Hmmm... More pretty damming evidence that the NFL has deliberately used biased studies to downplay the effects of concussions:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=ca...Sgckh9L1ZpqKhjQ
Jan 4, 2010
Statement of Bernie Parrish, Former NFL player, author of the best selling book They Call It A
Game and a new book Delay and Deny due to be published in 2010.
My book, They Call It A Game, published decades ago, had the subtitle, “An indictment of the
pro football establishment: how it manipulates and protects its billion-dollar monopoly at the
expense of the players and the public.” The only change through the years has been that the
numbers are bigger.
I thank the Committee on the Judiciary, especially Chairman John Conyers, for holding this
hearing. It reminds me of the Watergate era and two of my personal heroes, Senator Sam Ervin
and Senator Phillip Hart. I was fortunate enough to met those political giants at a hearing , much like this one It focused on the NFL and abuses of anti-trust exemptions.
Here is what Senator Ervin had to say about the NFL’s arrogant, illicit operation:
The NFL's approach is to perfect its Delay and Deny program following the tobacco industry's
"Merchants of death business model". The NFL even uses the same law firm as the tobacco
industry uses, Covington & Burling, the law firm who created the "Tobacco Council" to produce
bogus studies and paid experts to testify that tobacco products does not cause cancer. It exactly
parallels the way Covington & Burling partner, Paul Tagliabue, who as Commissioner of the
NFL, created the "NFL's Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee." It functions as did the
Tobacco Council, functioning to create a smoke screen of studies and organizing experts to deny
that professional football causes concussions that lead to further complications, including early
dementia. Taglibue installed Dr. Elliot Pellman, a graduate of Guadalajara’s medical school in rheumatology. Pellman had no expertise whatsoever in brain injuries, mild or otherwise, as the MTBI Committee Chairman. The New York Times exposed Dr.. Pellman’s padded resume and he subsequently resigned as chairman of the NFL MTBI Committee. However Dr. Pellman
remains current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's filtered conduit of information on
concussions and brain injuries from the MTBI Committee. Dr. Pellman has authored some 13
suspect studies on concussions and brain injuries and these have likely had an impact on youth
football programs with possible life-threatening effects made more dangerous because of their
tacit endorsement by the NFL.
After 50 plus years of professional football the NFL Commissioner and its players union have
suddenly awakened and decided it is time to study the problem for a few more years or buy off
those they can and try to discredit those they cannot, at least until the media heat cools off. The
NFLPA has been complicit and negligent on its own regarding player’s injuries in general but
especially about concussions and brain injuries.
The NFLPA's Dr. Thom Mayer was employed
part time being paid less than $25,000 a year until I pointed out that you can't get much medical
expertise for what they were paying Dr. Mayer. That email got him a big raise and now I
understand he is the NFLPA's concussion expert, without brain injury portfolio. But the Delay
and Deny program is carried out in large part by the players Gene Upshaw appointed
representatives on the Bert Bell Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Board. They include Tom
Condon (a player's agent who also represented the late Gene Upshaw), Dave Duerson (a former
NFL player and bankrupt business man crony of the late Gene Upshaw), and Jeff Van Note (an
announcer for the Atlanta Falcons). This board made up of these three former players and three
owner’s board members plus Commissioner Roger Goodell were found by an appellant court to
have "abused their discretion" in the Mike Webster case and are responsible for the many widely
believed unjustified denials of disability claims.
Only four retired players were receiving disability for brain injuries at the time of the last
Congressional hearings that is four out of 13,000 former NFL players. Only 317 total retired
players out of 13,000 (now Goodell says 21,000 have played in the NFL so it is four and 317
out of 21,000) received disability for their football injuries but that number was moved up to 428
a couple months later when the Congressional Research Service (CRS) report was being
compiled.
Facts and figures do not stand in the way of NFL spokesmen trying to convince the public or
congress that the owners are generous to a fault. The recent NFL funded University of Michigan
study of retired player circumstances says 86% of the older retired players own their own home
and 92% have Medical insurance. There is no group in America unless it is highly selected that is
made up of people 86% of who own their own home and 92% who have medical insurance (other
than the publicly funded Medicare). Those numbers cited by the NFL are suspect as their
speaking in percentages when the numbers are pitifully low when for instance a 25% benefit
increase equals $1.63 a day.
How reliable can any of that NFL telephone study of retired players be? Talking in percentages
allows them to tout the $1.63 a day increase to our pensions as a 25% increase, but it only shows
how pitifully low the sub-poverty level actual pensions are. No announcement was made about
Gene Upshaw’s simultaneous $10,000 per day compensation increase at about the same time.
Our average pre 1982 pensions remain below poverty level. Goodell’s PR gang deliberately make
confusing statements that lead your committees and the public to believe the pre 1993 retired
players receive the same benefits as today’s players, which they should but don’t.
Chairman Conyers, I applaud you for taking on this daunting task and risking the ire of the over
privileged political contributors who own and operate the NFL. You have been a hero of mine for
many years, and that continues today. This problem is not an easy one, and it cannot easily be
separated from our Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL player Retirement Plan because the owners have
chosen to use our pension plan as their medical insurance, our/their player disability plan. When
no medical insurance company would cover their business, because football is too risky and
injuries too frequent and severe to bet against, the owners had to come up with a different
insurance plan, so they made it part of our player retirement (pension) plan. This created a
competition between retirement and disability payments. The more and higher the disability
payments the lower the amount available for pensions.
I was advised by your staff not to go into the pension and disability issues in my testimony, but
to stick to the concussion and brain injury problems. When you know the whole story that is
impossible to do.
Dealing with the NFL and NFLPA’s collusive Delay and Deny operations means battling
through their myriad of tobacco company type public relations stunts, phony expert’s denials,
purchased testimony, and illusions of representation. It means fighting their multi-million-dollar
lobbying efforts directed against retired players and the public. They want you to keep your
attention on new understanding of retired player issues, speeding up the administrative
institutional process, the 88 Plan; which is a cheap out of court settlement for brain damage
caused by playing football, retired player families are often so happy to get any help they are
reluctant to say anything that might anger the tight-fisted owners who operate these public
relations scams. Look at the shiny object I’m holding up in this hand while I pick you pockets
with process, and procedure, and studies, and investigations and already taking care of that,
talking to the NFLPA about that, talking to Dr. No (Ira Cassen) about that, that has to wait for
the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, that has to wait, to wait, to wait, to wait, wait, wait,
Delay until we can Deny...
John Updyke once said, “It is difficult to make some one understand when his salary depends on
him not understanding.” Like Roger Goodell, his staff and his bosses Covington & Burling led
legal team.
After the June 2007 Congressional hearings Miki Yaris-Davis, Director of Benefits for the
NFLPA, described seeing the retired players together is like watching a bunch of Maryland crabs
scuttling along, “They’re all injured, it’s just a matter of degree.”
The NFL's Delay and Deny program pushes the costs of concussions and NFL injury caused
early dementia on Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid amounts to medical fraud and abuse
operation that has kept billions of dollars in the NFL owner’s bank accounts that should have
been paid out by NFL owners for the medical treatment of their employees injuries sustained
playing in the NFL.
The NLRB has ruled the retired players cannot be part of the NFLPA’s bargaining unit,
therefore it is fair to say Congress has left us with no way to protect our interests except through
litigation. Congress could correct this with legislation giving retired players a vote making retired
players an equal voting part of the bargaining unit
As Gene Upshaw repeated many times retired players are not in the bargaining unit, The
NFLPA, the (union) does not represent retired NFL players. The “new” NFL Alumni Assoc is a
hoax, another illusion of representation being perpetrated on retired players by Commissioner
Roger Goodell. He is using a small group of former players, his favored courtiers to try to install
a clone of Gene Upshaw in a position to block retired players for Goodell and his masters. These
courtiers collect various personal favors while helping Goodell carry out some rather clumsy
amateurish Divide and Conquer strategies to keep from dealing with the key issues.
Congress needs to insure that:
1) There is an Increase in the NFL retirement to match that of Baseball;
2) NFL Disability plan is rewritten to deal with the unique problems of professional
football including concussions and all brain injury problems related playing NFL
football;
3) There is a one time reparations payment to the players who played under the most
dangerous helmet to helmet crack back, cut block, clothes lineing crack back, head slap
rules, suffering concussions, neck and spine injuries playing with inferior equipment who
established the NFL as America’s foremost sport, now an $8 billion a year sport’s
business.
4) That the Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has jurisdiction to oversee
the operation of the NFL.
5) That the study of concussions and brain injuries in sports is overseen by the National
Institutes of Health (NIH).
Anyone who joins the Goodell-Martin NFL Alumni Association looking for representation is
being foolish.
On the morning of the 2006 midterm elections at 10:01 AM it was confirmed that the Democrats
had gained control of both the Senate and the House. At 10:30 AM I received a 32 page email
from Mr. Gerald Toner, Chief of Labor Racketeering, apologizing for holding my complaints
about the NFL and NFLPA since June 2006 then telling me I had not specifically cited the laws
violated therefore he was forwarding my complaints to Elizabeth Bond in the Department of
Labor and Toner then
told me I should get a lawyer and sue the NFLPA. I did and won $28.1
million for over 2000 retired players who backed me that this two-year ordeal. Legal
maneuvering and the usual lawyer deal making, coupled with the usual NFL NFLPA type
collusion unfairly cut another 11,000 retired players out of the case in what I believe to be a
flawed trial followed by a very tainted trial settlement deal. Ms Bond has already been dancing us
around for several frustrating years on the labor violations before I complained to Mr. Toner.
I worked for months helping to draft the bill to rescind the NFL's shield behind which they hide
their misdeeds and abuse of retired players and the public. The draft bill was attached to my
October 26, 2009 statement to this Committee and includes most of my suggestions intertwined
with others ideas on how to write such a bill. The American Needle case pending before the
United States Supreme Court is the most important case to the players and the public ever. Eric
Holder defended the NFL and won this case when he was at Covington & Burling. Now the
Solicitor General is calling for it to be remanded to the lower appellant court that ruled originally
in the Holder’s old NFL client’s favor. Of course, Mr. Holder should remove himself from
asserting any influence in the American Needle v. NFL case.
For more detailed information on disability and other retired player issues go to Dave Pear.com
website it has a library of information and adds commentary from all sides to it daily.