King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Congress gets an earful about the NFL's shabby treatment of disabled ex-players. Plus: A new college rating system in time for the NBA draft.
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June 27, 2007 | When four former NFL players testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee this week about the league's disgraceful treatment of retired and disabled veterans of the game, they sounded an awful lot like the elderly NBA retirees who fought for decades for a decent pension before finally winning that fight this year.
After a lot of them had died, that is, which many among the group believed had been the NBA's long-term plan for dealing with the issue: waiting until the issue ceased to exist.
Former Minnesota Vikings lineman Brent Boyd called the NFL's retirement and disability policy "delay, deny and hope I put a bullet in my head," the Chicago Tribune reports.
Boyd, 50, hasn't worked since 1999, having been diagnosed with clinical depression. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Boyd says he suffers from constant headaches, dizziness and depression as a result of concussions sustained in his playing career, which ended in 1986.
His claim for full disability payments was denied in 2002 by the six-member panel of league and NFL Players Association officials that decides on benefit claims.
"The NFL was hoping I'd go away and die," he told Congress.
The subcommittee heard from Boyd, Hall of Famer Mike Ditka, former Oakland Raider Curt Marsh and former New York Giant Harry Carson, as well as a representative of the late Mike Webster, the former Pittsburgh Steelers lineman who was denied benefits before his death in 2002 despite an NFL-approved doctor saying he was disabled because of head injuries suffered while playing in the league.
It heard tales of massive red tape and a system designed to deny benefits to players whose bodies are wrecked while in the employ of NFL teams.
"If you make people fill out enough forms, if you discourage them enough, make them jump through enough hoops, they're going to say, 'I don't need this,'" Ditka said. "This is ridiculous. They're frustrated."
"Why can't this be taken care of?" he asked.
Why indeed. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., seemed flabbergasted to hear from NFL Players Association lawyer Douglas Ell that 317 out of roughly 8,000 retired NFL players receive disability payments. Waters, who is married to a former NFL player, asked Ell to repeat the figure.
"In one of the most dangerous sports in the history of mankind, only 300 players are receiving disability payments?" she said.
It was union chief Gene Upshaw's statement last year that the union doesn't represent retired players that gave juice to the vets' efforts to publicize their situation, with Ditka their most prominent spokesman. Conspicuously and conveniently absent from the hearings because they reportedly had other commitments: Upshaw and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.