Disposable Players, Disposable Lives

So let Peyton Manning have all his awards and all of his glory.

Go ahead, enjoy it, you creep. Continue to dime out your teammates and complain about your offensive line when you think it doesn’t give you enough protection or your defense if it can’t hold a lead.

(And I also don’t like the guy because he donates to the Repugs.)

But please allow me to shift a bit at this point.

As I made the rounds this morning, I came across this post in a football vein from Taylor Marsh at HuffPo about the lack of medical care and disability compensation to former players, and Marsh cites the example of former St. Louis Cardinals offensive lineman Conrad Dobler.

I wish Marsh could have found a better example to make her case, because Dobler was truly one of the game’s dirtiest players. However, fair is fair – he did put in his time, and if the NFLPA wasn’t such an utterly toothless union, he would receive compensation. As Marsh notes…

The NFL takes care of their great players, right? Players like Dobler have pensions and health insurance, or can get disability right? Wrong. Doctor after doctor have pronounced Dobler 90% disabled, but then the NFL brings their own doctors in and... well, you know the drill. What the NFL is doing to former pros is un-American.

This comes not too long after the New York Times story documenting the findings of a neuropathologist who identified a link between repeated concussions suffered by former Eagles player Andre Waters and the brain damage that very likely played into his depression and led to his suicide. We also have the example of former Pittsburgh Steelers’ hall-of-fame center Mike Webster, who died in September 2002 after a string of health woes that began with brain trauma diagnosed after his playing days ended.

This post mentions what former players Paul Krause, Leroy Kelly and Joe DeLamielleure, all Hall of Famers, have had to endure without health benefits (the more I read about this issue, the more I understand Marsh’s rage at NFL players union head Gene Upshaw).

And now, we have former New England Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson complaining that coach Bill Belichick made him play too soon after he’d suffered a concussion, which subsequently led to another concussion. Now, in Johnson’s words, "There's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with my brain. And I know when it started."

I wonder if Johnson will have any difficulty qualifying for the disability health benefit he apparently will need now, probably for the rest of his life?

Also, I’d like to ask anyone out there who may be reading this who professes to hate “government” a question: Do you really want to see congressional intervention here?

If we can spend time and money on a steroids investigation for major league baseball, shouldn’t we do the same thing on behalf of the health of these men who have contributed so much (as noted, their very lives in some cases) to our enjoyment on Sundays?

If you want to see that happen, then click here and tell your elected representatives. But if you want the NFL to clean up its act without taking that step, click here and tell that to Gene Upshaw yourself.

Or better yet, if you’re a Colts fan, contact Peyton Manning and tell him to speak up on the behalf of former players instead of himself for a change. I don’t encourage this, but he’s one head-shot away from la-la land himself, and some empathy would be nice.