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By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Wednesday, Jun. 13 2007

The day after he had watched the latest episode of pro football's simmering family feud get just a bit uglier and a lot more public, La'Roi Glover stood outside the Rams' locker room considering whether he could � or should � take sides.

In a gladiator sport such as pro football, sometimes it helps to live in denial. You ignore the pain that often slices through your body like electric volts. You pretend you are immune to all the crippling, career-ending possibilities that lay scattered around you like a treacherous minefield. That is the survival instinct. So on Tuesday afternoon, Glover, a well-decorated survivor of 12 years of NFL trench warfare, understandably was reluctant to fast-forward his own life 10 years into an uncertain future. I wanted him to imagine that he was retired from the game for several years, to put him in the shoes of many of the bitter former players who are engaged in this nasty war of words with NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw.

He couldn't � or perhaps more accurately wouldn't � do it.

"It's a very sticky situation," Glover admitted with a polite smile and gentle shrug of his thickly muscled shoulders. "And to be quite honest, probably when I retire, I don't know which side I'll be on either."

Legends such as Mike Ditka and Jerry Kramer are leading the charge of the retired players who want the National Football League and the NFLPA to provide more post-career medical benefits for generations of men whose bodies have been traumatized by the brutality of their gladiator sport. They are trying to get the public to understand how despite all the billions of dollars pro football generates as America's most popular spectator sport, not enough of that money trickles down to the retired players.

So they are continuing to wage a nasty public battle with the shockingly insensitive Upshaw, who has become the very public face of what some perceive as the football establishment's resistance movement. The latest war of words came out in Chicago last weekend when Ditka's group, Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund, held another news conference attacking Upshaw and the union.

Ditka introduced a 35-year-old former NFL lineman, Brian DeMarco, whose football-related disabilities � and his inability to pay for proper medical treatment � left him homeless on three occasions and on the brink of financial ruin.

"There are so many more like me out there," DeMarco told reporters. "Trying to get through the system that the NFLPA has set up is excruciatingly painful."

One day later, Upshaw produced canceled checks from the NFLPA worth $10,000 that were used to pay DeMarco's living expenses over the past nine months. Yet even though the checks proved the union was helping DeMarco, they did nothing to help unravel the red tape that continues to bog down the process DeMarco and other retired players endure trying to get disability benefits.

"There are a number of points (the retired players) have a right to be bitter about," Glover said. "They've played a long time, sustained numerous injuries and they're trying to get their pensions and funds to help provide for surgeries. But at the same time, the union has done a marvelous job for the current players, and that's why so many of the current players are quite happy with what Gene is doing."

So the fight wages on, no closer to a resolution. Does anyone really want to solve this problem, or are they more concerned with stubbornly defending their own positions?

"Oh, I think it's definitely the latter," Glover said. "It's all about just defending their own positions."

And as they continue to trade angry insults and nasty threats, and produce nothing more useful than hard feelings and petty bitterness, they are no closer to finding a solution for assisting the indigent retirees. The sniping needs to stop. The retired players need to stop making this a personal war against Upshaw, and Upshaw needs to stop saying the most asinine and insensitive things about the old players.

Telling the Big Lie that there is no more money to give out of the limitless NFL horn of plenty is like staring into a crystal oasis and then telling a parched man to quench his thirst elsewhere.