Has anyone else noticed the ads for a new charity called NFL Alumni. Org?
Apparently, they are hopeful that hardworking Average Joes across the USA are going to feel badly for ex-NFL players who have now hit hard times and are having money troubles.
Nevermind that the economy is as bad as it has been for several decades, and the retired players who would be on the receiving end of the public largess were probably making at least 10 or 20 times the average annual wage back when they were playing, but apparently still couldn’t put something aside for later in life.
Now obviously, anyone is free to donate their own money to any cause that they deem worthy, but I can’t help but wonder how many folks who are scraping by on $30,000 or $40,000 per year (or less) are going to reach for their checkbooks to subsidize a former Professional Athlete’s financial needs.
I also would be curious how many current NFL players or team owners are kicking down—At least they can afford it without too much sacrifice.
Anyone else a little bit :rolleyes: when they see these appeals for $$$?
Not really. Players from before 1980 have been truly screwed by the NFL. The salary explosion in the NFL occurred after the strikes (1982 and 1987). Any player after 1993 apparently is decently covered.
Before that time, players are discovering physical problems popping up with age. NFL players appear to be more susceptible to diseases like Alzheimer’s. The older players have no health care from the league, and many are still too young for Medicare.
Your estimates of 10 to 20 times the average salary are wrong however. I pulled up 1970 statistics for an example. 1970 appears to be the year the minimum salary was instituted, at $9000 for rookies and $10,000 for veterans. The average 1970 NFL salary was $23,000. Compare this to a national median income for men of about $6670. Since the mean tends to skew upward in income discussions, this spread actually overstates the difference. Regardless, the difference wasn’t nearly as large as you seem to think.
I agree that you’re right that the league should chip in, and in fact, the Alumni Association was trying to get into the new CBA. I haven’t seen anything about whether they were in fact included.
Bill Watts said he had to have a regular job in the off season to make a decent living. That’s why he turned to pro wrestling. Ernie Ladd and Wahoo McDaniel also left pro football for wrestling, because the money was much much better. These are guys that played in the 60s. I can believe the ones that didn’t make a bunch of money doing something else are hurting now…especially guys with medical issues.
Up until the 1980s, it was pretty common for pro football players to have off-season jobs (insurance sales was a common job). They didn’t work those other jobs because they were bored – they worked them because they needed the money, even then. BTW, that’s also why training camp was so long in those days, and they played 6 preseason games – that much time was needed to get players back into shape, after 6 or 7 months off. “Offseason programs” didn’t exist back then.
As President Johnny Gentle notes, while the average NFL salary 40 years ago was several times that of the average American worker, the stars’ salaries undoubtedly drove that average up.
The issue for many of these former players is that they now have serious medical issues, resulting from playing football, and thus big medical bills. The skimpy pensions and medical coverage which the league and the union provide them doesn’t begin to cover their financial needs. For example, Leroy Kelly (a former running back for the Browns in the 1960s and 1970s, and a Hall of Famer) gets a pension of $176 a month.
The league and the union really do need to do more to help this situation. ISTM that the union talks a good game about this being important, but because the voting members of the union are current players, not former players, it never seems to get very high up on the list of priorities.
Well, first, I am not too much of an NFL person (or professional sports in general) so I want to admit to some bias right off the bat, and I also want to be clear that I just pulled the figure of 10 or 20 times the average income right out of my rear end, and I even figured that I was actually being conservative in my estimation, forgetting that the era of mega-million dollar contracts didn’t start until fairly recently…
That said, it still seems unseemly to me on some level, as I guess that there are millions of other Americans in serious need of financial assistance, people who never had the advantages of even the most modest-earning pro athlete.
Of course, as I said in my OP, people are free to contribute to any cause that they find compelling, but I would hope that the NFL would try to look after it’s own before hitting up the fans who can’t even afford a souvenir jersey or a few nosebleed tickets to an actual NFL game with their kids.
So, I’m looking around on NFLAlumni.org. While there’s a lot of information on the financial and medical needs of former players (and lobbying efforts directed towards both the NFL and the NFLPA to increase benefits), I’m not seeing anything which is asking for donations from the general public. I do see that people who don’t have a formal connection to the NFL can join the organization as “associates” for $100, but I certainly don’t see any requests for donations. MPB in Salt Lake, is there a specific page on that site which is doing so?