Return the gift if you don't like it

The July 27, 2006 NFLPA-NFL announcement about the NFL Player Retirement Plan increases for retired players is a PR sham. It is written to imply that the announced 1) 25% increase, 2) triple benefits for your death before age 45, and 3) the dementia/Alzheimer’s interest only research trust fund, is going to cost the active players $120 million is ridiculous. This is another Upshaw NFL Office attempt to bale Upshaw’s ass out. They even put $120 million amount in a sentence next to a claim that this will “bring the total player benefits to $700 million” to make it appear even more like the $120 million came from some other pot to be added in for the retired players to bring the total to a higher amount than was some how previously calculated.

The fact is a 25% increase will cost 25% of last years $50.58 million total benefits payout. ($50.58 times 25% = $12,645,000) $12.6 million is a hell of a long way from $120 million. Prevaricators is too nice a word for Upshaw and his cabal.

"The minimum increase for retired players will be $50 per month.” I didn’t choose those words Upshaw/Henderson and their gang chose the words and published them.

Andre Collins the NFLPA’s Retired Player’s Director (hired by Upshaw) didn’t understand their choice of the words “minimum…will be $50 per month” either, as retired player Ben Lynch learned when he called Andre and ask for an explanation. Andre didn’t know how it was being “interpreted.” He said he would find out and call back. If Andre didn’t know that, what the hell does he know? He gets $120,000 to do whatever Upshaw tells him to do. A “minimum…will be $50 per month” seems clear to me but few things are as they seem to be in the world of Gene Upshaw’s NFLPA.

Ben Lynch made an inadvertent friendly little reference in an email to “Gene is right…” about something but it struck me as an inappropriately polite deference to “Gene”, a tip off that only the most dense will miss. Gene isn’t right…Gene is wrong, dead wrong, wrong about his sense of right and wrong, wrong to attack and taunt the retired players as “ungrateful”, because they don’t appreciate their below poverty level benefits, wrong to say the current active players gave the retired players a pension “gift” when it was the retired players who gave the current active players a “gift”, a “gift” of a pension plan, the pension plan, the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan now worth over $1 billion.

Gene Upshaw wasn’t around and neither were any of today’s active players when we fought for and won the pension plan in 1959, 1960, 1961, and 1962 under oppressive monopoly conditions. We worked under slave contracts that still bind us today. We were benched, traded, released and blacklisted. The “gift” is from us, the retired players, to you the current active players.

I do have a solution. Since according to Upshaw and NFLPA Troy Vincent the current players want all the money coming in to the plan from 2006 forward, not just the 68% of it they are getting now, then they should start a new plan and give our old plan back to us.

The current active players have had little to nothing to do with the past plan income asset build-up and Upshaw and Vincent tell us that the active players want all but a miniscule amount of the money ($12.6 million) from 2006 and into the future, so… let them take it all and just give the old plan, that we won to begin with, back to us.

With $1 billion of assets available for benefits, and substantial income from interest and retired player endorsements, memorabilia, historic game films of us playing, and the like, the plan will be viable and be able to pay MLB type benefits for many many years into the future.

So Upshaw and Henderson can take their 25%, triple for death before 45, and dementia and Alzheimer “interest only” trust fund and shove it, give us the “old” past plan where it sits today and we’ll take care of Sylvia and John Mackey as they should have been taken care of in the past. A task Upshaw and the NFL Office didn’t bother with until it became an embarrassment for them.

You don’t appreciate our pension plan gift then give it back and get out of our way.

Another question that comes to mind is why would anyone chose to fund Alzheimer’s or any other kind of long shot medical research from a pension where beneficiaries families are hurting financially because of below poverty level benefits? In Upshaw and Henderson’s minds there is not enough money to increase retirement benefits to reasonable levels like MLB’s but there is enough to fund long shot medical research? Nothing ever adds up when Upshaw is involved not even the hours he is supposed to be working.

Just give us our pension plan back, give yourselves a new one and we’ll all be happy.

By federal law the $1 billion+ of funds in the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan can only be used for paying benefits to retired players and plan administrative costs. Today those administrative costs include $5.6 million in 2003-2004 legal fees to the Groom Law Group to beat up on retired, especially disabled players.