NFL Fumbles Care of Former Stars

Football has taken its toll on Willie Wood, a star for the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s. Portrait by Andrew Cutraro; inset photo: AP

Picture Super Bowl I: It’s Jan. 15, 1967, four plays into the second half, with the Kansas City Chiefs trailing the Green Bay Packers 14-10. Looking to take the lead, Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson drifts back to pass, but the defense is blitzing, and Packers safety Willie Wood is reading the play perfectly. Dawson drops a short pass and Wood beats the receiver to the ball, picks it off at midfield and runs it back to the Chiefs’ five-yard line.

The Packers score on the next play, breaking open a close contest that they would go on to win 35-10. Packers quarterback Bart Starr calls Wood’s interception “the biggest play of the game.” It’s the type of play that characterized Wood’s 12-year career and led to his election to the National Football League Hall of Fame.

Fast-forward 42 years. In the dining area of his assisted living facility in Washington, D.C., Wood sits as straight as he can in his wheelchair. Now 72, he has endured multiple back surgeries, some of his vertebrae have been fused, both knees and both hips have been replaced, and he can no longer walk. Dementia has stolen much of his memory. In an old photo next to the door of his private room, a young Wood is leaping across the field, arms outstretched and torso turned to the side, and he’s smiling.

When he’s reminded of the compliment from Starr, another Hall of Famer, Wood says, “Bart Starr said that?” Then he smiles faintly. “I wish he had made some plays.” For all he’s lost, Wood retains his sense of humor—and a generous deal from the NFL. Between his league pension and a new plan that compensates veteran players with dementia, Wood receives just over $100,000 a year, which covers the cost of his care.

Wood’s injuries and disabilities are typical of many NFL retirees, but not all are reaping the same benefits. Of the roughly 8,000 former players who are eligible, 224 receive total and permanent disability benefits, according to data collected by Congress from the NFL Players Association. “That translates to less than 3 percent of retired players, a very small number for any industry, much less one as physically demanding as professional football,” said Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., at a House subcommittee hearing in 2007.

Many former players are outraged that so few of their disabled teammates are compensated by the NFL, whose revenue last season was nearly $8 billion. Wood earned about $30,000 a year on average during his career from 1960 to 1972. Compared with today’s players, “what I made was chump change,” he says.

Mike Ditka has testified before Congress on behalf of disabled retirees.

From the players’ perspective, they built and boosted the NFL on their own torn, dislocated and arthritic shoulders and have received little in return. “These former NFL players are being treated like dogs in a callous and uncaring manner,” Mike Ditka, NFL commentator and former coach and pro player, told the House subcommittee, “while the NFL players’ union endlessly debates the issue and does nothing material to help these guys.”

Disability lawyer John Hogan, who has represented a number of former pros, has called the NFL disability program the worst of any industry in the country. “I stand by that,” Hogan says. “The amount of money they award can be generous, but the system itself is terrible. … Guys have a tough time proving that they are disabled.”

Mike Mosley played just three seasons with the Buffalo Bills in the early 1980s before knee, neck and back injuries forced his retirement. He received payments from the NFL for total and permanent disability for five years, until he was cut off in 2004 when a doctor hired by the NFL determined that he could do sedentary work. Now 50, he and his daughter are living with his mother, surviving on her Social Security income.

Even Johnny Unitas—often called the greatest quarterback in the game—was denied disability assistance by the NFL, after his "golden arm" became virtually useless from 18 years of tendon and nerve damage as a pro.

Mike Mosley played three seasons before serious injuries ended his career.

Last year the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service delivered to Congress a 145-page report on NFL players’ disabilities and benefits. It found that neither the NFL nor the NFL Players Association collects data on players who retire because of injury, and that former players have a difficult time trying to access league health benefits.

It also found that there is a conflict of interest among team doctors, who are beholden to the owners and coaches who hire them. As a result, Sanchez and John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, threatened the NFL and the players’ union with legislation that would enforce an adequate disability system if they did not correct it themselves.

NFL Players Association spokesman Carl Francis says there has been no direct follow-up to the congressional report. But he points to a number of new programs and benefits for retired players. For example, a joint-replacement program now reimburses retirees for the cost of replacing a knee, hip or shoulder. Retired players also receive free cardiovascular health screenings.

Perhaps most notable is the new program for retirees with dementia, called the 88 Plan after John Mackey, who suffers from dementia and whose player number with the Colts was 88. Eligible players receive up to $88,000 a year to pay for nursing care. “We are addressing and improving the disability program every day,” Francis says. “A lot of players have been accepted to receive benefits.”

The 88 Plan accepted Wood last year. Before that he survived on his $1,100-a-month league pension, plus donations from friends and an independent charity that helps NFL retirees.

The NFL also now funds its own scientific research on concussions, through its Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury. One study on the long-term effects of concussions that was published in the journal Neuroscience found no neurological or psychological consequences from even multiple concussions.

Other studies not affiliated with the NFL differ. Research on former pros by Kevin Guskiewicz, director of the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina, and his colleagues found that retired NFL players who had three or more concussions in their career are five times more likely than those with no concussions to suffer from mild cognitive impairment. This condition compromises reasoning, judgment and memory and is often a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. Another study by Guskiewicz found that those with three or more concussions were three times more likely to suffer from depression.

In Pittsburgh, Bennet Omalu, M.D., has performed autopsies on four former NFL players, all age 50 or younger. The brains of all four exhibited clear signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy—a condition found in boxers with dementia or people in their 80s or 90s. Of the four former players, two committed suicide.

Years of head-on collisions left Mike Webster with severe brain damage.

One of the autopsied players was Mike Webster, a Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Chiefs. He suffered from dementia, depression and chronic pain from football injuries, and for a while he was homeless, living out of his car. Yet he was twice denied full and permanent disability coverage by the NFL.

Webster died of a heart attack in 2002 at age 50, and in 2005 his former wife and children won a lawsuit that resulted in the NFL paying them more than $1.5 million. The court decided that Webster was permanently disabled by brain injuries incurred from playing football. The NFL appealed the decision in 2006 and lost.

Omalu’s diagnoses have been disputed by the NFL’s own neurologist. Even so, the league has deemed that any player with dementia is eligible for the 88 Plan, and no one has to prove that it resulted from playing football.

The NFL Players Association’s Francis says $1 million has been distributed to former players under this benefit. Speaking on the Senate floor last year, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said of the 88 Plan: “This is a start.”

(Mike Ditka photo by Matthew Cavanaugh/epa/Corbis; Mike Mosley photo by David Kohl/AP; Mike Webster photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images)

Don Beaulieu is a member of the Bulletin Today editorial staff.