NFL old-timers get help in fight

CHICAGO -- Former pro football players who have been waging an increasingly hostile battle over retiree disability benefits today will make public the names of current players who also fault the NFL and its players’ union for failing to properly assist retired players with serious medical and financial problems.

A news conference by the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund scheduled for this morning will detail what is being described as a “groundbreaking initiative” by current NFL players to address the growing needs of their predecessors on the field. The Gridiron Greats was formed last year to assist old-timers with serious medical and financial problems.

Gridiron Greats Executive Director Jennifer Smith on Monday declined to identify which current players will join ranks with the NFL veterans -- or say just what they will do to help ease suffering among aging NFL retirees.

“This is the first time an organized group of current NFL players will stand alongside of retired players,” Smith said. The initiative, she added, was developed by a current NFL player who will be in Chicago along with other current players this morning to explain the plan.

Until now, few current players have weighed in publicly on whether the league and the NFL Players Assn. are doing enough for old-timers with severe medical and financial problems. Retired players argue that they’ve been unable to sway union leadership because their union memberships expire when their careers end.

The NFLPA has in the past countered such criticism by outlining the various steps it has taken to boost pension payments and other benefits for old-timers who retired years before the league and its players began to benefit financially from increasingly lucrative television rights contracts.

The NFL and the players’ union are both funding new health-related programs that are designed to make it easier for retirees to get hip and knee replacement surgeries and other medical care for injuries that probably are tied to long-ago injuries.

The NFLPA also has begun to pay for medical care for NFL veterans with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The union also has made $5.5 million in total grants to more than 900 players who’ve fallen upon hard times since 1980.

Gridiron Greats board member and former Chicago Bears standout Mike Ditka, an outspoken critic of the NFL and its players’ union when it comes to the treatment of former players, will be at the news conference.

Ditka and several other former players used a Senate subcommittee hearing in September to lash out at the NFL establishment for failing to provide sufficient financial and medical help for aging players, most of whom never enjoyed the large salaries that current players receive.

NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell used that same hearing to defend professional football from charges that not enough is being done for old-timers with dire needs.

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greg.johnson@latimes.com