Bretsky
02-10-2007, 11:56 AM
SHAME ON NFL OWNERS/ PLAYERS UNION by BUD LEA
They must have been referring to another Willie Wood during Super Bowl week in Miami, surely not the Hall of Fame safety who helped turn the Green Bay Packers around.
No, they couldn't have meant the man who wasn't drafted coming out of USC in 1960 and wrote several NFL teams requesting a chance for a tryout. Vince Lombardi liked something because the 165-pound free agent made the team and was paid $6,500 his rookie year.
They must have got it wrong. This couldn't be the same Willie Wood, whom Lombardi called "pound for pound, the best tackler on the team." He never missed a game during his 12 years at Green Bay and was named to the Pro Bowl eight times.
It just couldn't be - but it was.
The Willie Woods of this world are supposed to follow football's unwritten code and walk away from the game and into retirement quietly with a small pension, hiding any bitterness and coping with the daily pain that is a constant reminder of the price one pays to play this game.
80719Packers/NFL
In his 12 seasons with the Green Bay Packers, Hall of Fame safety Willie Wood was named to the Pro Bowl eight times. Now 70, Wood has fallen on hard times.
And Wood, now 70, might have done just that had it not been for surgeries on his back, hips and knees that have left him virtually incapacitated, forcing him to reside in an assisted care facility in Washington, D.C. without the ability to pay for it.
One of the big issues at the Super Bowl last week was the help - or lack thereof - afforded the men who played the game at a time when the disabled list was the unemployment line, when aspirin was used to treat concussions, and when they did all this for a few thousand bucks a year.
Bill Forester was a Pro Bowl linebacker during his 11-year career with the Packers (1953-'63). His energy, enthusiasm and durability always amazed his coaches.
Today, Forester, 74, is struggling to stay alive. Former teammates say he is suffering from Alzheimer's, dementia and pneumonia and needs a feeding tube to survive. He can't get any money from the Players Association to help him.
Conrad Dobler retired in 1981 from the then St. Louis Cardinals and has undergone 11 football-related surgeries since then. In 1994 he tried to use funds from his NFL disability insurance by applying to the NFL retirement plan. What followed was a tangled, frustrating roadblock of bureaucratic madness.
He ingests 150 Vicodin a month to numb the pain in his knees. In an interview with HBO's "Real Sports," Dobler said that he has considered suicide.
Mike Webster will be remembered as a great center from the University of Wisconsin whose sturdiness personified the Pittsburgh Steelers' championship team. He refused to leave the lineup even for serious injuries.
However, that tough-guy insistence led to brain injuries that sent him spiraling into drug use. Bothered by debt, depression and bad health, he separated from his wife before his Hall of Fame enshrinement in 1997, became homeless and lived in his pickup truck. He died in 2002 at 50.
This is a side of the NFL that nobody likes to talk about, but which everyone who has ever played the game knows is a reality. It long has been an embarrassment for the league when players end up mentally and physically broken from the brutal demands of the game and then left with little or no financial support from the league after they retire.
It's stories such as these that prompted Jerry Kramer, Mike Ditka, Joe DeLamielleure and Lem Barney to take some action. So they went to Miami and set up a press conference at the Super Bowl media center.
They announced the start of the Gridiron Greats Assistant Fund to raise money for former players who have fallen on hard times.
"We can't wait anymore for the NFL to help," Kramer said. "I don't know when that will happen, so we have to do something now."
It is hard to believe it has come to this. The NFL owners and the players union should be ashamed.
Today's players will end up with a decent pension and with so much earnings in their career that only a nutcase will be able to mess it up. The old guys, though, get hammered both ways: They didn't have the earnings when they played and their pension is a pittance.
Herb Adderley, a Hall of Fame cornerback with Lombardi's Packers, earned a pension of $126.85 per month until union chief Gene Upshaw increased his benefits this year by 25%. Now Adderley will get $150.
For a league that receives $3.1 billion a year for its television rights alone, it is an incredibly chintzy way to do business. Of the 9,000 retired NFL players, according to Newsday, only 144 receive disability benefits and the league has never lost a lawsuit brought by a former player seeking help.
There is no sports league as flush as the NFL. There's plenty of money to go around. Are these owners and players so cheap that they believe helping out disabled players will blow a hole in the most profitable sports business the world has ever seen?
According to columnist Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star who attended the NFL Players' Association press conference last Thursday in Miami, Upshaw "stood in front of the assembled Super Bowl media and threw out vague figures and hazy accomplishments and lame excuses about why there's no money for these players who made the league great. He went cold when a reporter asked him the only question that mattered: How could the NFL let so many players who built the league suffer now that the league is printing money?"
Upshaw responded, "you never hear about the guys we help."
The pension and disability issues facing the league are confusing and not easily solved. Upshaw said it would take $800 million annually to elevate the former players' pensions to the active players' level.
But Ditka isn't asking for that kind of contribution. In fact, he sent a letter to the 32 NFL team owners, asking them for a $100,000 donation from each. He said he got one check for $10,000, and one for $5,000. Ditka sent the checks back.
Kramer's effort to help former players began 25 years ago when he lost his Super Bowl I championship ring on a flight. He did not see the ring until 1993, when somebody told him it was being auctioned on a Web site.
Kramer contacted the company, and it returned the ring and later agreed to auction off a replica that had been made for him. It raised $21,000, and Kramer donated the money to a fund for former NFL players in trouble.
From that start came the idea for the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund. An auction of memorabilia and solicitation of donations at JerryKramer.com will hopefully raise $500,00 for the cause," Kramer said.
Former NFL players are raiding their treasure troves and using their big-league connections to solicit one-of-a-kind donations for the auction that will run through Feb. 13. Auction items include Ditka's 1975 NFC championship ring that he earned while playing for the Cowboys, Lem Barney's 1967 Pro Bowl helmet, a football with Dwight Clark's autograph and a diagram of his famous "The Catch" play in the 1982 NFC championship game. Vince Lombardi's son has donated a hand-drawn play from the Packers' celebrated coach.
Here's hoping the NFL owners and players' association will do more to address a serious problem. Shame on them if they don't.
They must have been referring to another Willie Wood during Super Bowl week in Miami, surely not the Hall of Fame safety who helped turn the Green Bay Packers around.
No, they couldn't have meant the man who wasn't drafted coming out of USC in 1960 and wrote several NFL teams requesting a chance for a tryout. Vince Lombardi liked something because the 165-pound free agent made the team and was paid $6,500 his rookie year.
They must have got it wrong. This couldn't be the same Willie Wood, whom Lombardi called "pound for pound, the best tackler on the team." He never missed a game during his 12 years at Green Bay and was named to the Pro Bowl eight times.
It just couldn't be - but it was.
The Willie Woods of this world are supposed to follow football's unwritten code and walk away from the game and into retirement quietly with a small pension, hiding any bitterness and coping with the daily pain that is a constant reminder of the price one pays to play this game.
80719Packers/NFL
In his 12 seasons with the Green Bay Packers, Hall of Fame safety Willie Wood was named to the Pro Bowl eight times. Now 70, Wood has fallen on hard times.
And Wood, now 70, might have done just that had it not been for surgeries on his back, hips and knees that have left him virtually incapacitated, forcing him to reside in an assisted care facility in Washington, D.C. without the ability to pay for it.
One of the big issues at the Super Bowl last week was the help - or lack thereof - afforded the men who played the game at a time when the disabled list was the unemployment line, when aspirin was used to treat concussions, and when they did all this for a few thousand bucks a year.
Bill Forester was a Pro Bowl linebacker during his 11-year career with the Packers (1953-'63). His energy, enthusiasm and durability always amazed his coaches.
Today, Forester, 74, is struggling to stay alive. Former teammates say he is suffering from Alzheimer's, dementia and pneumonia and needs a feeding tube to survive. He can't get any money from the Players Association to help him.
Conrad Dobler retired in 1981 from the then St. Louis Cardinals and has undergone 11 football-related surgeries since then. In 1994 he tried to use funds from his NFL disability insurance by applying to the NFL retirement plan. What followed was a tangled, frustrating roadblock of bureaucratic madness.
He ingests 150 Vicodin a month to numb the pain in his knees. In an interview with HBO's "Real Sports," Dobler said that he has considered suicide.
Mike Webster will be remembered as a great center from the University of Wisconsin whose sturdiness personified the Pittsburgh Steelers' championship team. He refused to leave the lineup even for serious injuries.
However, that tough-guy insistence led to brain injuries that sent him spiraling into drug use. Bothered by debt, depression and bad health, he separated from his wife before his Hall of Fame enshrinement in 1997, became homeless and lived in his pickup truck. He died in 2002 at 50.
This is a side of the NFL that nobody likes to talk about, but which everyone who has ever played the game knows is a reality. It long has been an embarrassment for the league when players end up mentally and physically broken from the brutal demands of the game and then left with little or no financial support from the league after they retire.
It's stories such as these that prompted Jerry Kramer, Mike Ditka, Joe DeLamielleure and Lem Barney to take some action. So they went to Miami and set up a press conference at the Super Bowl media center.
They announced the start of the Gridiron Greats Assistant Fund to raise money for former players who have fallen on hard times.
"We can't wait anymore for the NFL to help," Kramer said. "I don't know when that will happen, so we have to do something now."
It is hard to believe it has come to this. The NFL owners and the players union should be ashamed.
Today's players will end up with a decent pension and with so much earnings in their career that only a nutcase will be able to mess it up. The old guys, though, get hammered both ways: They didn't have the earnings when they played and their pension is a pittance.
Herb Adderley, a Hall of Fame cornerback with Lombardi's Packers, earned a pension of $126.85 per month until union chief Gene Upshaw increased his benefits this year by 25%. Now Adderley will get $150.
For a league that receives $3.1 billion a year for its television rights alone, it is an incredibly chintzy way to do business. Of the 9,000 retired NFL players, according to Newsday, only 144 receive disability benefits and the league has never lost a lawsuit brought by a former player seeking help.
There is no sports league as flush as the NFL. There's plenty of money to go around. Are these owners and players so cheap that they believe helping out disabled players will blow a hole in the most profitable sports business the world has ever seen?
According to columnist Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star who attended the NFL Players' Association press conference last Thursday in Miami, Upshaw "stood in front of the assembled Super Bowl media and threw out vague figures and hazy accomplishments and lame excuses about why there's no money for these players who made the league great. He went cold when a reporter asked him the only question that mattered: How could the NFL let so many players who built the league suffer now that the league is printing money?"
Upshaw responded, "you never hear about the guys we help."
The pension and disability issues facing the league are confusing and not easily solved. Upshaw said it would take $800 million annually to elevate the former players' pensions to the active players' level.
But Ditka isn't asking for that kind of contribution. In fact, he sent a letter to the 32 NFL team owners, asking them for a $100,000 donation from each. He said he got one check for $10,000, and one for $5,000. Ditka sent the checks back.
Kramer's effort to help former players began 25 years ago when he lost his Super Bowl I championship ring on a flight. He did not see the ring until 1993, when somebody told him it was being auctioned on a Web site.
Kramer contacted the company, and it returned the ring and later agreed to auction off a replica that had been made for him. It raised $21,000, and Kramer donated the money to a fund for former NFL players in trouble.
From that start came the idea for the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund. An auction of memorabilia and solicitation of donations at JerryKramer.com will hopefully raise $500,00 for the cause," Kramer said.
Former NFL players are raiding their treasure troves and using their big-league connections to solicit one-of-a-kind donations for the auction that will run through Feb. 13. Auction items include Ditka's 1975 NFC championship ring that he earned while playing for the Cowboys, Lem Barney's 1967 Pro Bowl helmet, a football with Dwight Clark's autograph and a diagram of his famous "The Catch" play in the 1982 NFC championship game. Vince Lombardi's son has donated a hand-drawn play from the Packers' celebrated coach.
Here's hoping the NFL owners and players' association will do more to address a serious problem. Shame on them if they don't.