I see fines for upsetting Goodell’s delicate fee-fees:
Steelers receiver Hines Ward has teed off on the NFL for its handling of the concussion problem, in comments to Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports, who has interviewed eight veteran players on the question of big hits and other issues for GQ.
“We don’t know what they want,” Ward said regarding the league’s rules pertaining to helmet-to-helmet hits. “They’re so hypocritical sometimes. They came out with these new helmets that are supposed to stop concussions. If they care so much about our safety, why don’t they mandate that we wear the new ones? If they’re so worried about what concussions will do to us after our careers, then guarantee our insurance for life. And if you’re going to fine me for a hit, let the money go to veteran guys to help with their medical issues. “To say the league really cares? They don’t give a f–k about concussions. And now they want to add on two extra games? Are you kidding? Come on, let’s be real.”
He’s right.
stuckinred
How bout that Dawg!
Cat Lady
There was more to the interview too- he said that the lack of a CBA would mean that players would have no insurance, which currently pays not only for surgery, etc. but for rehab. If it takes a Steeler to focus Teatard America on what it may mean to someone other than themselves that they care about, then the Steelers will be good for something. But Roethlisberger can still DIAF.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
He’s not quite right. Goodell cares about concussions to the point where the public perception that the NFL doesn’t care disappears. He doesn’t care beyond that point.
urizon
Ward sounds like a man who knows he’s about to play his last game.
JPL
But they get paid so much…………………
IMO, this is such a clear cut case that the owners are wrong. Unfortunately, the news media is not reporting it that way. Who would have thought that MSM wouldn’t side with the players on this.
Linnaeus
Here’s the NFLPA’s Nolan Harrison on injuries.
Mako
Only recently started watching american football again, and often find myself confused by the rules; aren’t concussions basically time-outs? A chance to slide in another scheduled commercial break?
arguingwithsignposts
Good for Hines Ward. the NFL is a bunch of greedy owners, and Roger Goodell is just their lackey. He deserves to catch hell for anything the players can get their hands on. I know it’s going to be easy to bag on the players when the league is shut down next year, but let’s remember that the owners make a hella lot more money than any player, and Jerry Jones hasn’t risked shit for his little thunderdome.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, the owners are really into the “soshulism for me, but not for thee, player serfs!” mentality.
Sixers
Hines is so persecuted its sad.
gwangung
Which means the average American sports fan will side with them and dump on the “spoiled, overpaid players.”
SteveinSC
These poor young men are just fuel for the money machine, just like soldiers and white rednecks. The rich only care about the few years these eloi in helmets and jockstraps can sell ads, push signature tennis shoes or some fucking soft drink. With what’s left after they’re washed up, go to a fucking Emergency Room if they start having hallucinations. Manufactured glory and hype while they’re generating zillions. Empty hulls to be spit to the side when they wear out.
Mikey
Never cared that much for Hines Ward. I just changed my mind.
meh
Hines Ward is an asshole. Plain and simple. I’m sorry that the league has asked you to play an extra two games…of football. For millions of dollars. Let’s not forget that the average career in the NFL is 4.5 years. Even making the league minimum of $325K. That’s $1.3M over 4 years pre-tax. If you aren’t smart enough to manage your own money to ensure that you and your family are taken care of for at least the next 10 years, then you are a moron.
This is another example of why I no longer watch football. Too many tone-deaf WATB complaining that they don’t make enough, or that the teams will move if they don’t get a taxpayer financed stadium. Give the morons bread & circuses and they will lie down like dogs. Like Patrick Ewing said, “Yeah we make a lot, but we also spend a lot”. GFY athletes.
Linnaeus
My former neighbor is an ex-NFL player, one whose name some of you would recognize if I were to mention it. Had a chat with him once on the front porch that our triplex units shared and he told me a few things about how pro football works that people don’t know. Rather eye-opening.
Jay B.
@Sixers:
And you are so smart, it’s hilarious. Thanks for sharing your amazingly brilliant insights. Sure, that whiny nigger should shut up and play ball (because what else are they good for, amirite?), but thankfully, while a lot of his co-workers will have permanent brain damage and assorted other physical traumas, we’ll always have your comment. We should encourage more!
@meh: And another one! Awesome. Shut up and play ball you ignorant nigger! Hope you enjoy that $1.3 million while you’re in permanent rehab!
Mako
I really don’t know what this post or that article is about.
But this video is cool.
http://www.extremesportclips.com/video/299/Joe-Theisman-Leg-Break.html
dr. bloor
@meh:
If the logic here is “you make too much money to have a say in your work conditions,” I don’t imagine you watch much of anything at all.
arguingwithsignposts
@meh: In the game of who shits in his own nest the most, might i suggest field of schemes? Don’t confuse the sometimes overpaid athletes with the shitheel owners.
cathyx
I thought football players were supposed to be dumb? He doesn’t sound very dumb.
Violet
If the viewing public cared about football players’ injuries and rehab, and felt they were being treated poorly, then the public could stop watching and going to games and boycott sponsors as a protest. Owners need ticket sales and ratings and sponsorship or they don’t make money in the end.
Perhaps outraged viewers and fans should start a campaign. Partner with players. Has that ever been discussed?
Suffern ACE
@meh: I’m a pretty smart guy myself, now that I’m 40 and all. If I got $1.0 million per year all of a sudden, fuck if I’d know what to do with it. Probably give it to that nice man Bernie Maddoff, like all them smart other rich folks in New York did. Hire the right people, I suppose. There are just so many of them hanging around looking out for my interest when I don’t know what the fuck to do with all that money.
Spaghetti Lee
It’s possible to both think that the league/owners are being hypocrites and that the players are selfish. NFL players have every right to fight for better working conditions, but I’m not going to pretend to summon up righteous outrage for someone who makes millions of dollars playing sports. Yeah, they get hurt on the job. So do firemen and cops and soldiers, and they make a hell of a lot less money for it.
Jay B, why are you using that language? How did you get that that’s what people are implying?
Jay B.
@meh:
Since you pretend to be intelligent, here’s something: Players have a skill. The market for that very specialized skill is huge, but the pool of practitioners good enough to do it is vanishingly small. They get paid a fraction of what the market is worth. No one, literally no one, watches football for the owners. You can pretend to be better than it of course, but the fact remains, people enjoy the sport. And the players play it under a set of rules and a labor agreement. The owners now want to change those rules and ask more from their ultra-skilled practitioners, despite the fact that they work in a very dangerous field. Two more games, a full 12% additional work load, will further cripple the players. They may have bought into 16 games and they may not have fully known the neurological damage they are enjoying (for their non-guaranteed contracts) when they got into the game. But now, because YOU find them overpaid (for reasons that have literally nothing to do with anything, not the market, not the reality, nothing but your own personal sensibilities about What Matters and What Doesn’t), you think the guy is an asshole?
How much do you bitch about work, hero? I hope it’s like none, because what the fuck do you do that any other trained ape can’t? Now work that shitty job and have an extra day tacked on while the computer you jockey burns a hole in your head. See what you say then.
Violet
@Suffern ACE:
Don’t forget, you’d have tons of chicks trying to get in with you too. They’re happy to spend your money for you.
Dan
Is Conor Friedersdorf very very stupid?
Ailuridae
@arguingwithsignposts:
It is almost impossible to seriously argue that NFL athletes are overpaid.
some other guy
No, your thinking of European football, where players are encouraged to fake an injury every 5 minutes or so to run out the clock once they have a score advantage.
danimal
@Linnaeus: Ok, Linnaeus, as long as you’re maintaining his anonymity, you might as well share the good stuff. What’s eye-opening? Need to know.
Jay B.
@Spaghetti Lee:
Because that’s exactly the sentiment being expressed. Ward makes perfectly sensible arguments and he’s called an asshole. The majority of pro football players are black. All of the owners are white. And the players are supposed to shut up and play for what the owners want. What dynamic do you think is going on?
And if Tom Brady makes the same comment, he’d be told to shut up because he’s a pussy or gay.
SteveinSC
@Spaghetti Lee:
Jesus Fucking Christ he was trying to make a non politically correct point you prig. That happens a lot here if you’ve taken the time to notice, unless, of course, this is your first time out, sport.
BruceFromOhio
Yup.
Too basic, that holds for anyone.
It’s a very exclusive club, but not like some members-only golf course down the street. You dedicate nearly all your waking life from the time you are barely a teen (sometimes even before) to training, training, training, practice, playing, practice, and more training. The competition for college play will take out any normal human. The chase to make the 53-man roaster on any NFL team is even more competitive. And on any play of any game, one bad hit ends your career, forever.
And remember, it’s a *business*, not a fucking sport. In high school, it’s still a sport, but beyond that, its all supply and demand capitalism.
I think Ward is a sneaky, snakey sonofabitch. But in this instance, I have to agree with him. League and owners could do a lot, but the business decisions dictate otherwise.
Spaghetti Lee
@SteveinSC:
Well it was a dumbass point. Someone doesn’t agree with me about NFL salary structure = OMG THEY MUST THINK ALL NFL PLAYERS ARE DUMB NIGGERS AND WANT TO OPPRESS THEM. Yeah, doesn’t follow.
Sixers
@Jay B.:
Ha! I was joking Cole for his “Steelers are the most persecuted team in the league” proclamations through out the year. Way to jump off the deep end and assume everybody is racist. I usually don’t like to dive down to your level but I think it’s safe to assume you are one dumb motherfucker. If thats not clear enough, go fuck yourself asshole.
I bet the NFL cares about concussions as seriously as the Steelers care about their star players treating women with respect.
stuckinred
@Jay B.: He’s half korean and he’d rip your sissy ass in half if you ever had the fucking guts to say some shit like that to him you loudmouth punk-ass racist motherfucker.
Suffern ACE
@Violet: While I would hope that $1.0 million per year would bring out the chicks or boy toys, I’m thinking I might need in the $5-6 million range before that became an issue. Regardless, i’d end up putting it all in a TIAA-CREFF index fund, because they sell to professors and teachers who are for the most part smart. Nothing sex “sex appeal” more than a guy who has it all in no-load no-fee funds.
JWL
Ward is too kind hearted.
The players ARE the NFL. The owners are parasites feeding on their talents and labor.
Linnaeus
@danimal:
This was several years ago, so I don’t remember all of the details, but the one thing that sticks out in my memory is his story of how his team played him with not one, but two broken arms. They were in casts (thankfully), but the pain was such that he still had to take huge cortisone (or some other drug) shots with long needles so that he could play. This guy’s position was on the defensive line, so his arms were engaged every single down he played. I can’t imagine what that must have felt like.
And he definitely suffers from some kind of joint problems (maybe arthritis) in his legs; he was in his mid 40s, I think, when he lived next door to me and he went up and down stairs like he was a man 30 years older than that.
Sixers
@SteveinSC:
Who’s the bigger prick the guy assuming people are racist or the people who arent racist but Jay is too stupid to understand what they are saying? @Spaghetti Lee:
Pretty much.
piratedan
@meh: yeah while a bunch of rich white guys sit in their owner boxes like Roman dictators watching the gladiators perform the masses….
Sixers
@JWL:
When does the XFL season start again?
BruceFromOhio
@Linnaeus:
Reminds me of “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”. When you’re a hustling, happening 20-something, you’re indestructible. The agents, coaches, union reps and owners probably don’t really want to talk about what you’re supposed to do with your millions in retirement.
@Violet: Yep, that’s a really big IF right there at the beginning. Guilty as charged.
@Spaghetti Lee:
This.
JWL
@Sixers: I’d certainly tune in if the individual NFC/AFC owners (and members of the ownership groups) chose up sides and declared the season on. It would be worth it just to witness Jerry Jones being carted off the field with a broken hip.
BruceFromOhio
@Sixers: XFL, now there was a classic example of cargo cult behavior. “Look, look! If we put a bunch of guys on the field in uniforms and market the hell out of it, we’ll be just like Thunderdome Jerry Jones!”
@JWL: No one would pay for that. Okay, *almost* no one would pay for that.
Sixers
This must not be much of sports crowd because the NFL is called a “Helmet League” for a reason that has nothing to do with concussions. Nobody cares who’s under the helmets. Don’t believe me? Take a look at how the last NFL strike turned out. Fans still showed up to watch scabs play and the players union caved. Outside the QB and one more star position player half the fans can’t name other players on their home team and they only root for the name on the helmet.
Jay B.
@Sixers:
Obviously, I didn’t get your joke. Mostly because it wasn’t funny. But cool, keep working the meta-meta-angle. You’ll be a star someday, kid.
Spaghetti Lee:
Why’s that champ? Seems utterly obvious and completely naive for you to think otherwise. Labor is always The Other — the late, great Steve Gilliard covered the New York Transit Strike (here’s a sample) in one of the high points of blogging and clearly understood the opposition. Not only have Americans become reflexively anti-union, they especially hate unions when minorities are asking for things.
Ward says something unassailable and he’s a pampered uppity asshole. And certainly in light of a year largely defined by concussions ADDING two games doesn’t exactly seem like the owners particularly respect the help, does it? Finally, I fully admit that if Tom Brady said it, people would call him a pansy, but for the same basic reason — it’s easier to hate minorities when they ask for something they feel they deserve.
@stuckinred: Yeah, I’m sure he’d hate that I agree with him and think that owners and other assorted assholes think he should just shut up and play. You’re even dumber than me, evidently.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Among grownups, feelings are fee fees only if you call your dick a pee pee and your trips to the bathroom wee wees.
I can’t take any grownup seriously who uses that godfucking awful term.
Mako
I really didn’t know the guy was one race or another. Still have no idea who he is. Are useless sports threads always this heated? Where would be a good place to read those sort of uselessly heated threads? I like internet banter.
different church-lady
About 8 years ago a linebacker made a comment to Sports Illustrated to the effect of, “They fine you for violent hits, and then you see those same hits in an NFL-branded video game.”
I thought of this when you talked about Goodell’s fees because the writer followed up the quote with the words: “Oh oh… someone’s going to be getting a call from Paul Tagliabue.”
Spaghetti Lee
@Jay B.:
I didn’t say Ward was being “unassailable”, and I did say he and NFL players have every right to fight for better working conditions. But I’m not going to start cheering for them as some sort of Niemollerian test case for labor relations in general, because they’re not. How many hundreds of times more money does an NFL star make as opposed to a New York City transit worker?
It’s about money for me, not race. I can’t speak for everyone here, but I think it’s kind of fruitless to go onto a fairly left-wing blog like this one and start flinging accusations of troglodytic racism around.
different church-lady
@Mako: when you are aware of all internet traditions, you will know the answer to your question.
Sixers
@Jay B.:
At first I was worried calling you a dumb motherfucker was a little harsh but now that I see you can’t be man? enough to say “you know what? I did misread that and calling someone a racist when they were not being one is almost as bad as actually being a racist and was totally my bad. Sorry.” or something of the sort, I’d like to add arrogant douchbag to the tail end of dumb motherfucker.
Cacti
Figures the loudest whines about helmet-to-helmet hits would come from the guy considered the dirtiest player in the league…
by his peers.
stuckinred
@Jay B.: yea, fuck you, I deleted it but it didn’t work.
Pooh
Amazingly, this thread sucks worse than your average Firebagger/Obot ultraviolence one.
stuckinred
@Sixers: Pretty funny since I misread his too. Something about that word makes me jump quickly. Fuck it, I’d rather be wrong on that than not say anything.
Jay B.
@Sixers:
I’m sorry that your unfunny joke led me to think you made a racist comment. You aren’t a racist, but you still can’t write for shit.
Three-nineteen
If the league was actually serious about helmet hits, this is what would happen: every time the refs call a helmet-to-helmet hit, that player would immediately be taken off the field. Tape of the hit would go to the booth for review. If the booth determined it was intentional, the player would be ejected immediately. If it happened in the 4th quarter, the player wouldn’t be able to dress for the next week’s game.
Lysana
@Spaghetti Lee:
With a hell of a lot better health insurance and retirement policy, too. Do you have even the LEAST idea what the fuck you’re talking about?
joe from Lowell
That was a righteous rant!
Eighteen games, are you effing kidding me?
joe from Lowell
No, wait:
That was a righteous rant.
Also, cops, firemen, and even soldiers don’t get disabled at anything close to the rate of NFL players.
gwangung
And people whine about that, too, for police and firemen.
Face it, Americans have become reflexively anti-union, anti-benefits, for no damn good reason.
meh
@Jay B.:
They get 65% of the revenue that comes into the league. Hard to see that as a fraction of the market. That is in addition to whatever endorsement deals they have outside the realm of their playing contracts.
um, no. Coal mining is a very dangerous field. The military during wartime is a very dangerous field. This is football.
And people wonder why the teahadists fight to protect their Galtian overlords, the banksters. Yes, I think they are overpaid because they play a game. That’s why I don’t watch it. You disagree which seems to have hurt your tender man feelings…/shrug
Yup, pretty much. But then again, I think you’re an asshole too. It’s the utter narcissism that these pricks show. Out of everyone in this pissy little drama, the only guy that seems halfway decent is Cromartie. He comes out and says let’s get this shit resolved. There are thousands of people that make their living from this game – vendors, ticket takers, ya know – the trained apes of the world. But no, perhaps the players and owners should let us know that if we aren’t careful, they will come for our shitty little jobs next.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@JWL: Owners who do not compete in an open market, but rather as either a single entity or a cartel of individual entities. They shape shift depending on which argument gets them more money as owners.
I say lets do this right. Get rid of the collective bargaining agreement. Drop the draft and the salary cap. Let the owners truly compete for the talent and quit colluding to fix salaries. Let the teams compete for talent by providing the benefits that the players are asking for and salaries indicative of a player’s true market value.
Jager
If you’ve ever played any of the rough sports on a high level, you realize just how hard it is on your body. I played hockey from 5 years of age to 35. I played on a high level high school team, a very good college club team and in adult leagues. I just went to my high school hockey team reunion, all guys in their early 60’s, out of the 23 who showed up, there were 18 knee operations, artificial knees, artificial hips, dental implants, deviated septums and everybody had arthritis somewhere. The guys with the worst problems were the few who played Division one hockey or Jr Hockey and the one guy who made it to the NHL. I can’t imagine a group of people in their early sixties anywhere in the world as beat up as our team is. And football is worse.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@meh: I disagree. I think being crippled if you have a fair to middling career counts as a dangerous profession. Always one hit away from paralysis or death. One injury away from your contract being null and void. This and they end up with dimentia, depression, and other mental impairments. All leading to a shorter life span.
I think the question should be asked: what do the owners do to earn their 35%? Let the players form a co-op and play without those leeches sucking their blood. Most of the stadia are publicly funded anyhow.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Barb (formerly Gex):
oh, and their developmental league is publicly subsidized yet for profit NCAA in which leagues and coaches get paid handsomely while the players are severely punished for trying to profit. And of course these guys face all the same risks as the pros. Without the payday.
meh
@ barb – I get what you’re saying but I happen to think that low, low rates of serious injury or death preclude it from being a very dangerous profession. Having said that, if they are able to negotiate lifetime medical insurance, good for them. My annoyance at Ward boils down to the public whining. There are a lot of people hurting through no fault of their own so his comments came across as tone-deaf to me, but I could be wrong.
Also, too – the owners are just as bad if not worse. They at least have the common sense not to whine in public for the most part.
A pox on both their houses…oh and the steelers QB is a rapist…
Mako
@joe from Lowell:
Why should they? Surely when one signs up for the NFL one knows it involves hurtful physical contact?
Barb (formerly Gex)
@meh: I think opting out of the existing agreement in order to ask for more games is a manner of publicly whining. Holding the ability to work in their field over the players in order to gain concessions without giving anything in return. Blaming the players because of their income seems unfair when it is really us who are paying them those salaries and creating the demand in the first place. There’s also a fair amount of looking at how the top players get paid and use that as how we judge the players. Not the minimum salary, short career guys.
I guess I’m just not a fan of the “it’s worse for someone else somewhere, so just STFU” approach to things. This is how the owners of things get those of us who work to get them rich caught up in infighting.
ETA: Living in MN and seeing the Vikings past two owners whine about not making enough money and demanding the public buy them a stadium makes me question the idea that owners don’t whine. It just doesn’t seem to count.
SteveinSC
@Barb (formerly Gex):
This!
Alan
@Spaghetti Lee:
Support their unions, too.
Look, a safe workplace is a human right, whether you earn $50k, $500k, or $5 million. Janitors have the same right to life as CEOs. And I mean that both ways—if some company is working its top execs to injury or death (Geoffrey Frost at Motorola comes to mind), that ain’t right, either.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@SteveinSC: It is basically a bunch of rich people who have bought the rights to people’s labor and manipulated the government to be allowed to act as a monopoly/cartel all while being publicly subsidized. Professional sports is the closest we get to having people “owned” by their employers – see the draft or the franchise tag, etc.
Americans repeatedly side with the brave, successful entrepreneurs who benefit from their starting position in life, their crony connections, and their political power to enrich themselves. And just as many are willing to turn their venom on the players. I can’t figure it out. The best thing the right did was get Americans to hate workers and venerate owners.
ETA: “best” as in for their own self-interest
meh
@barb – not sure how you got me to end up sticking up for the owners (as the BSG once said it’s like rooting for the house in blackjack) but there was a story in cnnsi today talking about how Gene Upshaw acknowledged prior to his death that the last CBA was weighted in the players favor and would be opted out of at the earliest possible opportunity — which it was. Let’s also not pretend that they are going to have to play 2 extra games for free…we all know that shit ain’t happenin…
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Alan: Nope. We can only be sympathetic to one, only one, group of people. Will it be Afghani orphans? Or the people of Egypt? Definitely not football players. They are rank lower than feeling sorry for ourselves on our list of people to have concern for.
I feel bad for the people of such limited concern for others. All I hear is bitterness.
meh
fywp
@ barb — at least we agree that the NCAA is an even bigger racket run by large gaping assholes…
Sixers
@Jay B.:
I’m glad you could rise off your fainting couch long enough to cement your asshole status. I accept your apology. Now keep vigilant for the next person that says something you don’t get so you can rain down your condemnation on them with furious correct grammar and writing skills until you realize how fucking stupid you sound.
Foxhunter
@meh: I’m way late to this party, but your comment about Cromartie is giving credit where credit is NOT due.
He has nine children with eight different women. He has support payments to make. That is the sole reasone he wants the CBA issue resolved.
And I’ll add that contrary to your /shrug/ opinioin, Hines Ward is not an ass. His comments about concussions from a player perspective are on the mark. It was not a display of rich athlete petulance, but an obivious point that the NFL is still late to the game in regards to the concussion issue. But feel free to continue to mock sports fans and act like an prick.
Foxhunter
@meh:
Read this, then tell me that again.
“A 1994 study of 7,000 former players by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health found linemen had a 52 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than the general population. While U.S. life expectancy is 77.6 years, recent studies suggest the average for NFL players is 55, 52 for linemen. “
JWL
@Barb (formerly Gex): I’d dig it if the players union pulled a reverse with the owners, and founded their own league. Under different management, of course. Can you imagine it? I can. There is enough cash in this country to fund a cannot lose profit maker, if the current union leadership with its own fat cat bankers struck while the iron was hot. It could be a MLB Richie Phillips leading the umps out-of-sight-and-mind moment, only with the current NFL ownership groups holding an empty bag.
Admiral_Komack
I suspect Mr. Ward will be fined…somehow, but it won’t have anything to do with what he said here…no siree, bob.
Blue Neponset
I think Ward should also blame the crappy ass, shitty, sucky, piece of shit union that represents him. Right up until he croaked Gene Upshaw didn’t think retired players were something he was paid to worry about. LINK Hopefully the new guy has figured it out.
Ward is right about the helmets too.
Noonan
Ward seems to be indicating that concussions have a lasting impact on players health. But renowned head doctor James Harrison has said concussions are just a sudden, unexpected nap. Weird.