By Jeff Davis
March 6, 2007
Chicago Sports Review
http://www.chicagosportsreview.com/printer/article.asp?c=191445
Something is deeply wrong with pro football. It boils down to the simple fact that the richest, most powerful, most popular league on earth, the National Football League, is throwing dirt on its ancestors while they are still alive. The ancestors, of course, are the players who made the game rich and powerful, and are now are begging for some crumbs in the form of a decent pension and health care.
We're talking about the men who played before 1982, when the first of two major strikes that redefined player's pension rights. These are men who were permanently injured from playing a sport that, according to those who participate, is the equivalent of an auto crash every play.
Imagine, say, that you manage to survive 75 or 80 such collisions over a three hour period every week, and did it for no less than 20 weeks (don't forget pre-season games) plus three or four more playoff games. The average Bear this year survived about 1,500 such collisions. That leaves men with battered limbs that lead to crippling, and worst of all, brain concussions that lead to Alzheimer's and dementia.
"Basically, they're waiting for us to die," said Mike Pyle, the former Bears's center, co-captain and past NFLPA president. What a sad commentary.
That's why you are hearing Hall of Famers and former stars like Mike Ditka, Green Bay's Jerry Kramer, Buffalo's Joe DeLamielleure, the Giants's Harry Carson, and their group, they call the Forgotten325. They are standing up for Alzheimer's victims and Hall of Famer's like John Mackey, Pete Pihos, and non-Hall inductee, but championship
linebacker Bill Forester of Vince Lombardi's Packers. They are standing up for perhaps the greatest defensive end of all, the Bears's Doug Atkins who is confined to a wheelchair in his Knoxville, Tennessee home because he can't afford, let alone get, insurance to cover hip replacement surgery.
And there are so many more.
Take the premier cornerback of his era, Herb Adderley, who gave Green Bay and Dallas a dozen years after playing his trade at Duffy Daugherty's Michigan State football factory in the late '50s and early '60s. Because the union told Adderley and other ex-players years ago that the life expectancy of the average pro was age 55, he chose to take his pension at 45. When he outlived the actuarial figuring (as life expectancy for his group pushed 60) Adderley was stuck with a pension that brings him a disgraceful $126 dollars a month. No wonder he says "I'm embarrassed to say I even played in the NFL."
Ditka led the old-timers charge the week before this year's Super Bowl.
"It's a disgrace," said the great Bear tight end and coach. Charging that owners only care about money, not the history of the game, Ditka blasted away. "The owners ought to be ashamed of themselves."
DeLamielleure said it as bluntly as possible, laying co-blame at the feet of union head Gene Upshaw, who takes home millions a year as executive director of the NFLPA.
"Our pension sucks, plain and simple." DeLamielleure said.
When asked about Ditka's comments at his first pre-Super Bowl news conference, a somewhat evasive rookie commissioner Roger Goodell lamely said Ditka was wrong and then said he had to talk things over "with Gene."
Talking things over with Gene Upshaw goes to the heart of the matter according to many former players. After the owners' management council engineered the 1987 strike and hired guys off loading docks and semi-pro teams and called them "replacements," Upshaw stood up and let himself be counted.
Realizing the public and the networks did not like what they saw in 1987, the former Oakland Raiders' Hall of Fame guard forced the owners' hand by decertifying the union. He used the NFLPA war chest dues to finance court cases and eventually, the players won every case.
Before he left office in 1989, Pete Rozelle started a dialogue with Upshaw and he told his successor Paul Tagliabue that he must do the same to end the war. When Tagliabue dissolved the NFL Management Council and took charge of negotiations himself, he was able to forge a truce and ultimately a settlement with Upshaw. The NFL now has lasted two decades without a labor stoppage.
The problem though, is the commissioner and executive director became close personal friends. The old-timers who fought the good fight have another word for it, one almost as dirty as the one all unionists disdain, scab, for "replacements." That word is Sweetheart. And in the labor movement, sweetheart emits an odor that reeks of collusion.
Meanwhile, the fight between the old-timers, now focused against both the league and union, continues.
March 6, 2007
Chicago Sports Review
http://www.chicagosportsreview.com/printer/article.asp?c=191445
Something is deeply wrong with pro football. It boils down to the simple fact that the richest, most powerful, most popular league on earth, the National Football League, is throwing dirt on its ancestors while they are still alive. The ancestors, of course, are the players who made the game rich and powerful, and are now are begging for some crumbs in the form of a decent pension and health care.
We're talking about the men who played before 1982, when the first of two major strikes that redefined player's pension rights. These are men who were permanently injured from playing a sport that, according to those who participate, is the equivalent of an auto crash every play.
Imagine, say, that you manage to survive 75 or 80 such collisions over a three hour period every week, and did it for no less than 20 weeks (don't forget pre-season games) plus three or four more playoff games. The average Bear this year survived about 1,500 such collisions. That leaves men with battered limbs that lead to crippling, and worst of all, brain concussions that lead to Alzheimer's and dementia.
"Basically, they're waiting for us to die," said Mike Pyle, the former Bears's center, co-captain and past NFLPA president. What a sad commentary.
That's why you are hearing Hall of Famers and former stars like Mike Ditka, Green Bay's Jerry Kramer, Buffalo's Joe DeLamielleure, the Giants's Harry Carson, and their group, they call the Forgotten325. They are standing up for Alzheimer's victims and Hall of Famer's like John Mackey, Pete Pihos, and non-Hall inductee, but championship
linebacker Bill Forester of Vince Lombardi's Packers. They are standing up for perhaps the greatest defensive end of all, the Bears's Doug Atkins who is confined to a wheelchair in his Knoxville, Tennessee home because he can't afford, let alone get, insurance to cover hip replacement surgery.
And there are so many more.
Take the premier cornerback of his era, Herb Adderley, who gave Green Bay and Dallas a dozen years after playing his trade at Duffy Daugherty's Michigan State football factory in the late '50s and early '60s. Because the union told Adderley and other ex-players years ago that the life expectancy of the average pro was age 55, he chose to take his pension at 45. When he outlived the actuarial figuring (as life expectancy for his group pushed 60) Adderley was stuck with a pension that brings him a disgraceful $126 dollars a month. No wonder he says "I'm embarrassed to say I even played in the NFL."
Ditka led the old-timers charge the week before this year's Super Bowl.
"It's a disgrace," said the great Bear tight end and coach. Charging that owners only care about money, not the history of the game, Ditka blasted away. "The owners ought to be ashamed of themselves."
DeLamielleure said it as bluntly as possible, laying co-blame at the feet of union head Gene Upshaw, who takes home millions a year as executive director of the NFLPA.
"Our pension sucks, plain and simple." DeLamielleure said.
When asked about Ditka's comments at his first pre-Super Bowl news conference, a somewhat evasive rookie commissioner Roger Goodell lamely said Ditka was wrong and then said he had to talk things over "with Gene."
Talking things over with Gene Upshaw goes to the heart of the matter according to many former players. After the owners' management council engineered the 1987 strike and hired guys off loading docks and semi-pro teams and called them "replacements," Upshaw stood up and let himself be counted.
Realizing the public and the networks did not like what they saw in 1987, the former Oakland Raiders' Hall of Fame guard forced the owners' hand by decertifying the union. He used the NFLPA war chest dues to finance court cases and eventually, the players won every case.
Before he left office in 1989, Pete Rozelle started a dialogue with Upshaw and he told his successor Paul Tagliabue that he must do the same to end the war. When Tagliabue dissolved the NFL Management Council and took charge of negotiations himself, he was able to forge a truce and ultimately a settlement with Upshaw. The NFL now has lasted two decades without a labor stoppage.
The problem though, is the commissioner and executive director became close personal friends. The old-timers who fought the good fight have another word for it, one almost as dirty as the one all unionists disdain, scab, for "replacements." That word is Sweetheart. And in the labor movement, sweetheart emits an odor that reeks of collusion.
Meanwhile, the fight between the old-timers, now focused against both the league and union, continues.
0 comments:
Post a Comment