Cleveland Browns’ offensive tackle Tony Pashos considers twice- or thrice-weekly massages crucial to his training routine. But even the most basic rubdown runs him about $180.
“The majority of us, we are all massive,” said Pashos, whose 6-foot-6-inch, 325-pound frame occupied the better part of a conference room sofa during during the National Football League Players Association meetings here Friday. “My wife loves a 30-minute massage. Thirty minutes for me, you only cover my ankle and my foot. I need a two-hour massage.”
With the average NFL salary around $2 million, players acknowledge they have much greater financial resources to weather a work stoppage than the average out-of-work fan. But as the NFL lockout enters it second week, some players are beginning to realize how expensive it will be to maintain their chiseled — and in some cases enormous — physiques to the standard they achieved when they had the run of NFL training facilities and weight rooms, breakfast and lunch spreads, trainers, therapists, physicians, and NFL-funded health-care coverage.
In a significant blow for the NFLPA, an arbitrator ruled in February that the NFL did not have to provide health insurance coverage for active players once the most recent collective bargaining agreement expired in early March, even though the league had provided benefits to players during the 1982 and ’87 strikes.
“This is the way the NFL applies pressure from the inside out, from inside the family,” said Miki Yaras-Davis, who was the NFLPA’s senior director of benefits and still assists players even though the union dissolved on March 11. . For some it’s been “devastating,” she said. “We warned our players: This will happen.”
Players, even those injured last year when the collective bargaining agreement was in effect, now must pay out of pocket for health insurance. Government-guaranteed continuation insurance for a player with a wife and children through COBRA runs $2,400 a month, according to Yaras-Davis. But that coverage won’t provide for many health and training options that before the lockout would have been absorbed at least partly by NFL teams. Injured players will have to file worker’s compensation claims, Yaras-Davis said.
Healthy players will have to pay for their massages, acupuncture services, chiropractic treatment, personal training, fitness classes and an assortment of vitamins and supplements.
Loading...
Comments