SportsFrog.com
http://www.sportsfrog.com/2007/02/the_nfl_and_its_disposable_pla.php
February 2, 2007
I had to dig deep, but finally something good coming out of the hype around the Super Bowl. Thanks to a very nice column by Tim Smith in The Daily News, I learned that the The Girdiron Greats Assistance Fund held a press conference and drew attention to the fact that the NFL has largely ignored its older generations, the very players upon which this league was built.
Some former NFL players, who suffered significantly disabling injuries on the field, get a whopping $70 a month for their pension. Former Buffalo Bill Joe DeLamielleure places blame at the top, "I hold (union executive director) Gene Upshaw and (former NFL commissioner) Paul Tagliabue responsible for this. They were in power for 20 years and did nothing."
But hey, why worry about former players, right? You barely even care about the current ones. The way that this most violent league is able to get away with the highest level of player turnover in any sport without offering guaranteed contracts has always boggled my mind.
This would probably be cost-prohibitve though, no? Smith sums up the league's unbelievable level of selfishness by dismissing that myth through an interview with Gene Upshaw: "He said at the current rate it would cost $8 million a year to get the retired players on par with the current players in terms of disability payments ... He also said there was no mechanism in place for those retired players who don't really need their pensions to donate them.
"That is a tough sell in a league that has a TV contract worth billions and some players earning in the hundreds of millions. Under that setup, it looks cruel not to help those ailing retired players or to force them to drag you into court to get help."
Eight million a year to provide an older generation of players - a generation where we know their bodies were abused even more than they are now - a humane level of support? I'm pretty sure that's less than what Tagliabue was pulling down a year all by himself (not including benefits).
Good gracious, you have to be a miserable bunch of penny-pinching gluttonous corporate Scrooges to withhold these benefits.
Memo to Roger: Cut the damn check already.
http://www.sportsfrog.com/2007/02/the_nfl_and_its_disposable_pla.php
February 2, 2007
I had to dig deep, but finally something good coming out of the hype around the Super Bowl. Thanks to a very nice column by Tim Smith in The Daily News, I learned that the The Girdiron Greats Assistance Fund held a press conference and drew attention to the fact that the NFL has largely ignored its older generations, the very players upon which this league was built.
Some former NFL players, who suffered significantly disabling injuries on the field, get a whopping $70 a month for their pension. Former Buffalo Bill Joe DeLamielleure places blame at the top, "I hold (union executive director) Gene Upshaw and (former NFL commissioner) Paul Tagliabue responsible for this. They were in power for 20 years and did nothing."
But hey, why worry about former players, right? You barely even care about the current ones. The way that this most violent league is able to get away with the highest level of player turnover in any sport without offering guaranteed contracts has always boggled my mind.
This would probably be cost-prohibitve though, no? Smith sums up the league's unbelievable level of selfishness by dismissing that myth through an interview with Gene Upshaw: "He said at the current rate it would cost $8 million a year to get the retired players on par with the current players in terms of disability payments ... He also said there was no mechanism in place for those retired players who don't really need their pensions to donate them.
"That is a tough sell in a league that has a TV contract worth billions and some players earning in the hundreds of millions. Under that setup, it looks cruel not to help those ailing retired players or to force them to drag you into court to get help."
Eight million a year to provide an older generation of players - a generation where we know their bodies were abused even more than they are now - a humane level of support? I'm pretty sure that's less than what Tagliabue was pulling down a year all by himself (not including benefits).
Good gracious, you have to be a miserable bunch of penny-pinching gluttonous corporate Scrooges to withhold these benefits.
Memo to Roger: Cut the damn check already.
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