What's on Frontline?

NFL Concussion story. It's kind of stupid. Frontline is making a real drama out of the concept that getting hit in the head causes lifelong cognitive damage. What idiots. People have been calling ex-boxers "punchy" for about 100 years because of the damage getting hit in the head causes. Duh!

The NFL should have required teams a long time ago to add a clause to every player contract leaving the team and the league out of any liability suit over their injuries. They could have protected the league from the lawsuits now and the epic pussifying too...

So something harmful should be allowed to continue, and not discussed, if it's dumb enough?

I disagree. The players wreck their bodies for a few years and the NFL and te discard them. It's fine if you are a multimillion dollar contract player, but they aren't. Many players won't make that I'm their entire career so if it gets cut short, they are left in the cold with nothing.

Tendmote, is boxing safe? What dumbass in the world thinks boxing is safe? People get killed in the ring. People get crippled for life and die playing football too.

FYI, the NFL and the players association agreed on a $765 million dollar settlement of the issue a few months ago.

@Draug: $420,000 minimum wage and plus you get a nice pension. Even when their careers are cut short, they live pretty nice lives. (not hollywood nice, but guaranteed middle class income)

http://www.delducasports.com/assets/files/Summary-of-NFL-Player-Benefits.pdf

NFL will not last another 15 years. It's barbaric fans will probably take up cock fighting.

whos Putin33 is he new?

@tendmote ... they sign up for it, it's quite voluntary. The NFL just needs to make that clearer to them, even if it scares off a touch of the revenue.

@Emac ... the settlement is not going to be the end of things. That only ended the class-action suit I believe, and the players didn't get a great deal in it in my opinion. There will still be cases of individual players for a long time to come.

@Fasces ... yeah, if they don't blow it. You might just call them stupid (probably right), but the trends show that athletes are much more likely to do that than some random person making that amount.

Bo Sox, I didn't say the players got a great deal did I? Mike Webster won't have a case. He was a steroid user. Any player that use Roids or any illegal substance will have a hard time proving a case. Any player who has a family history of Alzheimer's will have a tough case. Any player with a history of alcohol abuse will have a tough case. The number of players who played for years and did not suffer impairment will also serve as evidence against players claiming a direct link. In other words it isn't cut and dried.

No, $405k is the minimum rookie salary for 2013. So a rookie goes out and gets hurt, knows nothing cause he either got a bullshit degree or was drafted before he got a degree or worse, and now he is hurt for life, possibly brain damaged, making a slightly above minimum wage income the rest of his life (depending on how badly).

That pension is bullshit. $200 per month times number of years played. What kind of pension is that? You'd have to have a 20 year career (doesn't happen for many NFL players as their bodies can't take 20 years of pounding) to make a middle class income of 4K per month (48k per year).

If you had a 20 year career, you probably wouldn't *need* the pension.

The settlement was hush money. There was never any admitting of wrongdoing, so this will continue to be an issue.

Emac, what about children who show signs of CTE? Mike Webster was hit on the head for over twenty years of his life. What about an eighteen year old with no history of substance abuse?

Like Draug said, this isn't about players not knowing the risks. The risks of football are well known as far as visible physical damage - broken bones, back and knee problems, etc. The entire point of the program is that the NFL has willfully ignored and neglected to protect its players from an even more insidious and debilitating condition that only manifests itself after a career has ended (or even sooner, in Junior Seau's case). The fact that the NFL does nothing to prevent such injuries from occurring and then goes and glorifies the violence in the game at the expense of its players is sickening.

"If you had a 20 year career, you probably wouldn't *need* the pension."

A lot of the players mentioned on Frontline *did* have long careers - Junior Seau played for twenty years - but changes in behavior can undue years of saving money and investments. Seau's were gone within a matter of months after his retirement. The same with the other cases profiled.

Junior Seau signed some of the most lucrative deals in NFL history. He didn't need any help from the NFL. He and other players in his situation (or the situation he was in I guess is what I should say) did it for the younger players that weren't fortunate enough to last.

Look, I enjoy watching football, but when hit squads run around taking out key players by kneecapping them and brutes with massive bodies charge with their heads down and take the top of their helmet into another players face mask, snapping their neck back like they've just been rear-ended by a semi going 65 MPH, something has to stop. I'm glad the NFL changed the rules regarding lowering ones head and charging like a raging bull, but more needs to be done. Much more. Not only during the game, but as after care when players have career ending injuries.

And the "people get killed in boxing" analogy fails on the face of it. You can't say something is OK just because another sports has issues of it's own. Boxing and MMA are just as much to blame for glorifying violence in sports. Basketball and baseball at least prove that sports and athleticism can exist and be hugely popular without being violent. Both are supposed to be non/minimal contact.

"No, $405k is the minimum rookie salary for 2013."
Its 2011 it was negotiated that starting in 2014 the min wage would be 420,000...

"That pension is bullshit."
That's only one aspect of the pension:
"Under the Severance Pay Plan, if a player is released by a team and has two or more credited seasons in the league, he will receive termination pay of $12,500 per credited season."

"Under the NFL Player Annuity Program, a player with four or more credited seasons in the league is eligible to receive a $65,000 annuity program contribution from which he can begin receiving annual distributions at the age of 35"

"Under the NFL Player Second Career Savings Plan, a player with at least two credited seasons in the league can contribute up to a maximum of $10,000 in pre-tax dollars per year to one of nine different investment funds and receive a matching team contribution of $2 for each $1 the player contributes to a plan (the team can contribute up to a maximum of $20,000 per year)."

Keep in mind that playing just 4 seasons, he'd be guarenteed to make at least ~$2 million, even after taxes thats the same the average american would make in 30 years.