Grudge Match: Injured Players Battle NFL in Senate

Sept. 18, 2007 — -- Whether Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, politicians in the nation's capital love to hear their names mentioned on ESPN and see their photos on their hometown sports pages. When they talk about sports, they're able to remind their constituents of their importance. They're able to look like regular guys or gals. And sports talk is a lot easier than making sense of health care reform or the national debt.

It's no surprise, then, that the politicians on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will spend a couple of hours on Tuesday posturing and declaiming on the plight of retired NFL players, and what the league and the players union are doing for them.

With testimony expected from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, union leader Gene Upshaw, and Hall of Famers Mike Ditka and Gale Sayers, the hearing room will be filled with accusations and explanations.

Ditka and other ex-players claim that NFL owners and the players union have failed to provide properly for aging athletes who face debilitating injuries. The league and the union reply that they have established the most generous disability system anywhere, and that it is improving every year.

Goodell and Upshaw will tell the senators that the NFL pension/disability fund has grown from $88 million in 1982 to $1.1 billion today. They will show that the 1,800 players in the NFL this season will contribute an average of $82,000 each to health, pension and disability benefits for former players, a total of $147.5 million. And they will focus on their assertion that many former players are collecting disabilities and pensions in annual amounts that are more than they made as players.

The debate will be fierce. Despite the impressive numbers presented by the league and the union, many old players feel wronged and aren't hesitant to say so. They're quick to use words like "fraud" and "crime" and "corruption." At a hearing in June before a House subcommittee, former Vikings player Brent Boyd, who suffered a series of concussions, compared the NFL to the tobacco industry, saying, "They lie about the NFL and concussions the same way the tobacco companies lied about tobacco and cancer."