rules.

Except one.

He didn't weigh enough.

"The coaches would look at you and how much you weighed to see if you were going to play," said Culpepper, the former Florida Gator who played defensive line for the Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Culpepper thrived in a Tampa Bay defense that stressed speed and strength, but then he went to Chicago, where the Bears were slaves to the scale. Like many NFL teams, Chicago had a minimum and maximum weight for each position.

One Friday morning — weigh-in day — during the 2000 season, Culpepper barely hit 265 pounds, and coaches determined he was too light to line up Sunday for a Bears team that would finish 5-11.

"Things like weighing in on a Friday were illogical to me," Culpepper said, "and it didn't make me a better football player.

"What did I do about it? I retired the next year. I'd had enough."

Culpepper was a victim of the numbers game. BIG numbers.

In the modern-day NFL, size does matter — at least if you want to keep earning a paycheck.

By compiling a database of NFL rosters dating to 1920 — nearly 40,000 players — The Post tracked the size of players decade-by-decade and team-by-team.

From 1920 to 1984, there were never more than eight players in any season who weighed 300 pounds or more. This year, there were 570 players who weighed 300 or more listed on 2006 NFL training camp rosters, nearly 20 percent of all players.

Other super-sized findings:

- Since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, the average player is nearly 25 pounds heavier, averaging 245.

- Over the same period, the average offensive lineman is 62 pounds heavier; defensive lineman, 34 pounds.

- Running backs weigh 17 pounds more and quarterbacks are 26 pounds heavier.

Coaches, players, analysts and doctors say there are many reasons for the increases in size: the natural progression by generations; better nutrition; supplements; illegal substances, including steroids, which the league began testing for in 1987, and untested drugs like human growth hormone; workout regiments that now begin in high school.

But what has maintained the trend toward bigger and bigger players is the league's copycat tendencies — what works well for one team will soon be tried by many others.

NFL is league of copycats

Mark Schlereth experienced a range of poundage in his 12-year NFL career. He was a member of "The Hogs'' offensive line for the Washington Redskins and also played in a Denver Broncos system that demanded leaner, quicker blockers.

Schlereth, now an analyst for ESPN, gives three reasons why NFL teams started pumping and plumping their offensive linemen through the '80s and '90s.

Larry Allen. Nate Newton. Joe Jacoby.

Between them, they played in 22 Pro Bowls and packed on more than 1,000 pounds as 300-plus players.

"Whatever is in vogue, that's what the league goes for," Schlereth said. "The league saw these incredible athletes, who were huge men, and decided this is the way to go — bigger is better."

That mantra trickled down to the college and high school level, where massive linemen no longer were born but bloated up on extra cheeseburgers and shakes.

Aspiring prep tight ends, defensive ends and linebackers "ate their way to being offensive linemen,'' Schlereth said.

In 1980, offensive linemen outweighed their teammates by 45 pounds. In 2006, the difference is about the weight of one Olsen twin — 81 pounds.

Schlereth fought to keep up. In Denver, he was issued a minimum weight of 285 pounds and fined $100 for each pound short on weigh-in day.

Sometimes, just before stepping on the scale, he would guzzle a gallon of water or slip a small weight plate into his jockstrap. Players who needed to shed pounds also took extreme measures, like pulling on rubber suits to run in the heat.

"To me, it's all relatively stupid and ridiculous," said Schlereth, who now weighs 205 pounds, less than he did in high school. "On one hand, the NFL says it doesn't want things like ephedra (a banned supplement used for weight loss), but it's OK to have a guy in a rubber suit running and passing out trying to make weight."

Culpepper had to stuff himself to push 280, eating between meals and making late-night runs to McDonald's and Wendy's.

"You know how you feel after Thanksgiving dinner? I felt like that every day," said Culpepper, now a personal injury attorney in Tampa who also has slimmed down to about 205.

Eight months after retiring, Culpepper shed his football fat suit, weighing in at 195 pounds and running his first marathon in 3 hours, 50 minutes. His waist size dropped from 40 inches to 33.

More weight does not guarantee wins

NFL offensive linemen started to get bigger than their defensive counterparts in 1975, the first year the O-lines outweighed the D-lines.

This season, the average weight for an offensive lineman is 312 — 23 pounds heavier than the average defensive lineman.

The push for poundage led to earth-shaking moments for gargantuan players. In 1999, the Detroit Lions made Wisconsin offensive tackle Aaron Gibson, who at one time weighed 440 pounds, the 27th overall pick in the draft. Gibson mostly played in the upper 300s, but in 2002 he became the league's first 400-pounder at 410 with the Dallas Cowboys.

That same year, Buffalo selected 370-pound OT Mike Williams fourth overall.

Both are now out of football.

"Truth is, bigger isn't better. Better is better," Schlereth said.

Research supports Schlereth's claim.

Since 1980, the two teams with the highest winning percentages — the San Francisco 49ers and Denver — had the lightest offensive lines.

Of the five teams with the biggest offensive lines over the past 25 years, only one franchise — the Raiders — has won more games than it has lost.

When Indianapolis Colts President Bill Polian kept hearing coaches talk about the importance of size, he decided to put the theory to a test, comparing winning percentages to the average weight of players on each team over about 10 seasons.

"We found higher weight had no bearing on winning — none," said Polian, who was the general manager in Buffalo when the Bills played in four Super Bowls. "There was a lot of noise about 'Big is the answer.' We tested it. It's not valid."

The offensive linemen who played for the perfect 1972 Dolphins, including two Hall of Famers, averaged 251 pounds, 13th of 26 teams. Size apparently means little this season, too. The Dolphins average 321 on their interior line, the fourth highest in the league, but they're 1-6.

Polian now is with a team that might spur a reverse copycat trend. The Super Bowl contender Colts average 302 pounds of protection for Peyton Manning — 30th in the league.

Still, it's hard to resist the big guys.

After April's draft, Dolphins coach Nick Saban said he wished he could have worked a trade to move up and pick Haloti Ngata, a 6-4, 340-pound defensive tackle selected 12th overall by the Baltimore Ravens.

"I always say it this way: They have weight classes in boxing for a reason. The heavyweights don't fight the lightweights," Saban said. "What's the reason for that? Because if a big guy is just as good as a little guy, the little guy doesn't have much of a chance."

Dolphins linebacker Zach Thomas has done pretty well for a little guy. The six-time Pro Bowler is in his 11th season and he doesn't like it when comments about his success end with "for a guy his size."

Thomas is listed at 228, but said he plays closer to 220 and "sometimes lighter."

He remembers his second year with the Dolphins, when several trainers suggested he get bigger so his body could hold up.

"I tried to put on weight and I was sluggish," Thomas said. "Now I don't even worry about that because I know it doesn't matter."

Football becomes a 12-month job

NFL teams started encouraging players to train year-round in the 1970s.

Former Dolphins coach Don Shula, who was an NFL defensive back in the '50s, said he and his teammates did little more than play some pickup basketball and run in the off-season. Hall of Famer Art Donovan, one of Shula's teammates on the Baltimore Colts, was huge for his day at 270 but not exactly a specimen. The Colts called him "Fatso."

Shula's Dolphins and Tom Landry's Cowboys were among the first to start mandatory off-season workout sessions five days a week, three hours a day. Soon, the copycat syndrome took over in the rest of the league, especially after the Dolphins and Cowboys played in a combined seven Super Bowls.

"That's where players really started to take off as far as size goes," Shula said.
"The other teams saw the progress that you were making, then everybody started to do it so that they wouldn't be left behind."

Shula believes the push for size also led to a change in overall strategy. Bigger players on defense meant tougher yards on the ground, so more teams added advanced passing games to their offenses.

"You had to find new and better ways to do things," Shula said. "You couldn't do the old stuff that perhaps was successful for you, the ground game that didn't involve the drop-back passing."

Steroids also became a factor in the late '70s and early '80s.

Shula said steroids were "probably a part" of the boom in size, especially since testing did not begin until 1987.

"Without a doubt that happened, people looking for a magic pill to get as big and strong as they could be," Shula said.

Supplements and untested drugs like HGH are likely factors in continued growth. But ESPN's Chris Mortensen, who has been covering the NFL since the '80s, said the steroid ban has changed the frames of some of the players whose careers require packing on and maintaining the pounds.

"The bodies are different," Mortensen said. "They're not Popeye bodies. They're obese bodies."

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Concussions a dirty little secret in the NFL

By Tim Dahlberg, AP Sports Columnist

Questionable is a word used a lot around the NFL. It's there every week in the injury reports that bookies and bettors like to study so much, usually stuck somewhere in between probable and doubtful.

Ben Roethlisberger, who was last seen sprawled unconscious on the field in Atlanta, is questionable this week. The Pittsburgh Steelers said so, meaning their star quarterback may or may not play Sunday against the Oakland Raiders.

Questionable. It's a word that can be used to describe many things.

Let's begin with the judgment of anyone involved with the Steelers who actually believes it is a good idea to rush back Roethlisberger after two concussions in four months.

Head injury one Sunday, starting nod the next. You don't need a degree in neurology to figure out something is wrong with this equation.

Concussions forced two other quarterbacks out of the game in recent years. Troy Aikman and Steve Young retired early because of the cumulative effect of concussions, and they're hardly alone among NFL alumni.

Current players aren't faring much better.

Quarterbacks Charlie Frye and Steve McNair recently left games with concussions and so did Minnesota receiver Troy Williamson.

Carolina linebacker Dan Morgan's season is over, and the horrifying image of Chiefs quarterback Trent Green having his head slammed to the ground in the first game of the season is an indelible one.

Concussions, it seems, are the NFL's dirty little secret. It's not just that they happen so often, but that the league doesn't seem to be doing much about it.

Sure, the NFL says it has had a committee of doctors studying them since 1994. But experts in the field say the league's studies are flawed, use suspect data, and don't stand up to peer review.

So when the NFL says no evidence has been found that brain function declines as a result of a concussion, the news is greeted with skepticism in the medical community.

"What the NFL allegedly finds is totally at odds with scores of publications that are out there," said Dr. Robert Cantu, a neurologist and leading expert in brain injuries at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "The stuff the NFL is putting out is just not the way the thinking is in the community of sports medicine and specialists with expertise in this area." Among those is a recent study by the University of North Carolina, which reported 10 percent of retired NFL players say concussions have had a permanent effect on their ability to think and remember things as they've gotten older.

Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson of the New York Giants is one of them. He estimates he had a dozen or more "bell-ringers" in his career, though he wasn't aware they were concussions. Carson said he has long had memory problems because of postconcussion syndrome.

For others, it's even worse.

Former Steelers lineman Terry Long died last year at the age of 45 from a brain inflammation that resulted, in part, from repeated head injuries. Fellow Steelers center Mike Webster was diagnosed with football-induced dementia before he died at the age of 50.

Coaches, though, seem to regard them as minor irritants.

Vikings coach Brad Childress offered his own diagnosis the other day after Williamson was injured.

"He does know what time zone we're in right now, and he can read a clock. So he's going to be OK," Childress said.

Football, of course, isn't alone in having to deal with brain injuries. Keith Primeau had two years and $6 million left on his contract with the Philadelphia Flyers but retired earlier this year when even the most mundane skating drills caused him problems due to past concussions.

And David Eckstein and Jim Edmonds of the St. Louis Cardinals struggled for much of the season after concussions.

Still, the NFL, filled with violent helmet-to-helmet tackles and players with bad intentions, stands out.

In boxing, a fighter knocked out is automatically suspended for 60 days. In the NFL, a player knocked unconscious has returned to play in the same game.

Roethlisberger didn't go back into the game last Sunday, though he wanted to. He also wants to play this Sunday.

"If I get cleared I'm going to beg and plead to be out there," he said.

Hopefully, no one will be listening. Hopefully, the Super Bowl champions, 2-4 so far this season, will resist the temptation to put him in.

Roethlisberger has no business playing Sunday. There's a good argument to be made he shouldn't play again this year.

Big Ben has only one career -- and only one life.

It's up to those around him to make sure neither is cut short.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Last Updated: 10/26/2006 6:46:32 AM

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Bob Mann, Packers' first black player, dies at 82

Packers' first black player dies at 82
Mann 'never had any problems' in Green Bay from 1950 to 1954

By Mike Vandermause
October 24, 2006
Packers.com

As the first African-American to play for the Green Bay Packers, Bob Mann will go down as a trailblazer in team history.

Mann, who played for the Packers from 1950 to 1954, died Saturday in the Detroit area. He was 82.

Mann was a 5-foot-11, 175-pound end who led the Packers with 50 catches, 696 receiving yards and eight touchdowns in 1951.

Off the field, he built a reputation as a quiet man with an even temper and dry sense of humor.

Art Daley, who covered the Packers for the Green Bay Press-Gazette in the 1950s, remembers when Mann was forced to stay in a different hotel than the team on road trips because of his race.

Daley recalls Mann telling him, "All it is is politics."

One of Daley's favorite stories about Mann involved teammate Dick Afflis, a guard who later became better known as pro wrestler Dick The Bruiser.

According to Daley, the Packers were staying at a Baltimore hotel that didn't allow black guests. After a team meeting, Mann was forced to go to another hotel and was joined by Afflis, his 252-pound teammate.

"They walked out of the hotel together and got outside and called a cab," Daley said. "The cab came up and the driver said, 'I can't take him because he's black.' Afflis grabbed the cab driver by the shirt and he said, 'You take him where he wants to go.'"

Mann was an honorary captain at a 1997 Packers game at Lambeau Field. In an interview with the Press-Gazette at that time, Mann said: "I never had any problems. Everyone treated me well."

According to Daley, hotels in bigger cities and in the South had restrictions based on race at the time, but no such edicts existed in Green Bay.

"He had a lot of fun," Daley said.

Mann was an honorable-mention all-America player on Michigan's national championship team in 1947.

He signed with Detroit after college and along with Melvin Groomes became the Lions' first African-American players in 1948.

Mann led the NFL with 1,014 receiving yards in 1949, and his 66 catches ranked second to the Rams' Tom Fears, who set an NFL record that season with 77 receptions.

The Lions traded Mann to the New York Yanks in 1950 for quarterback Bobby Layne, a future Pro Football Hall of Famer. Mann was released by the Yanks and signed by the Packers.

"He was on the small side, but he was a very nifty and productive wide receiver," Packers historian Lee Remmel said.

Mann said his biggest thrill was being inducted into the Packer Hall of Fame in 1988.

"That was the highlight for me," Mann told the Press-Gazette in 1997. "Coming back for that was my greatest memory, although I had a lot of them as a player as well."

Mann finished his Packers career with 109 catches for 1,629 yards and 17 touchdowns. He was released midway through the 1954 season and retired.

Mann, a native of Newvern, N.C., earned his law degree after retiring from football.

He headed Robert Mann & Associates in Detroit for more than 30 years. His office was located just a few blocks from Ford Field, where the Lions play.

"Bob was a great example to everyone," Pro Football Hall of Famer Lem Barney said in a Lions press release announcing Mann's death.

"He not only was a great football player but a man who gave of himself to the city and the entire community."

Mann is survived by his wife of 50 years, Vera. Funeral arrangements are pending.

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NFL Must Remember Those Who Paved the Way

By Michael David Smith
FootballOutsiders.com
October 7, 2006

Dave Pear was in pain when he called me this week. Pain is something he's felt a lot of in the quarter-century since he retired from professional football.

Pear, who played nose guard for six years in the NFL, suffered a herniated disk in his neck in 1979. He has lived with pain ever since that injury, which would force him to retire a year later. Pear played hurt in Super Bowl XV. On the Raiders' official Web site, his efforts are credited as a big reason the team won. That was the last game he ever played.

Pear called me this week to let me know that he disagreed with the kind words I had for Al Davis in last week's column.

"I continued to play with a herniated disk in my neck," Pear said. "Al Davis encouraged me to play. He told me I was an all-pro and that I could play better hurt than the other players could play healthy. With that injury, I went from all-pro to being cut in two years, and during that time I continually asked Davis for help, and the response was that I wasn't injured, I was a hypochondriac.

"I went to see Al in his office and said, 'I came to you as an all-pro two years ago and now I'm leaving to have a neck operation and I've lost my job. I broke my neck playing for you. You can't turn your back on me.' He told me he would call me. That was 25 years ago and I still haven't heard from him."

I don't know what happened in closed-door conversations between Pear and Davis. But I do know, and my conversation with Pear made me even more acutely aware, that the NFL has a real problem with retired players who suffered serious injuries and now feel that the league has turned its back on them.

"It's just wrong," Pear said. "If I sound bitter, it's in the sense that the NFL goes on TV and tells us what good they do with the United Way, and they spend money trying to help other causes, and they do that to take the focus off themselves and the way they treat their former players."

Pear is far from alone in feeling that way. Former Buffalo Bills safety Jeff Nixon urged his fellow ex-players to withhold NFL Players Association Retired Players Chapter dues to protest what he called a lack of attention to issues relating to retired players in the most recent collective-bargaining agreement negotiations. Chuck Bednarik, the Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Famer, said of his pension two years ago, "It stinks. It's nothing." Former Colts and Chargers safety Bruce Laird started a blog where he posts articles about retired players who have gone through tough times since leaving the game.

Many ex-players who are doing well financially have taken it upon themselves to provide the assistance that the league and the union won't. Former Green Bay Packers lineman Jerry Kramer has organized fundraisers to, as he says on his web site, "provide direct financial assistance to those retired players who are disadvantaged or indigent due to the inadequate pension and disability compensation the league provides to older players." Former Miami Dolphins and Cleveland Browns quarterback Arthur Roberts, a cardiologist, provides free heart screenings to ex-players. Mike Ditka hosts a golf tournament in Chicago each year to raise money for indigent retired players.

At his Hall of Fame induction speech in August, former New York Giants linebacker Harry Carson said the league needs to do more to help retired players. "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," Carson said. "If we made the league what it is, you have to take better care of your own."

The league and the players association maintain that they do plenty. In July they jointly announced a host of improvements to current and retired players' benefits. NFL player benefits total $700 million a year, and benefits have been improved for both current and retired players four times since 1993. Retired players receive almost $60 million a year from the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retirement Plan. The union's Players Assistance Trust, the NFL Alumni Association's Dire Need Fund and the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Enshrinee Assistance Fund all give more than $1 million a year in financial assistance to retired players. Harold Henderson, NFL executive vice president of labor relations and chairman of the NFL Management Council, called the NFL's package "the most extensive benefits package in professional sports."

But Pear, like many other ex-players, says those benefits need to be distributed more equitably, so that former players who paved the way for the current generation of multimillionaires and are now living with serious football-related injuries can reap some of the rewards from the $6 billion a year industry that pro football has become. Players who retired before salaries exploded with the dawning of free agency in 1993 say it annoys them that people assume that they're rich just because they once played pro football.

Many retired players blame NFL Players Association Executive Director Gene Upshaw for their inadequate pensions. Pear, his former teammate, said, "Gene Upshaw has definitely sold out his players." But under labor law, Upshaw works for the current players, not the retired players. You can't blame the players who helped build the league for feeling that they deserve a bigger slice of that $6 billion pie, but you also can't blame Upshaw for making the current players his top priority.

So if the union's priority is the current players, who can help retired players? I believe individual teams should do more. Before he joined the Raiders, Pear was the first member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to make the Pro Bowl. I'd like to see the Bucs do something to honor him, and I'd like to see every NFL team reach out to its former players, the ones who played before MRIs and eight-figure signing bonuses. Most of those players still love the game, but many of them wonder whether the sacrifices they made to play football were worth it.

"I don't want to sound like it's sour grapes, because football was my passion. It was something that I loved to do," Pear said. "But it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth toward your former employer."

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Lawyer helped make NFL what it is today

Ed Glennon fought to get free agency and other rights forplayers. The owners thought it would doom the league, but instead it strengthened it.

by Jay Weiner, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
October 14, 2006 – 5:46 PM

Last summer, during a routine hearing on an NFL labor relations matter, U.S. District Court Judge David Doty halted the proceedings. He acknowledged a Hall of Famer in his Minneapolis courtroom.

No, not NFL Players Association President Gene Upshaw, the former Oakland Raiders guard, who was sitting in the spectators' gallery.

It was the sports law Hall of Famer, if ever there was one, sitting at the union's counsel table, Ed Glennon, 82, the legal warrior in the cool khaki suit.

Doty wondered aloud if Glennon had anything to add to the discussion underway about the NFL's new collective bargaining agreement.

"I wanted to make a nod, at least, to history," Doty said.

Slowly, Glennon walked to the lectern in the middle of the cherry-wood-paneled courtroom. The other seven lawyers fell silent, reverent, leaning in to hear his soft words.

"Things have come a long way," Glennon said.

He should know.

Representing a bunch of brave players, Glennon challenged former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and his feudalistic owners, in Minneapolis federal court in 1975.

In so doing, Glennon outlawyered a Washington, D.C., attorney named Paul Tagliabue in the famous John Mackey case. Tagliabue would go on to succeed Rozelle.

But Glennon would change the face of the league, too.

The Vikings, who are enjoying their bye today, have been led this season by a host of players who were acquired via free agency, such as kicker Ryan Longwell, offensive guard Steve Hutchinson and running back Chester Taylor.

They came to Minnesota because of a system that might not have existed but for Edward M. Glennon.

Big cases

It started with Mackey in 1975, when the NFLPA was broke and powerless.

"They had to beg for things," Glennon said of players then.

Mackey was Glennon's first sports law tour de force, even though he would try other major NFL cases in Minneapolis federal court.

A one-time railroad lawyer, he'd already established himself as a wicked trial attorney for Lindquist & Vennum, the respected Minneapolis firm.

"Watching Ed Glennon in the courtroom is like watching Leonard Bernstein conduct a symphony," said Ed Garvey, the former NFLPA executive director, and a Glennon protegé. "It's a thing of beauty."

There, in 55 days of testimony, from February to July in 1975, examining 63 witnesses, dealing with more than 400 exhibits and generating 11,000 pages of transcript, Glennon grilled NFL legends about something known as "the Rozelle Rule."

Under that provision, Commissioner Rozelle rendered the movement of a player from one team to another virtually impossible. There was, per se, no free agency.

Rozelle alone determined what compensation a team would get if it should lose a player to another team. If very average players tried to jump from one team to another, the new team would be forced to award high draft choices as compensation. This discouraged movement.

A working-class kid from Chicago who worked his way through the University of Minnesota Law School as a waiter, Glennon took no prisoners when it came to NFL legends.

"To me, an enemy is an enemy," Glennon said recently. "He's an enemy until one of us is dead."

Garvey said: "There's this sense that lawyers argue in court and then they go out for a drink. Ed's not that type. If you're on the other side, then you're on the other side. It doesn't mean you have to be nasty all the time, just when you're awake."

Glennon beat up on Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas, who said lifting the Rozelle Rule would harm "competitive balance."

He lashed into Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll, who backed the league's argument that free agency would topple the economics of the league.

In the end, U.S. District Court Judge Earl Larson sided with Glennon and ruled the Rozelle Rule violated federal anti-trust law.

The union had a victory that would keep on giving.

"If the Mackey case had come out the other way you would have a very different NFL today, characterized by labor instability and a less successful business model," said Prof. Stephen F. Ross, director of the Penn State Institute for Sports Law, Policy & Research.

Rozelle's iron fist limited player freedom. But, in making the league's internal rules more flexible, Larson didn't bring about the death of the league, either. To the contrary, Ross said, the advent of free agency has benefitted fans, players and owners, driving salaries, revenues and competitive balance in a league that now prides itself on parity.

Glennon gleefully watched this offseason as the Vikings signed all their free agents.

"People say the players get too much money," Glennon said. "I say, where should it go? Should it all go to the owners? No. The dumbest owner in the world could not lose money in the NFL."

Tomorrow, he'll turn 83, but Ed Glennon still knows his enemies.

©2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

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Hero of Colts faithful, going strong at 82, reflects on career, life in Baltimore

by Ron Cassie, The Baltimore Examiner
Oct 16, 2006 5:00 AM

BALTIMORE - He admitted he still loves the notoriety.

“Anybody who tells you they don’t like a little attention is either a liar or a fool,” Artie Donovan said during an afternoon at the old Colts’ home behind the Valley Country Club in Towson.

He’s been slowed by a hip replacement, but at the age of 82, is as gregarious, irascible, opinionated and funny as ever. The hair is thinner and no longer red, but his eyes remain as green as an Irish hillside.

He’s as restless as ever, too.

“Hell, I got nothing to do any more,” he groused. “My riding mower broke down, and now I can’t even cut the grass. I’m bored.”

Adds Dottie, his wife of 50 years: “He keeps saying he needs a job — ‘I need a job,’ ‘I need a job’ — give me a break.”

The couple travels and makes local appearances. Artie also gets together with friends and former teammates Jimmy Mutscheller, 74, and Sisto Averno, 81. But he passes most of his time at the club that he and Dottie have owned for four decades. They live behind the club’s mansion in a house they built in 1967, but they turned the day-to-day operations of the business over to their oldest daughter, Debbie, two years ago.

“We do about 80 weddings a year here,” Artie says. “And you know, someone will always ask if I’m around. So, I end up after the reception, waiting at the end of the bar like an old hooker, looking for someone to come up, say hello and buy me a drink.”

From the Bronx to Baltimore

Artie, as every Colts diehard knows, grew up in the Bronx.

“3034 Grand Concord,” he said. “We lived in six-room apartment house. Twelve cousins on the same block. After church on Sunday everybody would hang around and shoot the breeze for an hour. That’s what I miss. Now, as soon as Sunday Mass is over, everyone hops in their cars and takes off.”

At least, he says, the rattling train and light-rail tracks near his current home remind him of his childhood. “The subway station was right underneath our building.”
He is the grandson of a middleweight boxing champ and the son of the renowned boxing referee Arthur Donovan Sr. — who was the third man in the ring for Joe Louis’ famous 1938 knockout of Max Schmeling, and has long enjoyed his homecomings in the Big Apple.

“Before the 1958 [title] game [against the Giants], I was walking around New York with a teammate,” Artie said. “And someone shouts at me from across the street, ‘Hey Donovan, I hope you’re better than you were when you played at St. Michaels. The Colts are going get their butts kicked tomorrow.’ I told my buddy, ‘These are my people.’ ”

By now everyone in this town has an “Artie” story. Maybe they bought their first legal beer at his old liquor store or got yelled at by him for goofing around at the club’s swimming pool. Maybe they shared a beer with him at linebacker Bill Pellington’s Iron Horse or Kusen’s old bar on 33rd Street, where the old Colts went after practice.

“I was at Buckingham Palace with my wife, watching the changing of the guard,” Artie said, recalling one unexpected encounter with a Colts fan. “And a guy comes up, some stranger, and whispers in my ear, ‘Wouldn’t you rather be at Pellington’s having a hamburger?’ I said, ‘I sure would.’ ”

But only Artie told Artie stories the best. Like the ones about him drinking beer and eating cheeseburgers during his numerous hospital stays.

“Even when I’m in the hospital now, people bring me so many cheeseburgers, baloney sandwiches and Schlitz, I can’t possibly eat and drink it all.

“Once, Gino Marchetti and I were in the hospital together,” Artie recounts, warming up to the subject. “He had an emergency appendectomy, and I had a leg infection I couldn’t get rid of. Well, he comes into my room in a wheelchair to watch the Colts play the Packers and says, ‘Artie, let’s switch. I’m sick of sitting in this thing.’

“Of course, a bunch of people come to watch the game with us, and they bring a case beer and sandwiches. But at 10 o’clock the nurse kicks them all out. So, it’s just the two us, and we finish the beer ourselves and have a pretty good buzz going by the time the game ends. I tell Gino, ‘Hey, I can’t get out of this wheelchair,’ he says, ‘Well, Fatso, I can’t get out of this bed.’ So we end up waking up the next morning just like that.”

Naturally, his former teammates have their favorite tales — mostly related to his off-the-field activities.

One of Johnny Unitas’ favorite receivers, Jimmy Orr, recalls a time in San Diego in 1970, when some of the old Colts made the trip to watch the Colts play the Chargers. “They had a great time, went sailing, came to the game and drank beer all day. Art’s roommate on this trip, Dick Szymanski, told me that when he woke up the following morning, Artie had the television on, sitting upside down on its stand. He was warming up a cheeseburger on top of it.’

Donovan says Orr got the story completely wrong.

“It was a pizza.”

A man for all seasons

The Baltimore Colts joined the NFL in 1950 but survived for only one season — Artie’s rookie year — before folding. They were re-incarnated in 1953, and when the Colts won the 1958 and 1959 titles, Donovan and guard Art Spinney were only holdovers from the 1950 squad on the roster.

Veteran Baltimore broadcaster Vince Bagli was there in 1953, when the 6-foot-2, 275-pound future Hall of Famer arrived at training camp in Westminster.

“Well, he was fat,” Bagli said. “And we wondered if he could play.”

Donovan went to Boston College, but Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) is where he perfected his defensive line skills.

“There are thousands of guys who play football in New York City, but everybody plays three-on-three basketball,” Donovan said. “That’s where I got my quickness. That, and playing paddle ball. Nobody at Westminster ever beat me at single-wall paddle ball.

“But it was [Colts’ head coach] Weeb Ewbank who made me into a great player,” Donovan said. “He taught me about peripheral vision and how to watch blockers.”

He was all-NFL in 1954, ’55, ’56, ’57 and ’58, playing alongside Marchetti, Don Joyce, Ordell Braase, Ray Krouse, Tom Finnin and Gene ‘Big Daddy’ Lipscomb. Marchetti, like Donovan, was a decorated WW II marine. Donovan fought in several Pacific battles, including Iwo Jima; Marchetti saw action at the Battle of the Bulge.

Artie shrugs. “We were tough.”

Before the big pro salaries, Donovan made ends meet hustling as a Shenley liquor salesman, as well as helping to manage the club with Dottie. Artie proudly notes that Dottie, a trained pharmacist, took hotel and restaurant management classes at Cornell in the summer.

“She works two days a week at Hopkins,” Artie says now. “I drive her to the shuttle bus, give her five dollars for lunch and then pick her up. She looks cute in her uniform getting off the bus.”

“I know,” said his daughter Kelly, a lawyer. “I’m like, that’s too much information, dad.”

With his own children — Kelly, Debbie, Chrissie, Artie and Mary — he was always strict about work during the summer — and curfew.

“We all started flipping hamburgers in the [club’s] snack bar when we were 12,” Kelly said. “And about curfew he would always say, ‘Nothing good happens after midnight.’

“To our friends, he was just ‘Mr. Donovan.’ But one of my friends told me when she went to college everyone was so impressed that she knew my father.

She was like, ‘He’s just Mr. Donovan.’ Dad was never the type to be too impressed with himself — or anybody else for that matter — and never acted like he was a big deal.”

A horseshoe love affair

The theory is that blue-collar Baltimore of the 1950s fell in love with Artie’s crew because they represented the average hard-working breadwinner, who reveled in the fact that the Colts were world champions in 1958 and 1959.

It’s dismissed by Donovan.

“Ah, they loved us in 1950, when we went 1-11,” Artie said. “We won one game in the middle of the year and the crowd ran down and carried us off the field on their shoulders.”

Donovan’s take is matter-of-fact, “It’s just always been a great football town.”

Bagli, also the co-author of ‘Sundays at 2:00 with the Baltimore Colts,’ insists there was a special bond between the players like Artie and the city.

“[The old Colts] genuinely cared about each other, and they liked and genuinely cared about people,” Bagli said. “And that’s how Artie is. He’d see you in church and give you an elbow and smile when he walked by.

“I never saw him turn down an old lady for a hug or a youngster for an autograph. He’s just a big-hearted guy.”

It’s an enthusiasm for the game, fans and life that hasn’t waned since he was a 26-year old rookie in 1950.

Recently at the Ocean Pride restaurant, where the old Colts meet once a month to discuss Players Association issues and charity events, a dad hesitantly approached Artie with his three children.

He sent his oldest, Brandy, 9, up first, with a cold Schlitz in her hand as an offering for an autograph. Artie, resembling an out-of-uniform Santa Claus, smiled broadly and immediately starts a conversation with the girl, and then corralled her two brothers in as well.

“I just always figured it was easier to be nice to everybody,” No. 70 said. “Do you know what I mean? It takes too much energy to be scheming or to try to manipulate things.

“I’ve been lucky, that’s all — always had someone looking out for me.”

On Sept. 16, 1962, before an opening-day contest against the Los Angeles Rams, Donovan took the Memorial Stadium field for the last time as the Colts retired his jersey in front of 54,796 emotional fans. He thanked the city of Baltimore that was good to him and made his mom, Mary Elizabeth O’Keefe Donovan, proud.

“My mother loved coming to Baltimore,” Artie said. “I used to pick her up at the train station and we’d got out somewhere to eat, like Dickman’s, at Mount Royal and Maryland, a nice white tablecloth place and everyone treated her like gold.

“In New York, she was the boxing referee’s wife. But in Baltimore, she was Artie Donovan’s mom.”

Baltimore Examiner

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Tackling life after the game

After financial, family struggles, an ex-Buffalo Bill finds hope

From the Baltimore Sun
By Rona Marech
Sun reporter

October 14, 2006

HAGERSTOWN -- Inside the Hagerstown Rescue Mission, up the stairs, into the dormitory, next to a bed with a thin tan coverlet, atop a dark locker -- this is where Donnie Green keeps his memorabilia. He has three tiny plastic helmets, one for each of the National Football League teams he played on: the Buffalo Bills, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Detroit Lions.

Behind those -- he has to groan and stretch to reach it -- is a blue, loose-leaf binder filled with photographs and articles. He turns the pages matter of factly, betraying little. Here he is in his No. 74 Bills jersey, staring out seriously, his fists clenched. Here he is coolly sitting on the bench, helmet pushed back. Here he is at Purdue University, a bright-eyed first-year student with a broad smile. He is watching a game in a fedora, his hands lifted over his head, victorious.

He pulls out a fan letter. "It sure is a pleasure to write to one of the greatest players who always gave 110 percent," it reads.

Green played for the NFL for seven years in the 1970s, most famously as part of the Bills' formidable offensive line that helped O.J. Simpson run a record-breaking 2,000 yards in a season. He and his fellow linemen were dubbed the Electric Company because they "turned the Juice loose."

But that was long ago, before Green's gait slowed and his brawn softened. Before family troubles. Before drugs.

In 2003, financial and emotional woes sent Green from his home in Annapolis to this Western Maryland shelter where men can find temporary housing or join a longer-term, religion-based recovery program. He arrived with little but some suitcases of old clothes. It didn't take long for him to find God -- truly find him and not just in a wishy-washy way, he says. Three years later, he's hopeful. He gets paid to work as a night watchman at the Rescue Mission. He's more peaceful.

And yet he's still here, a lumbering, gentle presence carrying a Bible and talking religion and trying, still, to figure out what to do next.

"I just take it from day to day," he said. "I'm really thankful God gave me another chance."

Green's predicament, some former players bitterly complain, is all too common. Men who played in the NFL prior to the 1980s were paid a pittance compared with current players, and until 1993, they retired without substantial pensions, health insurance or other now-standard benefits. Many suffer from ailments stemming from old injuries and years of play. And they're often too proud or embarrassed -- especially after all the athletic success and reverential treatment -- to seek help when their luck turns. Recent pension increases and changes in care coverage for retired players are inadequate, many who were in the business say.

They often know the saddest stories: Jackie Wallace, who played with the Colts among other teams, was found living under a New Orleans overpass; Mike Webster, once a Pittsburgh Steeler, was frequently unemployed and homeless in the years before his death.

"It goes on and on. There are hundreds of players who are hurting," said Bruce Laird, another former Colt who recently founded The Baltimore Football Club to assist ex-players. "We are working with the union to try to make them understand that these are the players who made the game, and they need help."

Joe DeLamielleure, a Hall of Famer who played right guard alongside Green on the Bills, calls it a "disgrace." "Why does the most lucrative business in the world have the worst pensions?" he said. "You know where Donnie is living? ... And Donnie Green isn't a dumb man, not an ignorant man. He's not a man who's lazy. He's a good man. For him to have to do this is absurd in my book."

At his peak in the NFL, Green said he never made more than $65,000. At 58, his monthly pension payments are a little more than $400.

It was only seven years of pro football, to be sure, but that was what Green had devoted his life to from the time he was a 219-pound eighth-grader in southeastern Virginia. High school coaches were already checking out the mountainous teenager, and he ended up playing football and basketball at Crestwood High School in Chesapeake before heading off to Purdue University on a football scholarship. He left school when he was drafted by Buffalo in 1971.

"God put something in me, to do the best I could," Green said. "I wanted to be the best offensive tackle on the planet."

On a snowy evening in 1973, Simpson -- running behind the Electric Company -- made history by rushing past the New York Jets defense and finishing the season with 2,003 yards.

Afterward, Simpson introduced each of his linesmen by name. Green, who has a gold capped tooth in the middle of his mouth, offers his molasses smile at the memory. "I was in the zone, really. I thought no one could stop me," he said. "I just kind of knew I was bad."

Then his smile fades, and he turns serious again. "I was never no big glamour guy," he said. "It wasn't a big-headed thing. I'm thankful God gave me the opportunity to participate in a sport at that level."

It lasted five years with the Bills and one each with the Eagles and the Lions, and then, suddenly, it was over. Green was hard-working and huge (a mean 6 feet, 8 inches and 272 pounds his rookie year), but that was no longer enough.

For a while he drifted, moving from Virginia to D.C., from job to job. He coached for a year, he was a teaching assistant, he drove a truck, he worked in a hospital supply room.

"My head was different then," he said. "I kind of wanted to chill out, duck out of the public scene for a while."

There were the family struggles, too -- two ex-wives, four kids and alimony problems he now blames on himself. And though he says he never was hooked, he was using drugs, more out of boredom than anything else. At a low point, he sold a gold bracelet inscribed with the words "we did it" that Simpson once gave him.

"People always used to say I was too nice. I used to do things I didn't want to do," he said. He lifts his baseball cap, touches his head. "I don't know what was wrong with me... I lost my motivation."

DeLamielleure saw his old friend around that time at a reunion and was struck by the beaten streak in his face. "To me, it was look of 'Oh, my God, how'd I get here, and what am I going to do about it?'" he said.

Green chose to move. After he lost his lease, he flipped a coin and decided to relocate to the Hagerstown shelter he had visited before with a minister friend.

He was embarrassed that first night, Green said, sleeping on a cot on the first floor with the other transients, but then "something just sparked in me."

He prayed at devotionals every morning and evening. Like everyone else, he was given a work assignment, first in the kitchen and later, for pay, at the front desk. He studied the Bible.

"The Lord lifted me from all that mess," he said.

Green is even bigger than he used to be, and the ferocity he once displayed on the field has been all but vanquished from his sincere, still-unlined face. He walks a little unevenly and is a little hunched. People in Hagerstown figured out his past story anyway -- if nothing else, his size always gives him away.

Yet he's a humble man, said Bruce Shank, the executive director of the Rescue Mission. He believes Green is ready to venture from the simple brick building where he's lived, perhaps to work with young people.

But Green isn't quite ready. He went to Chicago this year after a friend offered him a job managing a restaurant. But he returned to the shelter 18 days later. "I don't feel God is leading me to go now," he said.

Instead, he continues to work as a night monitor. He phones family and old football friends, he lifts weights occasionally, he puts on big, brown glasses and reads the Bible over and over.

Sometimes, he lingers on his regrets. He wishes, he said softly, that he had never tried drugs. Occasionally, he wonders if it would have been better to pursue basketball. Those athletes were paid more back then, and it's a "prettier sport," he said. "I got tired of all the banging."

He still likes to catch games on the weekends, though. Not to root for a favorite team, but more for the satisfaction of watching the machine hum. "I just like seeing the guys do their jobs," he said.

"Football was just a phase in my life," he said. "It was great, I know. Now it's over."

He puts away the notebook filled with pictures of that younger, trimmer man; the stranger with the pads and the hard squint. He doesn't leaf through it much any more.

"I don't know, it's kind of in the past," he says. "I'm kind of dealing with things now." He shakes his huge head a little, eyes soft, and shrugs one shoulder.

"Yeah," he says for emphasis, before falling silent.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.green14oct14,0,7857402.story
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun

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Convene in Canton? Take a hike, NFL

By JOHN P. LOPEZ
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 8, 2006, 11:03PM

Former NFL great Deacon Jones does not consider himself the voice of a football generation or some kind of revolutionary leader.

But Jones three years ago was among the first of what could become a significant number of past NFL heroes spurning annual Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Canton, Ohio, over what they think is unfair and exploitive treatment by the league.

"I'll starve to death before I let them (mistreat) me like that," said Jones, a Hall of Famer who was a star defensive lineman for 14 NFL seasons. "I don't know if I started a movement, and I didn't plan to do that. I just said this is what I have to do.

"I can't let you (mistreat) me. If you don't support me, I can't support you. I haven't asked any other player to do anything. It's on their own if they choose not to go."

But many more enshrined players indeed are missing the Hall of Fame event or threatening to skip it beginning next season.

Feelings of abandonment

For decades, one of the images the NFL has proudly projected has been the new Canton class framed by rows of enshrined legends in the background, all wearing their gold Hall of Fame blazers. More of those seats will go empty, as pre-1977 NFL players believe they have been abandoned.

"We want some equity," Hall of Famer and 14-year NFL great Ted Hendricks said. "They'll keep saying they (pay homage) to us, but they don't."

At the heart of the loosely organized Hall of Fame boycott is the NFL's subpar pension plan for players who began their careers before 1977, when federal courts ruled the league was violating anti-trust laws.

Those who began their playing careers after 1977 have earned much better pension and insurance benefits. And those whose careers began after 1995 enjoy superb benefits, including 401(k) and annuity plans

Saying no to hypocrisy

But while the NFL rakes in $6 billion a year and thrives as a league, pre-1977 players receive poor pensions and no health insurance.

Many players consider it hypocritical to support the NFL's annual tribute to the past. In their minds, it is more style than substance. The NFL, many former players believe, has forgotten the past and the players who lifted the game to unprecedented heights.

"Until this (stuff) gets right, I can't do that. I can't go there and smile," Jones said. "My conscience beats me to death.

"It hurts. I'm in the Hall of Fame. My recognition will go on forever, and I've done all right (financially). But there are a lot of guys who put a lot into this game, and it seems like the league just rolled on past them, doing nothing for them."

Another particularly painful issue for past players is the Hall's exploiting their names and legends. Until last year, Hall of Fame players were expected to pay their own travel and accommodation costs for the trip to Canton. Players also were expected to sign autographs for hours, earning $3 per signature.

Some players scraping by on pension checks of $800-$1,200 a month and having to pay for their own health insurance felt insulted that the NFL would use them in such a way but not listen to their calls for better benefits.

"A lot of the guys really were upset about that because we did all the work and we had to pay our own way," Hendricks said. "The autograph sessions were a calamity. There we were trying to help, but all the dealers would grab up all the tickets, and two weeks later they'd be selling stuff on eBay for quite a bit more than $3."

When Roger Goodell took over as NFL commissioner for Paul Tagliabue, who fully backed NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw's stance regarding pension benefits for pre-1977 players, some believed their voices might finally be heard. Upshaw was reported to be on his way out as NFLPA chief.

But last week, Upshaw reportedly agreed to a five-year extension on his NFLPA contract, which pays him $3 million a year. Prospects dimmed for pre-1977 players.

The ranks of legendary players returning to Canton figure to thin as a result.

"I'm watching the pioneers of the game cripple up and die with no dignity and no money for their family," former NFL defensive back Bruce Laird said. "To see their struggle and then hearing the same stuff from the league ... I tell the players now, 'This is going to be you. As soon as you leave the game, they're going to forget you.'

"It used to be at the Hall of Fame (ceremonies), the whole back was just full of players. It wasn't full this last time, and you're going to see less next time."

Said Jones, who attended 19 consecutive Hall of Fame induction ceremonies before beginning his boycott: "What would I tell (Goodell)? Every year when I was going to the Hall of Fame, we had the big luncheon.

"I would get two hours with the commissioner in the same room, talk to him personally. I used that opportunity a lot. I talked about the problems we have.

"Talking to Gene Upshaw — that's a waste of time. (Goodell) is aware of the problem. They're all aware. We've discussed it for 19 (straight) years. ... They refuse to give us any power. I'm afraid nothing's going to change."

All the NFL's greatest generation wants is representation on the NFL's Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retirement and Disability Plan board. All those players desire is a seat at the table.

Until they get that, they will — and should — leave the chairs empty at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

_______________________________________

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Pre-1977 NFL players fight for better pension

by John P. Lopez
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 7, 2006, 11:07PM

It was the NFL's greatest generation, a battered and bloodied assortment of football pioneers from blue-collar cities, Midwest farmhouses, bayou swamplands and every other corner of America.

The mantra these players forged: Play hard. Make no excuses. Tape it up and get back out there.

Their football souls were like coarse-grit sandpaper. They were proud and tough. And they always played hurt.

Today, many former NFL players fighting for better pension benefits and representation on the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retirement and Disability Plan board are swallowing their pride. They are because they hurt in an assortment of ways.

They feel cheated and victimized by an NFL pension plan that pales in comparison to similar plans in the NBA and Major League Baseball for players of their generation.

No matter the NFL's stance, to see what this generation of players did for the league, compared to what they get from the league, it is clear they are being cheated and discarded.

The sorry pension benefit plan for pre-1977 players is, as former Oakland Raiders great Howie Long said last year, "the deep, dark secret nobody wants to talk about."

Gone and forgotten

That prideful unspoken mantra, making no excuses, for years kept older-generation players from complaining about the treatment they received since their glory days ended.

But as bodies continue to fall apart and medical bills stack higher, with numerous players succumbing to dementia, hip and knee replacement operations and other life-altering conditions, the league's greatest generation wonders why it has been forgotten.

"We've been (left out) on every hand," said Deacon Jones, an eight-time Pro Bowl player in 14 NFL seasons for the Los Angeles Rams, San Diego Chargers and Washington Redskins. "I don't know why we are the victims all the time. We didn't do anything but play hard, play hurt and do whatever was asked of us.

"Every event I go to, I see some guys' bodies fading away. By the time something's done, these guys will be gone. It's like they're waiting for our generation to die out, so they don't have to answer these questions anymore."

Former Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini, 57, who had a sterling 13-year NFL career, earns just $1,202.32 a month in pension benefits.

Having been afforded no health insurance by the NFL in retirement, Pastorini must meet an annual $5,000 deductible because of pre-existing conditions that include back, neck and knee problems.

NFL Hall of Fame safety Paul Krause, who played 16 NFL seasons (1964-1979) for the Redskins and Minnesota Vikings, gets $300 a month in pension. Hall of Famer Leroy Kelly, a 10-year star running back for the Cleveland Browns (1964-1973) gets $800 a month.

Hall of Famer Joe DeLamielleure, who played 185 consecutive games during his 13 NFL seasons with the Buffalo Bills and Cleveland Browns, receives $800 a month. None has received NFL health insurance benefits.

The NFL built its $6 billion a year industry on the likes of Ollie Matson, Dick Butkus, Ted Hendricks and some 1,400 other pre-1977 players whose heroics are featured in grainy NFL Films productions. It was 1977 when the NFL was found to be violating antitrust laws, and benefits improved.

For those whose careers began before 1977, bits and pieces of their bodies are strewn from New York to Los Angeles to Houston. The NFL Players Association says it won't forget the foundation its predecessors laid.

Words mean little

In its mission statement, the NFLPA says, "We pay homage to our predecessors for their courage, sacrifice and vision."

But hundreds of former players believe that is where the paying stops. Just words.

"It's like you walk away in shame," Pastorini said. "I played the game as hard as I could. I was on the picket lines for the players association. Maybe I didn't agree with everything, but I was there for the players and the future players.

"It's really amazing how (executive director) Gene Upshaw and the players association turned their backs on the rest of us. In my opinion, Upshaw has been bought off. And if it wasn't for us, he wouldn't have that job he has."

Through NFLPA director of communications Carl Francis, Upshaw chose not to respond to questions about the NFL pension plan for pre-1977 players.

"We've addressed it so many times. We'll just let it take its course through the collective bargaining agreement," Francis said. "We're addressing the issues in our own ways."

In the past, Upshaw, who earns $3 million a year as NFLPA chief and recently received a five-year extension to his contract, has said he does care about former players.

But he also has called those calling for better benefits, "misinformed" and "ungrateful."

Hendricks, primarily a pass-rushing linebacker who intercepted an astonishing 26 passes in his 14-year career, said former players have confronted Upshaw at Hall of Fame meetings.

"He told us he doesn't represent us," Hendricks said. "He talked about how much money he was going to make the next few years. It was like he was pushing our faces in the mud and rubbing it around."

For modern-day NFL players, Upshaw has indeed worked wonders. Benefits are improved in large part because of 401(k) plans, annuities and better benefits that came as a result of recent collective bargaining agreement deals.

But their benefits still fall short of other leagues. A player retiring after 1998 with 10 years of experience would be eligible for an annual pension of roughly $51,000 at age 55. MLB players with 10 years of service would retire with $175,000 per year in benefits starting at age 62.

Getting mixed messages

But when the NFLPA upped pension benefits for pre-1977 players after a recent CBA agreement, Upshaw hailed the increase as unprecedented. Players were unimpressed with those benefits, many going from $100 a month to $200 a month for vested players.

"Yeah, he's got some window dressing he can put out there, but when you look at it, it's pathetic," said former Colts and Chargers (1972-1983) defensive back Bruce Laird. "Everybody is happy for what the union has done for the active players. They've done some wonderful things. If I played in 1995 and saw Gene Upshaw, I'd kiss his (backside).

"But for us? We're not sitting here with a cup in our hand asking for money. We want to be represented in the union. You can't have it both ways. You can't tell us you don't represent us and then say you do when you give us a raise that means nothing."

Inevitably, the majority of pre-1977 players voice most of their frustrations with Upshaw. They speak of not having a voice and getting conflicting, often contentious messages from him.

And Upshaw has told retired players the NFLPA does not represent them.

Labor law dictates that Upshaw must represent only active, dues-paying members of the union. But Upshaw, a Hall of Fame offensive lineman from the same generation of pre-1977 players, also has taken bows for funneling funds to former players.

Yet according to Laird, Upshaw also has told retired players, "You didn't hire me, and you can't fire me."

Another contradiction: When asked about gaining representation on the NFL's Retirement Board, a six-member committee that rules on benefit protests and disability claims, retired players have been told they indeed do have representation on the board. Their purported voice? Gene Upshaw.

"That's a joke," Laird said.

The conflicting messages seem endless, like the emotional and physical pain former players are feeling.

Poor performance

Without question, the Retirement Board's record for being sympathetic to retired players' claims has been less than impressive. Of 3,500 players represented, barely 130 (0.37 percent) have earned full disability, according to a 2005 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette study in the wake of Steelers great Mike Webster's death.

With no representative on the board, former players feel abandoned by the game and deceived by Upshaw.

"It's an impossibility to have ourselves heard," Pastorini said. "There are a lot of disturbing stories out there. Great players are falling to pieces.

"Upshaw makes me sick. He was a teammate of mine (at Oakland in 1980), and I didn't like him as a teammate. I like him less now."

Recently, many players have tried to tackle the issue themselves, so to speak. Former Packers great Jerry Kramer has founded the Gridiron Greats Relief Fund, initiating a series of memorabilia auctions at jerrykramer.com in hopes of helping destitute and needy former players.

Mike Ditka, a Hall of Famer and legendary Chicago Bears player and coach, has become among the most active advocates for financial relief.

Ditka also established a fund, but when Ditka penned letters soliciting each NFL team for a $100,000 donation in order to begin allowing former players "dignity," the response was embarrassing. One team sent a $5,000 check. Another sent $10,000. That's it.

Not nearly enough

Hendricks and Jones, too, are involved in fundraising efforts, attending dozens of charitable efforts every year, autographing memorabilia for auctions and hosting golf tournaments every November.

But considering financial demands, what players are doing for themselves makes a minuscule impact.

Matson, perhaps the league's first true superstar tailback and a Hall of Famer, has lived in a full-time nursing facility in Los Angeles the past two years, suffering from symptoms of dementia and other ailments. He receives $1,200 a month from the NFL pension plan, although Matson's investments post-NFL have kept the family from financial straits.

"These were the guys who put the NFL on the map and made it the game it is today," said Bruce Matson, Ollie's son and a Houston dentist and cosmetic surgeon. "What dad gets from the NFL, you couldn't even buy groceries with in L.A."

And while the past scrapes together money for groceries and prescriptions, the NFL sits atop a mountain of gold. Franchises are valued at an average of nearly $820 million apiece, according to Forbes magazine. The league's television and multimedia deal will bring the NFL $24 billion over the next eight years.

Remember football's greatest generation? The NFL apparently stands for Not For Long.

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The Haunting: Ghosts of NFL Past Refuse to Go Gently Into that Good Night

By Michael Olesker
Press Box, Baltimore, Md.
September 28, 2006

They are the ghosts of autumns past, moving along the shadows of the National Football League with their haunting sounds of distress: the grinding of artificial hips, the jangling of detached vertebrae. And now, the insistent rising of some of their voices.

Two months ago, the NFL and its Players Association tossed pro football's retirees a bone instead of a football. Pensions would be increased up to 25 percent a year. Brand new money would help provide care for those like John Mackey, the former Baltimore Colt suffering from dementia who now spends most of his waking hours in adult day care.

Their work done, the NFL and the current players then took their bows and waited for applause.

Instead, they're hearing angry words from some retired players who feel shunted aside instead of grateful. Many feel short-changed on pensions by a league that has grown enormously prosperous. They feel cut adrift on medical help by a business that tacitly encourages its employees to wreck one another's bodies and then preposterously offers no medical benefits on the lingering after-effects.

"Now they make the case that they're upgrading the pensions by $120 million a year," said Bruce Laird, the former Baltimore Colts defensive back. "So what? I was never a good math major, but I know the league's about a $6 billion business that was built on our backs. Let's talk about real numbers -- the ex-players like me getting a $55 a month increase when gas is $3 a gallon now. Hey, don't tell me you gave me something. If you give me a dollar and you've only got $10, that's something. But not this. This is crumbs."

Laird's voice is joined by former Colts as well as others around the league. There are estimates that as many as 400 former players, some now in their 70s, get less than $400 a month from their NFL pensions. At this year's Super Bowl, a week-long auction will be held to establish a Gridiron Greats Fund, a charitable trust to help former players pay their medical bills and supplement meager retirement benefits.

"It's a sad situation from a social and moral perspective," said Baltimore labor lawyer Joel A. Smith, whose clients include Major League Baseball umpires. "What they have to do is balance the current players with the obvious needs of the preceding generations. Football is different from other sports. The body contact is so rough. The average football career is much less than most professional sports. You think of the way John Unitas was treated all those years. If these guys didn't have workmen's comp, they'd have nothing."

But there are some retirees who defend the new financial package. The ex-Colt linebacker (and union rep) Stan White, for example, said he thought the deal was satisfactory. Ex-Cowboy and Redskin Jean Fugett, now leader of the NFL organization of retired players, admits there are problems but isn't willing to declare heartlessness on the part of the league or its current players.

And there are fans who wonder: Why in the world are these rich and famous men complaining about pension benefits and medical assistance when they made such great fortunes in their playing days?

***

Go back to the night of Sept. 13, to Baltimore's Mt. Washington Tavern. About a dozen of the old Colts have gathered. Sylvia Mackey, John Mackey's wife and caretaker, is also there. So is Sandy Unitas, widow of John Unitas, who still recalls the awful battles over medical coverage her late husband had with the NFL.

This night, it's a gathering for the John Mackey Fund, a charity formed to assist ex-players like the Hall of Famer Mackey, who suffers from frontotemporal dementia. It's an affliction similar to Alzheimer's.

In his playing days, Mackey with a football in his hands was a kind of unstoppable earth force. Off the field, he headed the NFL Players Association in its early battles for collective bargaining. At 64, Mackey's conversation now consists of perhaps a dozen rote sentences, muttered gently and repeatedly.

When the NFL released its new benefits package two months ago, it included a so-called Number 88 Plan (Mackey's old number) that will pay up to $88,000 a year for institutional care or up to $50,000 a year for in-home nursing care for retired players suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia.

The gesture arrives after several years of lobbying from Sylvia Mackey, including an impassioned letter she sent to then-Commissioner Paul Tagilabue. The new money, she said the other night, has put "some dignity" back into her life -- though, in her 60s, she'll continue to work as an airline stewardess "until I can get my full retirement benefits."

She has also talked with women in similar situations, "wives of guys in the Hall of Fame. We think there are 15 or 20 dementia cases -- and that's just from the 260 guys in the Hall." She rattles off several names from around the league. Laird adds a few names to her list, and so does ex-Colt Hall of Famer Art Donovan.

"It's the multiple-collision syndrome," Laird said. "It catches up. But the NFL doesn't want to hear about it. They're afraid it'll open up a Pandora's box. Why? Money."

"Sometimes John and I will catch some of those old films and see those great runs he made," Sylvia Mackey said. "He'll look at them and say, 'Is that me?' And I say, 'Yes, John, that's you.' "

But dementia-related illness is only a part of it. Football is a survival-of-the-fittest business computed in damaged muscle and bone. The after-effects linger across lifetimes.

"You get a bunch of old players together, and right away they're comparing body parts," Laird said. " 'How's the knee? How's the hip?' Me, I have no cartilage from the fifth to the seventh vertebrae in my neck. Both shoulders were separated numerous times." He reaches out his hands. "Scars on my hands from reaching through face masks, grabbing pieces of tooth. See this scar? That's from teeth. I had 12 concussions in 14 years. They'd stick amyl nitrate under your nose and say, 'Get back out there.' 'Yeah, man, I can go.' And you go right back in. That's the way the game is played."

But Laird, like the other retirees, gets no medical assistance from the NFL. The traditional concept is simple: Football was always perceived as a stopover game, a brief moment between college ball and a real, long-term business career from which the former athletes would receive medical coverage.

The problem was, such thinking denied the obvious: football is a violent game, whose crippling injuries resonate and deepen across the years.

"That's why John was so insistent about it," Sandy Unitas said recalling her husband's battles over his various injuries. "He felt the NFL had turned its back on him and all the other players. He paid for all his medical expenses. He had good insurance, and he could afford to pay. But he felt he was entitled to it, because these were lingering football injuries. He felt he was fighting for the players who couldn't afford to pay."

At the Mackey gathering a few weeks ago, ex-Colts Hall of Famer Lenny Moore put his finger on part of the problem.

"Most guys today, if they have theirs, they don't concern themselves with anybody else," Moore said. "Today's players are self-satisfied. When salaries started skyrocketing, they should have reached out to the guys who made it possible for them to make all this money. They don't even know who a guy like John Mackey is, and he's the one responsible for getting us collective bargaining in the first place.

"But there's another side to this, see? You're talking about professional athletes, you're talking about guys with a lot of pride. They don't want to say, 'Please help me.' Some of the old guys die broke because of it. You remember Night Train Lane (one of the NFL's greatest defensive backs)? Man, we had to raise money just to put Night Train Lane in the ground."

At 72, Moore still works for the State Department of Juvenile Services, which provides his medical coverage.

"The players today, they could care less about the guys who came before them," former Colts running back Tom Matte said. "And they're the ones deciding how much we get. Me, I get $1,438 a month pension from the NFL, plus social security. Believe me, it's not enough to live on." Matte works several part-time jobs, including broadcasting. He's been through major surgery on a few occasions; he gets no medical benefits from the NFL.

"What we got in the new benefits deal is a pittance," Matte said. "What we get medically is nothing. The fans might not want to hear it, but it's true. Some of them think we made a fortune. Hell, I came into the league getting $10,000 a year, plus a $4,000 bonus. And I was the seventh player taken in the whole country. The most I ever got was $85,000, with bonuses and playoff money."

Then there is Fugett, the Baltimore native who went on to play for Dallas and Washington, graduated from Georgetown Law School and now heads the Retired Players Department Steering Committee.

"I don't want to say today's players have turned their backs on us," Fugett said. "If there are health issues, there's a fund, and guys can get on the phone and see a doctor. Some of this is a matter of communication. But, yes, we're in a unique business. We're all walking around in pain almost every day. My back's been messed up since 1975, and I get no medical coverage for it. Nothing.

"When we were all playing, nobody really knew the effects on our bodies. A lot of stuff was never diagnosed. The doctors worked for the teams, and the teams just wanted you to play. They would get the medical reports, and we didn't. It's physical stuff, and psychological stuff, too. Look, we're all strong guys. We don't like to ask for help."

Included on such a list is Sisto Averno, who goes back to the beginning of Baltimore Colts football. He is past 80 now, and has to use a walker. He's had hip and knee replacements, remnants of old football collisions. The NFL has paid for none of it.

In his five years with the Colts, Averno's starting pay was $4,000. The most he made was $9,500. He was a 60-minute man: offensive guard or tackle, linebacker, kickoff and punt teams.

"One time, I separated my shoulder," Averno said. "I told the coach, Clem Crowe. He said, 'Block with the other one.' "

Averno remembers his first training camp at Westminster "I stood there with Artie Donovan," he said, "and we saw so many bodies in camp, we were ready to walk out. Then one of the assistant coaches came up and said, 'Come on, you're making $4,000.' I figured, 'He's right, that's almost $400 a game. Pretty good pay, ain't it?' "

In today's NFL, no player can imagine such puny numbers. Their sense of history goes back about 10 minutes. If they notice those ghostly forms out there in the shadows, they don't make the connection to their own vulnerable lives. They don't understand how these old men are haunting reminders of their own days to come.

Issue 1.23: September 28, 2006

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Simms' case highlights NFL doctors' dilemma

Tampa Bay's quarterback had his spleen taken out Sept. 24

By ANTHONY CORMIER
anthony.cormier@heraldtribune.com
Article published Oct 1, 2006

It's an old National Football League standard: If you're hurt, you play. If you're injured, you don't.

But the difference between being sore and needing surgery is subtle in today's NFL, where the line between a serious ailment and pedestrian pain is blurred by doctors working for the teams and athletes who want to play, even at risk of their own health.

Last week brought a pair of dangerous incidents -- Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Chris Simms playing with a ruptured spleen, and Dallas Cowboys receiver Terrell Owens returning to practice one day after overdosing on pills -- that sounded an alarm in the medical community about the conflict between the teams, their physicians and the players in pro sports.

The cases were a reminder, some say, of the long-standing struggle to balance ethics, money and player safety in the NFL.

Critics say the league is tiptoeing through a minefield, where the drive to get star players back in the game can cloud medical decisions with serious, sometimes fatal, consequences.

"There is a huge problem in the National Football League," said Dr. Robert Huizenga, a former team physician for the Oakland Raiders. "And it doesn't seem like anyone wants to address it."

The debate is as old as the game itself and as complex as the West Coast offense. On one side are the players, and on the other are coaches and front-office personnel.

In the middle are team physicians, doctors and trainers whose allegiance to the health of players can be tested by the owners who pay their salaries.

"The real question is: 'Who does the doctor work for?' Does he work on behalf of the athlete or is he working for the team?" asked Dr. Stephen Rice of the Jersey Shore (N.J.) Medical Center, who is a College of Sports Medicine fellow and former physician at the University of Washington.

Critics say team physicians sometimes fall prey to their bosses' demands, scrambling for "miracle cures" that mask serious injuries and put players back on the field when they shouldn't be.

"I don't think there's any question that, when you get a strong coach in your face saying, 'This guy needs to be ready,' you do what it takes to get them back on the field," said Ralph Cindrich, a former player and now one of the league's premier agents.

"There are a lot of instances where they push a guy back before he's ready."

In the business of football, roster spots and million-dollar contracts are won by the players who grit through twisted joints and shredded tendons -- even if they're risking a serious injury that could lead to devastating consequences in the long term.

In a landmark study at the University of North Carolina, researchers found that nearly 60 percent of retired NFL players had suffered at least one concussion during their careers. The survey also concluded that retired NFL players have a 37 percent higher risk of Alzheimer's disease than other men of the same age.

Former team physicians and longtime sports medicine professionals say the doctors are put in a tenuous position each week, where snap decisions carry serious ramifications in the billion-dollar world of the NFL.

Each team employs a staff of trainers to deal with pedestrian ailments such as sore muscles and sprained joints. They also have a squad of doctors to diagnose and treat injuries.

NFL teams generally will not allow media access to trainers and physicians, and Bucs doctor Joe Diaco could not comment for this story.

"It's a business, a two-sided business that is driven by the fact that, if you can't perform, you can't play," said Dr. Jon Schriner, who operates six sports medicine centers in Michigan and has worked with collegiate and Olympic athletes.

The sidelines and the training rooms where athletes rehab can be lonely places, where the sense of invulnerability that drove an athlete to the NFL can lead to isolation from coaches and teammates.

In a world of machismo, toughness can be a player's defining attribute.

Take Brett Favre, the Green Bay Packers quarterback whose legacy was determined more by his ironman streak of 224 straight starts than his Super Bowl win or 402 touchdown passes.

There is no label feared more than "injury-prone" or, worse yet, "soft." So while there is pressure from coaches to send players back prematurely, the players often put the same pressure on themselves.

Said Bucs receiver Michael Clayton: "A lot of guys play this game with a passion (that) we'll play until we die, until we can't anymore."

Careers can be made, or lost, on a reputation of playing with pain. The first three weeks of this season have seen players suffer through organ damage (Simms), concussions (Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner) and possible broken bones (Seattle running back Shaun Alexander).

In each instance the players refused to leave the field.

"The athlete thinks he is invulnerable, that nothing bad can happen," Rice said. "They almost need to believe that, in order to face the risks that they do."

For Tampa Bay Bucs veteran Dave Moore, a raging rib cage pain in NFL week one wasn't enough to keep him out. The long snapper couldn't breathe, and he spit up blood as he sat in the locker room.

He planned to return to the field as soon as Diaco gave him the go-ahead.

An assistant coach asked Moore if he was OK, and Moore said yes. But he wasn't -- Moore had a broken rib and punctured lung. What he thought was a bruise was a more serious injury that has kept Moore out since the season opener.

"If I didn't actually spit up blood to realize something inside was going on, I would have gone right back in the game," he said.

But what happens when the injury goes undiagnosed?

In Simms' case, trainers and physicians said a ruptured spleen can be difficult to detect, as the symptoms -- dizziness, abdominal pain and blurry vision -- are similar to cases of dehydration or simple exhaustion.

The Bucs' trainers and physicians would not comment, but coach Jon Gruden is confident that they made the right decision on Simms, based on the information they had at the time.

But recognizing the difference between pain and injury extends beyond the NFL, Gruden said, to weekend warriors who try to understand the difference between a sore knee and a torn ligament.

"It's every phase of sport," Gruden said. "It's amateur sports, it's professional sports, it's being a human being. Sometimes a man or a woman has to push themselves through it. A normal human being knows what their limitations are."

But a player's needs are sometimes weighed against the team goals, and critics say doctors are caught between competing interests.

Several years ago, many players raised serious questions about the care they were getting. According to an NFL Players Association survey, players were asked if their physicians were "good" or better. On four teams, 60 percent of the players found their medical staff lacking.

The Cincinnati Bengals' doctors were held in the lowest regard, as only one in five of the players called them "good" or better.

That's where the union stepped in to fight for changes to the collective bargaining agreement that would offset potential medical conflicts. Players can now pick their own surgeons and receive second opinions from doctors of their choice.

It's all on the team's dime, according to NFLPA official Carl Francis, and was put in a formal agreement to shield players from making a decision based on a doctor who is paid by the team.

"We made it a priority for the player to be able to protect his rights," Francis said.

But with so much pressure to find "miracle cures," team physicians also are faced with an additional threat: malpractice lawsuits. Just like their civilian counterparts, team doctors are seeing a huge rise in malpractice insurance and recent litigation by former NFL players that equate to multimillion-dollar settlements.

For example, the family of Korey Stringer, a Minnesota Vikings lineman who died of heatstroke during training camp in 2001, is suing the team's doctors for $100 million -- enough to cripple a team doctor's long-standing private practice.

"The lawyers are always telling us to get out," said Huizenga, the former Raiders' physician. "They say, 'You've got to be an idiot to do this. It's just not worth it.'"

Now an associate professor of medicine at UCLA, Huizenga spent seven years on the sidelines with the Raiders and became disillusioned by what he calls a tug-of-war between clubs and doctors. Huizenga's book, "You're Okay, It's Just a Bruise," was an inside account of the way pro football sometimes ignores injuries and turned a blind eye to the 1980s steroid spike.

He believes the ethics that guide civilian doctors get lost in the four-month shuffle of the NFL regular season, where big games come with a big price. The title of his book, he said, was taken from a line used by a Raiders doctor to diagnose just about every player who came into the trainer's room.

"Your star quarterback has a concussion before the game, but maybe the team doesn't tell him," Huizenga said. "Or maybe a player has a severely injured knee before the Super Bowl. Give him an injection of cortisone and send him in the game.

"These are serious ethical issues facing team doctors, but it's a system that we've railed against for years and nothing seems to have changed."

______

Korey Stringer
An offensive line- man for the Minnes- ota Vikings, Stringer died of heatstroke in the 2001 training camp. His wife, Kelci, is suing the team for $100 million.

O.J. McDuffie

The former Miami Dolphins receiver is suing team doctors because of a 1999 toe injury that ended his career. The case remains in circuit court.

Dick Butkus

The Chicago Bears legend won a $600,000 settlement in the 1970s from the team doctor over repeated cortisone shots to his knees.
______

Herald-Tribune writer Tom Balog contributed to this report.

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