The Pain Game

But at least they were alive. The autopsy of Andre Waters, who played 12 NFL seasons in the 1980s and 1990s and committed suicide at 44, revealed a ravaged brain consistent with the advanced dementia of a man in his 80s. Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who won four Super Bowl championships and died of a heart attack at 50 in 2002, was plagued from the moment he left football by dementia and other brain injuries caused by his play, according to his doctors. Homeless and unable to find a job during much of his retirement, Webster also suffered from chronic physical pain, contended his family, who successfully sued the NFL's retirement board for more than $1.5 million after being denied a disability claim.

Last year, the weight of the stories sparked two sets of congressional hearings. With a rapt Pear listening last September in a Senate hearing room, former Minnesota Vikings offensive guard Brent Boyd -- whose doctors blame concussions suffered in his playing days for his severe memory loss, bouts of depression and joblessness -- blasted the league and union as deceitful in their treatment of veterans with disability claims: "There is fraud, corruption and collusion by the NFL."

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, a member of the oversight panel conducting the hearing, urged the NFL "to get its house in order" and told NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and players association Executive Director Gene Upshaw that he was prepared to introduce "accountability or oversight" legislation if he did not see changes in the treatment of the retirees by the league and the union. But ideas for specific reforms to NFL practices were scarce among the lawmakers.

Since 1993, virtually all disability payments received by retired players have come from a share of league revenue allotted to the active players, which since 2006 has been set at 60 percent. Politically and economically, the arrangement has placed the union and Upshaw on the horns of a dilemma: If the union doesn't address the needs of disabled retirees, it runs the risk of looking callously indifferent; if it does, the kitty for the active membership declines by whatever is spent on the disability awards. Upshaw, a retired player himself, acknowledges tensions. "I have [active] players who don't like us paying so much for the [retirees]," he says.

Upshaw and the retirees' representatives agree on this point: There is virtually no bond between the active players and the retired ones. The union chief casually observes that the retirees don't pay his salary and that, therefore, he doesn't represent them. "My obligation is to the players playing now," he says. "And it's a different kind of group these days."

Different generation, different expectations and a whole new set of riches for everybody involved. When Pear starred at a peak salary of $125,000, the average player's annual salary was less than $100,000. Today, it's about $1.8 million. The league's annual revenue has correspondingly soared several-fold and, in 2006, was estimated to be from $6 billion to $7 billion. The worth of NFL franchises is in some cases more than 40 times the value of teams in Pear's era.

Pondering these numbers, Pear just shakes his head. "So much money there -- it's unbelievable that we're the guys who helped to build up the league, but we're the ones fighting for crumbs."

But, Upshaw says, such a focus misses the point. He fears that, if disability payments "go to any borderline cases out there," the floodgates will open, and there "might be thousands" of claims from NFL retirees who will "say they hurt somewhere on their bodies . . . Heck, a lot of guys have little things." He says the league couldn't endure such a press of claims. "We couldn't afford that," he says. "And the [active] players wouldn't go for it . . . The players right now give up $82,000 a year [on average] to fund all the things we're doing with disability [payments] and pensions . . . We can't pay for everything for all the [retirees] asking for it. We want to protect money for the retired players who really need and deserve it."

Upshaw says that, as of last fall, 428 retirees out of 1,052 applicants had been awarded disability payments from one of the retirement plan's programs, with the union having paid a combined $126 million on pension benefits and disability claims for the retirees. At last count, 317 were still receiving disability payments, he says. But retirees have long been suspicious of the union's numbers. A lawsuit filed against a subsidiary of the players union by Bernie Parrish, a former union executive and retired Cleveland Browns defensive back, asserts that tax records reveal that only 121 retirees received disability benefits in 2006. Worse, Upshaw's critics point out, the union has frequently joined the league in aggressively trying to deny retiree disability claims.

Pear's cognitive problems do not qualify him for disability payments under the league's plan. As a general stance, neither the union nor the league believes that any player's mental impairment has been caused by football.

Upshaw resents that people have made him out "to be the bad guy" in all this. "We're working with the league to make things better," he says, referring to a relatively new NFL program that covers joint replacements for qualified retirees that will be paid for by league and union contributions. Then there are league- and union-generated charitable programs, such as the Players Assistance Trust, which provided $1.2 million in assistance to struggling retirees in 2006, according to Upshaw. Pension benefits for the retirees have climbed on average by about 25 percent in recent years, he says. "We can't do everything overnight," he says. "But we've made progress, and where does it get you? . . . You're helping people, you're paying some of their bills, and then the same people criticize you? That just doesn't seem right."

"I'll tell you what isn't right," Pear fumes later. "It's when rich people destroy hurting players and stop them from getting hundreds of thousands in their disability benefits -- and then have the nerve to tell some of them they should be grateful for getting a few bucks in charity. They try to make you feel guilty . . . Their policy has