Arizona Daily Star
Published: 07.12.2007
Opinion by Greg Hansen
Fred W. Enke is 83 now and he's a tennis nut. How much of a nut? He watches Wimbledon, start to finish. If it is on TV at 6 a.m., he is watching.
How devoted? He walked outside Tuesday and swept off, in their entirety, the tennis courts at his Casa Grande ranch. It doesn't sound like much of a task, but a week ago Enke was in a hospital bed, morphine dripping into his system, recovering from gall bladder surgery.
"Worst pain I've had in my life,'' he insists. "They took out my gall bladder in nine little pieces, through my belly button.''
When Enke says that something hurts, you believe him.
After retiring from a seven-year NFL career, quarterbacking the Lions, Eagles and Colts from 1948 to 1954, Enke ultimately required surgery to replace both knees, his right shoulder and his left hip. He also had surgery to keep his back in working condition.
"Oh, I'm not sure you can blame it all on football,'' he says, just to be interrupted by his wife, Marjorie, who adds "14 years of football, Fred, 14 years of football. What else could it have been?''
Fred W. Enke, son of legendary UA basketball coach Fred A. Enke, is perhaps the greatest Wildcat athlete of the 20th century, and if not No. 1, somewhere at the front of the Top 10. He does not regret his football days.
"If I don't take medication, I've got arthritis problems,'' he says. "But that can't be related to football, can it?''
If there is one good thing about Enke's post-football body trauma it's that he was so successful in the agricultural business that he didn't have to worry about medical bills. Unlike so many retired NFL players, who last month presented their pension/disability/economic problems at a Congressional hearing, Enke isn't worried about finances.
His monthly NFL pension is $1,400, which has been substantially upgraded several times from its original $350.
"It took us years to get anything,'' he says. "Those who played in the NFL before 1960 didn't get a dime until Pete Rozelle took our case and got the ball rolling for pensions. But I am alarmed to continue to read how many former players are disabled, or have dementia, and are in dire need these days.''
Enke's top NFL salary: $12,000. Signing bonus: $1,000.
The NFL last month announced that $126 million a year goes into post-career disability benefits for retired players. However, Hall of Famer Mike Ditka, the loudest critic of the league's pension system, discovered that just 317 of more than 10,000 eligible players receive disability payments from that fund.
Sandy Unitas, widow of Hall of Fame quarterback John Unitas, told the Congressional subcommittee that Unitas was never approved for disability benefits even though he lost functional use of his right arm.
The NFL pension issue is so provocative that Tucsonan Les Josephson, for 11 years a Los Angeles Rams fullback, says that a retired-players Web site he checks has input from more than 2,000 players.
"I'm probably one of the fortunate ones, knock on wood, that I haven't had major physical repercussions or a number of football-related surgeries,'' said Josephson, who is a mortgage company executive here. "I'll eventually have to have my knees replaced, but I wasn't one of those who got beat up real bad."
Josephson, 64, began taking his NFL pension four years ago. His highest salary over his 1964-74 career? It was $50,000. That means he didn't get wealthy playing for the Rams, nor are his retirement benefits excessive. ("Far below $100,000 a year," he says.)
He has heard the medical and financial horror stories about ex-Packers Willie Wood and defensive back Herb Adderley and about ex-Raiders center Jim Otto, among others.
"I missed one year with an Achilles' reconstruction surgery, and I had a broken jaw and two shoulder surgeries," says Josephson. "One argument against us is that we knew what we were getting into; we knew the risks. But there should come a point where some humanity is involved. If Herb Adderley truly is getting only $128 a month, as has been publicized, that's not right."
Those who played in the '50s, such as Enke and his contemporaries, began with pensions that paid $30 a month for each season of service. In retrospect, he is astonished there wasn't more permanent physical damage.
Some of his teammates eschewed thigh pads, or knee pads, afraid it would limit their mobility. Worse, facemasks weren't implemented until 1954.
"In a 1954 game against the Rams, I saw facemasks for the first time," Enke says. "We wondered what they were. We'd have guys get teeth knocked out every week. Every NFL team was spending a fortune in dental bills.
"Funny, but after that game with the Rams, all of our helmets were taken and sent to the Rawlings company in Chicago and fitted for facemasks by the next Sunday. It might not have been good for the dental industry, but it sure made playing football more safe."
Heated Debate
In the last month, Congress has held hearings on the NFL's pension and disability programs.
Some former players say the NFL provides the worst pension plan in professional sports, although football is one of the most dangerous sports.
NFL players union head Gene Upshaw has come under fire from a group of Hall of Famers that says the union has concentrated too much on current players and ignored the health problems of former players.
Congressional testimony revealed the NFL has $1.1 billion in its disability and pension fund, but has spent only $20 million.
Source: The Associated Press
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