Most NFL Players Choosing to Collect a Reduced Pension at 45

Vested players, in the language of pro football, are those who have played at least four years in the National Football League since 1959, when the league established its current pension plan.

The vested are the veterans, in other words. And they have come up for discussion during the NFL’s labor-management fight for several reasons:

--The average former lineman or former back getting an NFL pension is receiving less than $385 a month, less than $4,600 a year.

--In the 28 years since the plan began, 72 of the NFL’s vested players have died.

--Their average age at death was 38.

--Another 324 vested old pros are still alive and collecting pensions after choosing payment at the age of their choice--45, 55 or more.

--In line with insurance company practices, players settling for pensions at age 45 are getting only about half as much as those who wait until their 55th birthdays.

--But, shockingly, despite this disparity, and in the face of evidence that a life expectancy into the 70s is the U.S. norm today, 285 of the NFL’s eligible vested players, or 88% of the total, chose to begin collecting at 45.

“They don’t think they’ll live to be 55,” an executive of the NFL Players Assn. said the other day.

The executive is Michele J. (Mickey) Yaras, the union’s director of benefits, who keeps the records and provided the statistics.

“The guys playing today tell me the same thing,” she said. “Most of them think they have a life expectancy in the early 50s.

“There’s no way to prove it. To my knowledge, no (longevity) study has ever been made of football players. But I’ve been here since 1978. I know what they think and say and do. They don’t expect to be around too long.”

One of the major influences has apparently been the widespread use of steroids.

According to some NFL trainers, the players are very much aware that steroids reduce life expectancy, but they use them in increasing numbers even so--to gain weight--because pro teams now want 300-pound linemen.

“Steroids affect liver function, and the liver is such an important organ,” Ram physician Robert Kerlan said.

“I’d think anyone using steroids over a prolonged period of time would probably have a lower life expectancy. But statistical evidence is lacking.

“No scientific study that I’m aware of has ever proved the link between football and a shorter life.”

That’s the problem, the experts agree. No actuarial people have compiled any data in this field--for insurance companies or anyone else--because the base of players is so small.

“Only about 22,000 people have ever played NFL football,” Joel Bussert, the league’s director of player personnel, said.

And insurance companies think in terms of millions or more, not specialized groups of 22,000.

Margaret H. Mushinski, a New York researcher for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., said: “We don’t have any data, medical or statistical, on football players (because) there are so few of them.”

Linda Delgadillo, director of communications for the national Society of Actuaries, said: “(Insurance) companies do look at group trends--that is, big (groups). NFL players as a group are such a minuscule percentage (of U.S. males).”

In the minds of the players, however, the problem is hardly minuscule.

“The thing we need most is a study of former NFL players,” Yaras said. “The league is in position to (underwrite) a study, but hasn’t done it. Hardly anything is more important in this (area).”

She said the players need the data to make informed judgments on the best age to start drawing a pension. And the negotiators need it to make realistic longevity assumptions.

Two kinds of information are required, and one is already on file.

“The names of the players (on each NFL roster) are generally available going back to the 1920s,” the NFL’s Bussert said.

What isn’t readily available, everyone concedes, is what happened to them--particularly to those who played three or four years or fewer. Many could be tracked down, but it would be costly, and nobody has been willing to fund the project.

Here are some related matters that NFL people are talking about this month:

Question: If the NFL’s pension plan only began in 1959, what of the players who were in the league before then?

Answer: Of the thousands who played before 1959, only 598 are on NFL pensions. And payments only started this year. “Most (recipients) are in their 50s and early 60s,” Lisa Hatter said at the NFL office. “The list of eligibles is between 900 and 950, but some of them can’t be found, and some haven’t yet turned 55.”

Q: What’s happened to the rest of them?

A: Many are dead, and others couldn’t meet the NFL’s eligibility requirements. Although a pro football player’s career expectancy is about four years, the league only agreed to pay five-year veterans. And it only agreed to that last winter after years of lobbying by the two player groups, the NFL Alumni Assn. and the NFL Players Assn.

Q: How are pension payments figured for pre-’59 players?

A: At age 55, they get $60 a month for each year of NFL service. For a five-year veteran, that’s $300 a month or $3,600 a year. The pension for a 10-year veteran is $600 a month or $7,200 a year.

Q: How are payments figured for those who have played since 1959?

A: At 55, they get $150 a month for each year of NFL service. The pension for a four-year modern-era veteran is the same as that for a 10-year pre-’59 veteran: $600 a month or $7,200 a year. Those opting for pensions at age 45 get about 55% of that.

Q: How many four-year players are active on NFL teams today?

A: The league says it has 1,624 pre-strike players, including those on injured reserve, of whom 818 are vested and 826 nonvested.

Q: Pros worry that the hits they take in football games eventually will affect life expectancy. They say their heads and bodies take more abuse in one game than other people’s bodies take in a lifetime. Is this a valid point?

A: The only study ever made in this general area was completed long ago. According to Metropolitan Life researcher Mushinski, an 1876-1900 look at baseball players found that catcher was the game’s most dangerous position.

Based on a mortality index ratio of 100 for adult males at the time, outfielders, with a ratio of 95, outlived the average, whereas catchers, 108, didn’t. No such study has been made of football players. And since 1900, the protective gear for catchers has been improved.

Metropolitan Life found that the average baseball player’s career is shorter than a football player’s career. Of 8,680 baseball players studied in 1901-73, only 37% lasted more than four years in the majors. About 30% only played one big league season.

But baseball players live longer than most people. Their mortality index rate is only 72% of that of white males in the Metropolitan Life report.

Q: Do any insurance people consider football playing an occupational hazard?

A: The only recent report in this area--a 1967 occupation study by the Chicago-based national Society of Actuaries--excluded all pro athletes because “the data were not sufficiently extensive.”

In Chicago, Delgadillo listed the following as some of the society’s relevant findings, based on a mortality index ratio of 100 for adult males: race drivers, 446; turfmen and sportsmen, except jockeys, 134; actors, 141; U.S. Army officers, 72; enlisted men, 214.

Even so, insurance companies apparently don’t pay much attention to occupational hazards for anyone, let alone football players. Delgadillo said the society’s 1967 study has never been updated.

Q: What have social scientists discovered about the longevity of football players?

A: Dr. Ellsworth Buskirk of Penn State’s Human Performance Laboratory said: “No one has ever looked exclusively at pro football players . . . the complete picture, their activity habits after football, and so on.

“The (life-expectancy) case against steroids hasn’t been proved, although enough adverse side effects have shown up to (indicate that extensive use is harmful). . . . There is some evidence that bulking up for short periods may not be harmful. (Using steroids) for 14 or 15 years in college and the NFL may be (another matter).

“(As for) life expectancy, the big factor is what football players do after football--if they keep up actively or gain weight and do other foolish things.”

Sounding a similar note, Dr. Henry Montoye of the University of Wisconsin Biodynamics Laboratory said:.

“What’s important (in life expectancy) is what athletes do after their sports career is over. The critical factor is their after-football weight and exercise program--maintaining a physically active life style.”

Montoye also discovered that “honor students (have) greater longevity than athletes or their average classmates.”

In a study of Harvard graduates, Dr. Ralph S. Paffenbarger Jr. of Stanford found that heart attacks declined “with increases in energy expenditure (by stair-climbing, walking and sports play).” Physically active alumni aged 35-74 “were at 39% lesser risk than classmates with a lower (activity) index.”

But Paffenbarger made no distinction between football players and other athletes when he concluded flatly that “habitual post-college exercise, not student sports play, predicts low coronary heart disease risk.”

To date, Buskirk, Montoye, Paffenbarger and the nation’s other social scientists working in this field have ignored football players as a special group--though they certainly seem special.

They differ greatly from tennis players, say, or track athletes, in the kinds and quantities of food they eat.

Moreover, their work habits are as drastically different from those of other athletes as their dietary habits. For one thing, football players, unlike golfers or javelin throwers, take repeated blows to the head in practices and games. They also work out at length in heavy gear in hot weather. And until recently, they were always deprived of water or soft drinks until after practices and games on the hottest days.

From her Washington office, Yaras said: “This is only a lay person’s view, but I don’t see how any researcher could lump football players with other athletes on the (life expectancy) charts.”

Among other things, college golfers and tennis players usually continue to play golf and tennis after graduation. Football players, to remain active, must learn a new game. Some do, some don’t.

Q: In a three-color public relations release last month, the NFL announced that its benefits for old players far exceed baseball’s. The release stated that NFL benefits for seven-year veterans at 55 are $3,586 by comparison with baseball’s $2,112. So why is the NFLPA fighting the NFL on pensions?

A: Said Yaras: “To get these misleading figures, the NFL includes severance pay along with pension payments. The NFL knows there’s a difference between severance pay and pensions, but they won’t admit it. This is a deliberate distortion.

“(The NFL’s) severance pay is $80,000 for a five-year player. It is collected immediately, when the team cuts the player--not at age 45 or 55. Severance is necessary to help the player’s transition to the real world. He is going from a six-figure salary, perhaps, to a $20,000 salary as a high school coach. The NFL tacks severance onto pensions to hide the fact that they have a shoddy pension plan.”

Q: How is the NFL’s pension plan funded, and why have the players and owners been arguing over it this year at the bargaining table?

A: It is funded by owners’ contributions, which nearly doubled to an average $7.5 million annually in 1977--when the players, for their part, gave up free agency. In the 1982 agreement with the union, the owners raised their annual commitment to $12.5 million.

Shortly afterward, when Internal Revenue disallowed the NFL’s tax deductibility claim, the owners ceased contributing, though they continued to fund benefits. They and the players are now in court over whether the NFL is in default of $18 million.

In 1987 bargaining, the owners are proposing that they make no more fixed contributions. To get free of this obligation, they have offered to guarantee a fixed pension of $200 instead of $150 per month at age 55 to a vested player.

The union says that the owners have reneged on the contributions they promised, that the contributions should continue, and that in labor relations, when multi-employer pension plans are over-funded, benefits are supposed to increase.