Now, THIS is a powerful message (Wallace Matthews Column today)

[Blog Is My Co-Pilot]

http://www.newsday.com/sports/columnists/ny-spwally315074337jan31,0,2120315.column?coll=ny-sports-columnists

This week is the NFL equivalent of Mardi Gras, a week of happy horsecrap about the League That Can Do No Wrong.

But a handful of former players, Hall of Famers all, are not swallowing the Kool-Aid the rest of the country seems to be drunk on. While most of the NFL media is being distracted by the temptations of Super Bowl Week, Jerry Kramer, Harry Carson and Mike Ditka, to name a few, will be speaking truth in a hotel conference room a few hours before Upshaw gets his chance to lie about how great everything is.

They have long known that The Shield, as the players refer to it, is a league that eats its young, and the NFLPA is a union that discards its old. And tomorrow, they want the rest of the world to know it.

As Kramer said, "It will not be a pleasant task. But then, it's not pleasant to talk to Bill Forester [a Pro Bowl linebacker on Kramer's Green Bay Packers teams of the mid-60s] and hear that he's suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia and pneumonia, that he needs a feeding tube to survive, and that he can't get any money from the Players Association to help him."

Nor is it pleasant to consider the case of Willie Wood, a Hall of Famer now destitute, living in a nursing home and needing to rely on a trust fund for retired players set up by Ditka, of all people, in order to survive; or to think about a former New England Patriot, whose name is being withheld to preserve his privacy, living on the street, nor to consider the future of Carson, now 53 and suffering from post-concussion syndrome, the result of at least 15 game and practice-related concussions. Will he be the next John Mackey or Andre Waters?

This is the stuff the NFL never wants to talk about, but especially not now, when everyone is paying attention to what is universally regarded as the world's most lucrative and best-run sports league.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

One of the most underreported ongoing meaningful stories in American sports.

 

[henryhenry]

old stuff. the times did an andre waters piece last week. peter keating did it for espn mag two months ago.

matthews is a good columnist.


nfl concussions affect about .0000000000001 of the population.

canzano wrote about something that affects tens of millions of working-poor americans.

co-pilot, you've got your 'sports tunnel-vision' glasses on.

 

[write then drink]

nfl concussions affect about .0000000000001 of the population.

do you honestly believe this is a story that only affects NFL players?

 

[henryhenry]

okay, it affects nfl brass. agents maybe. writers who cover it.

nfl concussions is not a huge social issue.

you obviously believe otherwise.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

nfl concussions is not a huge social issue.

It's not in the grand scheme of things.

But in the world of the NFL, and that's what we're talking about here, it should be a huge issue.

 

[Franklin]

nfl concussions affect about .0000000000001 of the population.

perhaps it affects such a small percentange of the population because such a small percentage of the population plays in the nfl. among players, i'd say the incidence is far more significant. it's a legitimate issue.

 

[Ike Broflovski]

This appears as if it has become the Official Super Bowl XLI Pregame Topic, for those intrepid journalists who want to cover the Super Bowl "differently." I think there should be a rule for those assigned to the Super Bowl: one story for every two nights there.

That would cut the "horsecrap," as Mr. Matthews so eloquently puts it. (Wait. If it's horsecrap, why is he even covering it?)

I read an approximately one-million-word piece by Melissa Isaacson on this topic Sunday in the Chicago Tribune, as it related to the '85 Bears. Don't misunderstand me: the story was interesting (though too long), but it wasn't something I hadn't read before -- like, say, last week with the Andre Waters story.

I don't think the players are going to get a lot of sympathy. They know they sold their souls, and it's an occupational hazard. Maybe someone should do a story about that. Ms. Isaacson told of how the '85 Bears used to laugh at Ed O'Bradovich, who couldn't turn his head.

It's the same thing with the faux-outrage Tank Johnson columns. File it, then head to Joe's Stone Crab.

 

[JHaugJr]

The issue here is not concussions. The issue is whether a labor union is serving the interests of retirees by providing or advocating for sufficient long term health care benefits.

 

[goalmouth]

The other point here is that former players are banding together to call attention to the problem. The league will be forced to address it.

 

[leo1]

The other point here is that former players are banding together to call attention to the problem. The league will be forced to address it.

exactly. it's a crying shame that there's no solid pension fund. the media should cover it. people should read, watch and listen to the stories. then the league, owners, player association and sponsors should do something about it.

 

[Blog Is My Co-Pilot]

The issue here is not concussions. The issue is whether a labor union is serving the interests of retirees by providing or advocating for sufficient long term health care benefits.

Ding, ding, ding.

And to whoever said, "They sold their souls". . .

It's a comment so obvioulsy ill-informed that it probably doesn't need to be addressed. But for your benefit:

1) They didn't sell their souls. They sold their bodies.

2) The guys in question sold their bodies for not much more than a Steel worker today sells his body for.

The issue at hand: If it weren't for these guys, the players today wouldn't be able to, in Gene Upshaw's heartfelt words, "pay my salary." The league wouldn't be rolling in money. Guys like Kramer and Forester played before today's safer equipment, before today's modern medical staffs, and, most importantly, before today's salaries.

But rather than help them pay the price, the NFL is looking the other way.

Like Bob Ryan said, the sausage tastes better than ever, but nobody wants to see how it was made.