ESPN: The Magazine HGH story

It was a good story, pringle. I don't have it in front of me, and I read it more than a week ago, but he even got Greg Aiello on the record saying that the league is potentially open to HGH use if it's proven there is a medical benefit for players, right?

I wonder if the PA would fight that or minimize the importance of it, because they'd have to actually admit that players suffer debilitating side effects from all the contact and they'd potentially have to make payouts to all the former players who are cripples and can't get a penny?

 

I just posted about this--and mentioned Mike Webster--on the journalism board thread about a Wally Matthews column in Newsday about the former players speaking up today about the screw job they get from the union.

It's inherent in the collective-bargaining agreement between the league and the players. Only the current players have a vote and any money they give to former players is out of their pocket. Since the current players don't give a shit about the former players, the union doesn't give a shit about the former players--even though they are sure to make a big deal out of the extra pennies they add to the pension payout pot every every year. It makes Gene Upshaw a whore (although I wouldn't be the one to call him it to his face) because those are his peers he is screwing. But he has a multimillion dollar salary and it's at the pleasure of the current players who can vote, not the former players who have no power. If he wasn't making it hard for former players to get their hands on the $$, someone else would be.

The way I see it, this is really an issue between the current players and the former players--and it doesn't involve Joe Fan. If the current players are so shortsighted as to not realize that in 3 years most of them are going to be former players, it shouldn't be incumbent upon me to feel outrage about it.

I didn't mean to sidetrack the HGH discussion, but it's sort of relevant, because the NFLPA has a way of squelching news that can have an impact on its players' longterm health if it means they potentially have to pay money to former players. They've done it with the research about brain concussions and they've done it with the studies about heart disease and early death of former linemen, to name two areas.

 

It is the joint responsibility of the league and the union, if you ask me. I just posted on the other thread... They set money before negotiating when it comes to other things they deem important. They could certainly do it with a former players' fund if it was important. The money would be off the table before they start talking about dividing up the pie.

 

The NFL Youth Fund immediately comes to mind. They set aside $150 million (I believe that's the number, but I may be off on the amount) to promote the sport, build community football fields, run youth programs, etc. They do it in other areas, too. The money is jointly administered by the league and the union.

The union already has a say in what the NFL does with its money. Their collective bargaining efforts aren't from the typical employer-employee standpoint, in which the employer is dictating the the terms. They start out by saying, "If the league makes $X billion, the owners will see Y percent of it and the players will see Z percent of it." They are negotiating over Y and Z. In other words, they are negotiating over how the NFL's money gets divided up.