NFL fails on disability issue, House panel told

Four former football players Tuesday told a House panel that the NFL’s disability retirement system is broken, and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) chastised league and union leaders for failing to treat injured retirees and their families in a dignified manner.

“The [retiree disability] system does not work,” Mike Ditka, a Hall of Fame player and coach with the Chicago Bears, told the lawmakers. “There’s a difference between perception and reality. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to go back and take care of these players.... It’s right versus wrong, period.”

Tuesday’s House Judiciary subcommittee hearing came after growing public protests from former players who allege that the league has been negligent in dispensing disability benefits to retirees who suffer from such problems as hip injuries and early onset dementia linked to on-the-field concussions.

Waters, who serves on the full Judiciary Committee, spoke from personal experience about the case of former Washington Redskins player Jim Shorter, a friend of her husband, Sidney Williams, a retired NFL player himself.

“Jim Shorter died an awful death,” Waters told the panel. “He was blind, on dialysis.... He had several amputations.”

Waters, who intervened on Shorter’s behalf, said that other NFL retirees had warned her that the benefits application process for Shorter would be grueling. Ultimately, she said, Shorter was unsuccessful.

“He had taken early retirement, so they said he wasn’t eligible for disability benefits,” Water said.

After the hearing, Waters and the subcommittee’s ranking Republican, Utah’s Chris Cannon, questioned whether it is time for Congress to reconsider the NFL’s antitrust breaks to make sure aging football players are treated fairly. The breaks were granted through the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.

Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Lakewood), who chairs the subcommittee, questioned how only 3% of the NFL’s past and present players are receiving disability payments despite playing in a league where “half of all players retire because of injury [and] 60% of players suffer a concussion.”

Dennis Curran, the NFL senior vice president who oversees player benefits, said the league dispensed about $20 million in disability payments last year to 317 players. Until Tuesday’s hearing, the league had said about $19 million had been paid out to 284 players. No explanation was given for the increases.

In addition, Curran said, the league voluntarily increased pension benefits by 25% for athletes who played before 1982 and has increased charitable donations to former players who have fallen upon hard times.

But former athletes who appeared during the hearing said the NFL’s retiree medical benefits plan is stacked against them.

Former Oakland Raider Curt Marsh, who played for seven years, testified that a wrongly diagnosed injury resulted in his right foot and ankle eventually being amputated. Marsh said that, despite the amputation, back surgeries and hip-replacement surgery, the NFL union’s disability plan still required him to see three doctors before he was ruled eligible for benefits.

“It took nearly a year and a half,” said Marsh. “The whole time I thought to myself, ‘If I don’t qualify, then who does?’ ”

He also said that after publicly talking about his ordeal, NFL officials tried to correct his account. “I am a football player, but I’m not stupid ... and I have no problem with my memory,” he said.

Marsh’s complaints were similar to what other former NFL players said Tuesday morning at a news conference sponsored by the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund, a nonprofit group formed to aid players with medical and financial problems.

Retirees and family members of deceased players, many choking back tears, told of having to fight the system set in place by the NFL and the NFL Players Assn.

“This is a span of an entire generation of players being affected by this,” said Eugene “Mercury” Morris, a former star running back for the Miami Dolphins who has been fighting for disability payments for years.

Morris pointed to 35-year-old Brian DeMarco, who needed the assistance of two other players to sit and stand because of back injuries that required doctors to insert titanium rods and screws.

A former offensive tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals, DeMarco said that even though he has lost the use of one leg and has extreme nerve pain in his elbows, he has not been approved for disability payments from the league.

“I came because I was asked to represent modern-day players,” he said while fighting back tears. DeMarco said he and his wife had been homeless three times in the last four years, including a five-month stint spent living in a storage unit. “This is not just affecting the players. It’s affecting entire families. My wife has to take care of our children ... [and] her 35-year-old husband too.”

A few days ago, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell set a meeting for July 24 to try to resolve the dispute. Retirees and union chief Gene Upshaw will attend. And last week, the NFL and the NFLPA said the disability plan would now use Social Security standards to define disabilities, a move that is expected to speed the decision-making.

In his testimony Tuesday, Curran said that would mean those players who qualify for Social Security disability would also qualify for NFL disability, but it was unclear whether more retirees would qualify for football-related disability checks, which generally are higher.

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Times staff writer Greg Johnson contributed to this report.

claudia.lauer@latimes.com