NFL’s Pioneering Players Yet to Share in Bonanza That They Helped Create

There is an issue that the NFL wishes would just go away, quietly. Eventually, it will. But not right away. It’s about money: Who gets it, and who doesn’t.

The players get it. Oh, boy, do they get it.

Financially, today’s Super Bowl game is just one stop on a gravy-train ride for the 90 players who will suit up. For example:

--Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears, on top of his $785,000 annual salary, is reportedly guaranteed $240,000 a year for the next 41 years.

--Gary Fencik of the Bears earns about $275,000 a year.

--Dan Hampton of the Bears earns about $325,000 a year.

--Tony Eason of the New England Patriots earns about $575,000 a year.

--A few young players at the bottom of the pay scale in today’s Super Bowl have to get along on the NFL minimum, $50,000 a year.

And remember, the winning players today will get bonus checks worth $36,000, to go with the playoff money they have already made. The losers will get $18,000 apiece. So almost everyone involved makes money today--NBC, New Orleans hotels and restaurants, the airlines, even the people selling Super Bowl T-shirts at the Superdome.

QUESTION: Guess how much of all that money goes into medical or retirement benefits for the old men who decades ago built the National Football League?

ANSWER: Not one dime.

Let’s make sure everyone got that right:

Not one dime. New Orleans cabbies, hotel bellmen and New Orleans Airport skycaps will make more money today than the old, bent men with arthritic knees and hips who built the NFL on wooden cleats in the 1930s and ‘40s.

They were the pioneers--tough, hard men who played for maybe $100 a game, washed their own uniforms and loved every minute of it. And they never went on strike.

The players’ present-day union, the NFL Players Assn., provides no benefits to former NFL players who retired before 1959. Present-day players who play just four seasons will get a pension of $600 a month at age 55. For playing eight years, today’s players can draw $1,200 a month at 55.

But for players who retired before 1959, there’s nothing. No pension, no medical insurance, no hospitalization.

Tom Fears, the Hall of Fame Ram receiver of the 1950s, nearly goes white-faced when talking about the “pre-’59ers.”

“ We are the ones who built this game (the NFL),” he said at a restaurant recently, jabbing the table with his index finger for emphasis.

“ We are the ones who sold the game to the public. We are the ones who made the NFL a major league sport after World War II. We are the ones who put those first 100,000-plus crowds in the L.A. Coliseum.

“The players today are greedy bastards who could care less about the guys who paved the way for them. I’m talking about guys in the Hall of Fame, for crying out loud, who are crippled up with old football-related injuries . . . and these greedy bastards today, who’re making all this money, won’t give them one (bleeping) dime!’ ‘

Fears, who played for the Rams from 1949 to 1956, jabbed the table with his index finger again, rattling the dishes.

“At the minimum, they should provide the pre-’59ers with a medical plan,” he added. “I don’t think any of the old guys expect a pension to fall out of the sky after all these years. I don’t need one, and most of the pre-’59ers don’t. But there are some cases of real need.

“Do you know how much a medical plan for the few hundred pre-’59ers who’re left would cost? About one-half of 1% of the players’ share of the league’s TV money.”

The pre-’59ers have their own organization, the NFL Alumni Assn. It isn’t affiliated directly with the NFL and isn’t allowed under tax laws to pay pensions to former players. By marketing the names of old-timers for calendars, posters, golf tournaments and such, however, the organization has acquired enough funds to begin paying royalties to some members.

Recently, in a ceremony at NFL Alumni Assn. headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., 82-year-old Red Grange was presented with the first check, for $500. The NFL Alumni Assn. hopes to have $500 checks sent to 135 other qualified former players by the end of the year--players 65 or older who played at least five seasons.

The organization’s goal is to generate enough income to pay out $3,600 a year to qualified former players.

But to Dante Lavelli, a pre-’59er who played for the Cleveland Browns in the ‘40s and ‘50s, the presentation of a $500 check to Red Grange wasn’t a pretty sight.

“Five hundred dollars? For Red Grange ? That’s an insult!” he said. “Do today’s players have any idea what Red Grange did for the National Football League? There might not be an NFL today if it hadn’t been for Red Grange.

“We’ve tried time and time again to get the NFL Players Assn. to correct this problem, and all we’ve ever gotten was the cold shoulder.” Vic Maitland, president of the NFL Alumni Assn., said repeated efforts to include pre-’59ers in players’ association benefits have been unsuccessful.

“We’ve met with Ed Garvey (former president of the union) and Gene Upshaw (current president), and they both have told us they believe the pre-’59ers should be included in the benefits packages. But nothing has ever happened.

“They’ve both been nice to us, they’ve said this is a wrong that should be righted, that we should stick together and make it happen . . . but nothing ever happens.”

According to Dan Mitchell, director of UCLA’s Industrial Relations Institute, exclusion of old-timers from benefits by today’s members is typical of American labor unions.

“I doubt if you could find a case where early-day members of a major labor union who never were eligible for benefits in the first place were later brought into a benefits program,” he said.

“The years go by and unions acquire better benefits. . . . It’s just unlikely the old-timers would ever receive any benefits.

“The United Mine Workers have an unusual format in which retirees remain full-status members, eligible to vote in elections and benefits issues.”

At a news conference last Thursday in New Orleans, however, Upshaw indicated that the pre-’59ers may be awarded a pension benefit as soon as 1987, when the union’s operating contract with NFL owners expires. Of course, the pre-’59ers have heard this before.

“One issue we’re very concerned with is the pre-’59ers,” Upshaw said. “We feel the pre-’59ers should be covered in the pension. They contributed to the game, they built the game to what it is today.

“A survey we recently completed (showed) 83% of the players support (bringing) the pre-’59ers into the pension.”

If it ever happens, a lot of the old-timers will be surprised. Said Jim Hardy, a 1940s Chicago Cardinal quarterback: “Today’s NFL players are self-centered, selfish and couldn’t care less how they got where they are today. They think their lawyers and agents are the ones who put them in their salary brackets, but it wasn’t--it was the old-timers who built the game.

“It wouldn’t take much of a bite out of those big paychecks to take care of some of the old guys who are needy today.”

Said Dick Daugherty, once a Ram defensive back who retired in 1958: “It’s a real sad situation; a crime, really. There are old players who sacrificed their well-being decades ago to build pro football, and some of them are lingering on now, with knees in terrible shape, hips that don’t work.”

Added Ed Sprinkle, a Bear guard from the 1950s: “The reason (present-day NFL players) have never done what’s right is that they just don’t care. We’ve been hearing things like ‘We’re going to do something about this’ from them for years. Nothing ever happens. They just don’t care. All they want is security for the rest of their lives after three years in the league.”

Most pre-’59ers interviewed for this article were hesitant to name players in the category of “dire need” cases, saying that the old-timers are proud and don’t wish to be embarrassed.

Two names mentioned repeatedly, however, were Bulldog Turner, Chicago Bears, 1940-1952, and Bronko Nagurski, Bears, 1930-1937, 1943.

Sprinkle said: “Those two guys have real health problems. It’s really a sad state of affairs. Bulldog is a proud guy. He’s really hurting, but he wouldn’t fill out an application for the NFL Alumni Assn.’s dire-need fund.

“Nagurski has terrible arthritis.

“It’s a shame about Bulldog. He had 12 years in the league. If they ever decide to take care of the old guys, my gosh--they’d have to take care of Bulldog.”

Nagurski, incidentally, received a winner’s share of $210.43 when the Bears won the NFL championship game in 1933.

The NFL Alumni Assn. and the NFL jointly operate a foundation that administers a “dire-need fund” to needy old players. The money, up to $12,000 per individual, is administered by NFL Charities. Maitland said that 26 old-timers received dire need funds in 1985.

Carl Ekern, the Ram player representative, said that the pre-’59er issue has come up at several union meetings he has attended.

“It’s been talked about several times at meetings,” he said. “Upshaw has brought it up. To be honest, I doubt if you polled all the players in the league . . . I doubt if a large percentage are even aware of the problem.

“I think it’d be a great thing for the players to do--to take care of this problem. It would be a great gesture for today’s players. . . . It would help the guys who put the game where it is today.”

Of course, the pre-’59er issue will eventually go away.

As Sprinkle said: “If this goes on long enough, there won’t be any of us around to embarrass them anymore. We’ll all be dead.”