Active players plan to donate part of checks for Dec. 23 games to disabled retired players
Makes you wonder if Gene Upshaw has a conscience, doesn’t it?
CHICAGO — Some NFL players will donate part of their paychecks from the league’s Dec. 23 games to help needy retired players. Kansas City Chiefs lineman Kyle Turley said at a news conference to announce the plan Tuesday at Mike Ditka’s restaurant that he will donate his entire $25,000 paycheck. Ditka has been vocal in publicizing the plight of former players who struggle with the effects of lingering physical problems…. “We make a lot of money playing this game and it’s because of the guys that played before us,” Turley said…. His effort is the latest chapter in a very public and bitter feud between retired players and the NFL Players Association. Ditka and others say the union refuses to award disability benefits to former players. In recent months, they publicized the plight of retired players wiped out financially by the cost of multiple surgeries and injuries that have left them unable to work.
Professional athletes at times (deservedly) get a bad rap for being spoiled, self-absorbed asswipes. What gets less press is the fact that there are athletes who recognize that their success and the opportunities available to them derive from the work of those who came before them. Kyle Turley, whose playing style I’ve never admired, is one athlete who recognizes that his good fortune and material wealth rests on a foundation built in large part by players from a bygone era.
The sad reality is that while Turley recognizes the truth and is doing what he can to make a difference, the National Football League Players Association has essentially told retired players to go f—k themselves. NFLPA Gene Upshaw, himself a former NFL player with the Oakland Raiders, seems to be blessed with the moral and social conscience of a robber baron.
They’ve told the stories of former players such as Mike Webster, the Hall of Fame center of the Pittsburgh Steelers who died homeless in 2002 after suffering from mental illness widely attributed to head injuries sustained as a player.
The union and the league have defended the disability system. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told a Senate hearing in September that the league is boosting benefits when many companies around the nation are reducing them. And Gene Upshaw, executive director of the players association, has told the Senate that Congress should give the players’ union greater authority to approve disability claims.
NFLPA spokesman Carl Francis declined comment on Turley’s announcement, saying the union was focused on Tuesday’s shooting death of Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor.
Yes, that focus is understandable given the abject tragedy that is Taylor’s violent demise. Nonetheless, this off-handed dismissal of the issue Turley has raised is typical of NFLPA’s “f— you” attitude toward retired players. (What, they can only focus on one thing at a time??) These are people who left their heart and soul (and sometimes their long-term health) on the NFL playing fields of their youth, and now the very union that ensure that today’s players are enriched is telling them to go pound sand. I can’t think of a more dismissive and disrespectful approach to a group of people who frankly deserve better.
A convincing argument could be made that today’s NFL was built on the now bowed and in some cases broken backs of retired players. These ex-players aren’t asking for a slice of today’s pie. What they’re asking for, and what they deserve in spades, is assistance with long-term health issues stemming from their playing days.
How much does it cost for NFLPA to demonstrate that it has a conscience? Not nearly as much as you might think…and it’s the right thing to do.
Turley said reading about the Congressional hearings and in particular the emotional stories about players he admired as a boy prompted him to donate his money and ask his fellow players to do the same.
One of Turley’s game checks will not solve the problem, but I do applaud him for seeing a problem and determining that his involvement in finding a solution is the right thing to do. If he can convince other players to take a similar step, perhaps NFLPA President Gene Upshaw can be roused from his moral slumber and convinced to do the right thing as well.
It’s long past time that NFLPA take care of it’s own. The player’s union is sitting upon a figurative pot of gold, and taking care of some of the long-term football-related health issues would barely put a dent in NFLPA coffers. Then again, perhaps Upshaw and his goons enjoy looking like the modern-day equivalent of Simon Legree.
I admire Turley for stepping up and leading an effort to do the right thing. I hope that many retired NFL players in need will benefit. They deserve nothing less.
