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Image-minded league can't put positive spin on retirees' deal

by Paul Daugherty
Cincinnati Inquirer
Thursday, June 28, 2007

The NFL is the master league at spin. Not only does it put out public relations fires before they roar, it anticipates the flames before they spark. Is it any wonder commissioner Roger Goodell stressed proper conduct at a rookie symposium this week?

No pro league is more aware of its image and how it relates to the bottom line. The NFL never loses a PR war.

Until now. The league and its players association are being whipped so decisively in an image contest, their only option is unconditional surrender.

The NFL people arrive at a hearing Tuesday before a House Judiciary subcommittee. The subject is the league's treatment of its former players. They bring their charts, their numbers and their lawyers in dark suits. Look at all this money we have for these old guys!

The old guys bring themselves. They limp, they walk with crutches. They excuse themselves in advance for any lapses during testimony. Their brains, they explain, are scrambled from playing professional football.

Whom are you going to believe?

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) asks NFL Players Association counsel Douglas Ell how many retired players are currently receiving disability payments.

"Three hundred seventeen," he answers.

How many are eligible?, Waters asks.

Roughly 8,000, Ell answers.

Whom are you going to believe?

One former NFL gladiator, a lineman named Curt Marsh, told the subcommittee he has had 31 surgeries, including 14 on a leg that eventually was amputated.

Another guy is still so popular, 22 years after he coached in a Super Bowl and at least 30 years after he played, he signs autographs when he's done trashing the league and its players association. Mike Ditka never was short with his opinions.

The NFL can't win this one. If it says pensions and disability coverage had to be agreed to by the players in every new collective bargaining agreement, it looks petty and small. If it says the pension for some players now exceeds what they earned while playing, it looks cheap. It can't say that the current rank and file should pay more attention to the deals it signs.

That'd be true. It also would be skirting the issue. Which, today, looks a lot like Brian DeMarco, a former lineman. He walks with a cane. In some sort of contorted exercise in modern medical science, his spine has been fused to his hip. He has no health insurance because the deal the players cut with the league says the coverage expires three years after you retire. He can't work. Medical bills wiped him out. He told The Enquirer and other media outlets that he has been homeless three times in the last four years.

The NFL says it's taking better financial care of its old players than ever before. It says this at a hearing without its two best spokesmen. NFLPA chief Gene Upshaw was out of the country; Goodell was with the rookies. Wasn't the hearing important?

Of course players should study the deals they approve. Of course they make lots of money - now. What company these days pays fully for the health care of its retirees? How many companies still have pension plans?

What you choose to do to your knees - and hips and shoulders and brain - in the performance of your job is your business. Which would be true, in most jobs. Football isn't one of those.

Nobody who helped make billions for his company should be without a home because he can't get help from his company.

Former Bengal Bob Trumpy says the players association has ripped off its rank and file. He says Upshaw is too cozy with the league.

"Upshaw has claimed labor peace, but he has done it at the expense of the retired players," Trumpy said. He believes the players association has a moral obligation to the players who made today's wealth possible, but he doesn't know how to make things right.

"Ownership knows that if they get involved in paying the medical bills of ex-players, they'll go broke," he said. "I can't think of some magic bullet to fix this."

Conrad Dobler has a suggestion. For a few years, Dobler, a former NFL offensive lineman, has been the poster man for a system gone wrong. He has so much plastic in his knees, he could open a G.I. Joe factory. Between him and his four former linemates, Dobler said to me, "We don't have enough body parts to make a whole person."

Dobler suggests putting 2 percent of the salary cap into a retirement fund. I'm not an accountant; I wouldn't know how that might work. I'm not a rich, egocentric current player, either, so I don't know if they'd go for it.

But it's a start. Meantime, let's do something for Brian DeMarco, shall we? The way it is now, it just doesn't look good.