sportsjabber.net

Some of you may may know my feelings about the NFLPA, an organization as greedy, underhanded, sleazy, and willingly blind like the NFL itself.

An organization presided for year by former player Gene Upshaw, who screwed over his brethren at every opportunity. Even his own teammates that helped him win championships and other personal glories.

When Upshaw died, few tears were shed by former players.

Now the NFLPA is being run by an ambulance chaser who point blank told a former Redskin, a team he supposedly is a fan of because he grew up in the District of Columbia, that things would be “business as usual.”

This means thousands of people who dedicated their lives to the game are basically brushed aside and forgotten. The same people who made professional football a billion dollar empire that has so much power, it had their blackout rule pass through Congress, the House of Representatives, and White House in one day.

You don’t even see declarations of war get done that quickly.

Yet there are brave people who have tried to let the public know the sordid side of the NFL, even knowing that the machine would be there to try to block them at every turn.

Men like the Joe DeLamielleure and Mike Ditka are Hall of Famers who have long been vocal about the lack of support their brethren get medically, financially, and spiritually.

Bruce Laird, Jack Kemp, Tom Addison, Ricky Harris, and many more, have also tried to get the NFLPA to at least give respect to those who made the game what it is today.

While there is a lock out, the NFL is giving lip service about player safety for the first time since the league was born in 1920. The countless amount of players who left the game permanently damages and forgotten by the NFL would take more than just a calculator to recall.

When I was calling ex-players to garner support for Chris Hanburger’s induction into Canton last year, I was astonished to find many players suffering for Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

It seemed the amount of gridiron legends stricken with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) was far more prevalent with NFL players than any other sport or other lines of work.

As we learn more about head injuries with the advances of science, we start to understand better the hell men like Mike Webster, Jim Tyrer, Andre Waters, and others went through just before their deaths.

I also encountered many ex-players with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease in my Hanburger quest. While some players were unable to converse, some lit up at the mention of the game they love and held lucid discussions recalling the time they sweat and bled for the NFL.

This is why the work DeLamielleure, Laird, Ditka, and others are so very important and MUST be supported by anyone who claims to be a fan of football.

But I want to tell you about the work of Brent Boyd.

READ THE REST…

http://forums.sportsjabber.net/sjforums/showthread.php?t=84398