VICE series on NFL players post-career medical benefits or lack thereof

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Rigamarole

Err… aren’t they rich? How is finding medical care a problem for rich people? (and why should anyone give a shit about some rich person’s “plight”?) And if they end up not being rich for some reason, like they were a bad player and/or played only for a short amount of time and/or squandered their riches… can’t they get a regular job with health insurance like anyone else?

If you’d read the articles, you’d know that no, not everyone has those options and no, most former NFL players are far from “rich”.

[Rigamarole]

I can’t feel sorry for anyone who made at least a few million dollars and squandered it, and even if they somehow made less than that it still falls under option B: can’t they get a job? There are plenty of people struggling with health issues and medical expenses in this country that never had the luxury of getting tons of money to play with a ball.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Rigamarole

I can’t feel sorry for anyone who made at least a few million dollars and squandered it, and even if they somehow made less than that it still falls under option B: can’t they get a job? There are plenty of people struggling with health issues and medical expenses in this country that never had the luxury of getting tons of money to play with a ball.

If you haven’t read the articles, you really have nothing to contribute here, do you?

[Rigamarole]

@Snowboarder_Bo

If you haven’t read the articles, you really have nothing to contribute here, do you?

If you can’t put forth even a basic counter-argument without simply saying “refer to outside source”, then neither do you.

[Apocalypso]

@Rigamarole

If you can’t put forth even a basic counter-argument without simply saying “refer to outside source”, then neither do you.

Bo posted a link to an article along with some comments of his own, and invited us to comment on it. Your post ignored everything in the article and the comments and discussions following it. It’s like you just saw the thread title and replied without reading any of the thread.

I am not an NFL insider or anything, however:
There’s only a handful of positions in the NFL where they make the truly staggering amounts of money. A lot of guys in the trenches getting pounded every game, are not the ones pulling in 10m+ every year. Sure they still make a lot of money compared to other dangerous professions, say, a steel worker or a miner.
But the NFL is a multi billion dollar industry, and not only has it had a chance to make post-NFL life better for its employees and failed, it has also fought and denied and obfuscated doing anything except the bare minimum of care. It has for decades refused to even acknowledge the effects of concussions and head injuries, all the while lining its own pockets with gold dust from the results of its players battering the shit out of each other. Yes, there are a handful of players that can be called “rich” and seem to spend their money on frivolous luxury items. That doesn’t change the fact that there are many former NFL players with severe brain injuries that their employers lied about, minimized, and flat out refused to do anything about. And now they can’t work, can’t remember things, and sometimes need help dressing or feeding themselves. No, it’s not the only tragedy in the world, and the NFL is not the first company to screw over its employees. But it’s still a damn shame to hear of NFL stars whose names will long be remembered writing down everything they do in notebooks because they have no short term memory. And all the while Roger Godell and the owners (who take zero risk of catastrophic brain injuries) have private jets and mansions.

In any other dangerous industry nowdays, the companies are forced to have safety standards and work to make their employees safer. I’m positive you can find examples of the steel industry resisting safety standards (I come from a family of steelworkers, though I’m not one), but these guys formed a union and fought for their rights and their safety. Even Wal-mart would, if there were repeated injuries because of some process they followed, change that process to make their employees safer. It’s a shame Rigamole bemoans the standards of worker care and safety in the logging industry but isn’t willing to stand up for them, and is in fact apathetic to safety standards in other industries (like the NFL). It’s possible to be outraged and concerned by the NFL’s concussion bullshit while still supporting other dangerous profession employees. Employee safety is something that should be automatic in every industry, whether you’re cutting down trees, moving merchandise, or crashing into 300lb men at full speed.

[Hamlet]

@Apocalypso

I am not an NFL insider or anything, however:
There’s only a handful of positions in the NFL where they make the truly staggering amounts of money. A lot of guys in the trenches getting pounded every game, are not the ones pulling in 10m+ every year. Sure they still make a lot of money compared to other dangerous professions, say, a steel worker or a miner.
But the NFL is a multi billion dollar industry,

Unlike coal mining, which contributed 225.1 billion to the GDP. Or the $627 billion private construction makes.

@Apocalypso

In any other dangerous industry nowdays, the companies are forced to have safety standards and work to make their employees safer.

I don’t think the NFL has a special exemption from those same laws. Maybe you could point out if they do.

[Apocalypso]

@Hamlet

Unlike coal mining, which contributed 225.1 billion to the GDP. Or the $627 billion private construction makes.

I don’t think the NFL has a special exemption from those same laws. Maybe you could point out if they do.

Er, I am not trying to say that the NFL should follow different standards as other employers. In fact I believe the opposite. I’m trying to provide a counterpoint to the people saying “NFL players make millions and can provide their own health care”. Because it’s not the cost of post-NFL care (although that’s a big part of it). It’s also the denials and minimizing the long-term effects of head injuries, and the poor standards of care for aging players. The NFL makes enough money that they could easily provide much better care for ex-players. So could the coal or construction industries. Everyone who works in jobs that have a potential for injuries should have proper care, and the fact that some have it better or worse than others doesn’t change that we still need to go a long way in taking care of employees on the whole.

@Apocalypso

Employee safety is something that should be automatic in every industry, whether you’re cutting down trees, moving merchandise, or crashing into 300lb men at full speed.

[Hamlet]

@Apocalypso

Er, I am not trying to say that the NFL should follow different standards as other employers. In fact I believe the opposite. I’m trying to provide a counterpoint to the people saying “NFL players make millions and can provide their own health care”. Because it’s not the cost of post-NFL care (although that’s a big part of it). It’s also the denials and minimizing the long-term effects of head injuries, and the poor standards of care for aging players. The NFL makes enough money that they could easily provide much better care for ex-players. So could the coal or construction industries. Everyone who works in jobs that have a potential for injuries should have proper care, and the fact that some have it better or worse than others doesn’t change that we still need to go a long way in taking care of employees on the whole.

Yes. The income disparity between CEO’s and workers, the lack of health care and pensions for ex-employees, and sad stories about injured workers suffering from job related injuries are all problems in the US. The NFL is no exception, nor does it really claim to be. It’s run like a vast majority of other businesses in the US.

But when you consider Kyle Turley made like $25 million dollars and is getting $120,000 a year in payments, it’s really hard to garner as much sympathy for him. That’s not to say there aren’t horrible stories of even older players, but it’s also not going to move a lot of people to action.

[Chimera]

I hate to politicize this, but you just know the Libertarian and Tea Party Republicans will go nuts over the idea of regulating safety in football.

[Jim_s_Son]

People are expecting compassion and caring in a league where the commissioner is the son of a left wing loony tunes senator and the owner of the Colts a few years ago spoke out against the idea of Rush Limbaugh owning an NFL team?

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Part 3 was posted today: “DON’T MAKE PROUD MEN BEG”.

The subject is pensions, and the incredible disparity between pre-1993 players and players today, and also the disparity in the rate of growth of NFL income and the lack of growth of NFL players’ pensions.

As he moves towards his seventh decade, the Pro Football Hall of Famer should be thinking about retirement and spending more time with his family. Only that’s not possible on his NFL pension, which pays DeLamielleure $1,257.96 a month after taxes—or just over $15,000 a year, an amount that’s just below the federal poverty level of $15,930 for a family of two.

When it comes to struggling with inadequate benefits and a poverty-level pension, DeLamielleure isn’t alone among NFL retirees. According to data provided by the league, 3,641 former players receive an average monthly pension payment of $1,656. About 90 percent of those retirees also receive money from the Legacy Benefit fund, with an average monthly payment of $723.85. Add those amounts together, and that’s roughly $28,550 a year, a not insignificant amount that’s still far less generous than Major League Baseball’s pension plan.

After only 43 days in the bigs, MLB players are eligible for $34,000-a-year pensions. Players are awarded $100,000 a year after a decade in the Majors. Pre-93 NFL players would require 11 seasons—the average NFL career only lasts 3.3 years—to earn even the MLB’s 43-day pension level. And to earn $100,000 a year, those same pre-93ers would have had to play in the NFL for more than 30 years.

To put things another way: in 2011, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell received a $4.1 million boost to his pension. DeLamielleure would have to collect his NFL pension for 144 years to earn that much.

Given the league’s subsequent growth, it’s surprising they’ve stayed that way. Taxi squad players now earn a minimum of $6,300 per week, and sometimes upwards of $17,000 a week. No one needs to work for Uber. Last year, the average NFL ticket price was $84.43, and the league’s current television contracts total more than $27 billion. Overall, the NFL has become a $10 billion-a-year industry, one that Goodell hopes to expand to $25 billion a year by 2027.

And yet: retiree benefits haven’t kept pace. At least not for DeLamielleure and company, who were born at the wrong time. In 1993, the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement drastically altered the league’s financial landscape, adding free agency in exchange for a player salary cap. Benefits and pensions were boosted significantly for future retirees, but not for existing ones. A former player who played in the 1998 season was now eligible for $470 a month in pension payments; but a player credited for the 1992 season was still receiving just $225.

Over time, the NFL and its older retirees have experienced a profound financial decoupling. The league’s revenues and popularity have skyrocketed past other sports; meanwhile, pre-93ers have seen relatively paltry pension bumps, sometimes as little as $60 at a time. When DeLamielleure took his pension at 45, he received a little over $900 a month. Twenty years later, it’s up by about $300. That’s a 35 percent increase—which means that, without the Legacy benefit, DeLamielleure would actually be losing money, given that inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index has gone up 42 percent over the same time frame.

I’m not sure why this disparity comes into play, except that the NFLPA is for current players; they have much less of a vested interest in helping former players. Unions are a difficult thing to be a part of; like any democratic organization they take active participation and often times, as long as things are going well for most current members, they won’t take the time to get involved or think long-term. After all, if things are great now, why wouldn’t they be great in the future? :rolleyes:

“The bottom line is, I don’t work for [retired NFL football players]. They don’t hire me and they can’t fire me. They can complain about me all day long. They can have their opinion. But the active players have the vote. That’s who pays my salary.”

The preceding quote does not come from Goodell, and was not captured via surreptitious audio recording. It comes from former NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw—union head from 1983 until his death in 2008—and was given to the Charlotte Observer, only to be stated again and confirmed to the New York Times a few weeks later.

I think that a big part of the problem is that retirees have no say in union business, yet they continue to rely on the union for their income, benefits, insurance, etc. Imagine if once you started collecting Social Security, you could not vote or run for office; that’s what being a retired union member is like in the US.

[Mike Ditka had this to say before the US Congress during hearings on the NFL in 2007*:

@Mike Ditka

The system is broke; fix it. They know what’s broke; they know how to fix it. We’re not talking about the money; everyone knows the money’s there. Fix the system. Don’t make proud men beg. Don’t make 'em jump through hoops. They have dignity. Let people live out their lives with some respect.

](NFL Congressional Hearing 2007 - YouTube)Little has changed since that testimony 8 years ago, except that the League owners get much richer much faster.
*YouTube seems to have trouble starting at the correct point; Mr. Ditka is introduced at about 1:37:40

[Snowboarder_Bo]

[Related AP story on NFL player’s and medical conditions incurred from playing football:

Researchers studying a degenerative disease in former athletes say 11 of 12 brains of deceased former NFL players tested over the past year showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, continuing a trend they’ve been tracking.

A story posted on PBS.org on Friday reported that a total of 87 of the 91 brains of former NFL players examined in recent years by researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have had CTE.

](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FBN_NFL_BRAIN_DISEASE_RESEARCH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-09-18-23-22-45)

ETA: [Here’s the PBS story: 76 of 79 Deceased NFL Players Found to Have Brain Disease

Researchers there have now examined the brain tissue of 128 football players who, before their deaths, played the game professionally, semi-professionally, in college or in high school. Of that sample, 101 players, or just under 80 percent, tested positive for CTE.

](76 of 79 Deceased NFL Players Found to Have Brain Disease | FRONTLINE).