Being a sports fan, I’ve been meaning to write a bit about the controversy involving retired football players. As some of you know, there was a hearing yesterday on the disability program for the folks who played in the National Football League. The players who really have been left to struggle in their post-playing years are the not-famous, unseen guys–people who average three years in the league and leave with battered bodies (you can’t be a 300-pound lineman and get pounded every game and, then, live very easily with a body built to be huge but now lacking in the kind of physical workout that is required to keep pace with a professional sports career–you just plain deteriorate).

    For the non-sports fans, here’s a snippet from the report in The New York Times:

If it were as easy as that, though, the N.F.L. and the N.F.L. Players Association would not be mired in a long-standing fight with retired players who say they have been unjustly denied benefits after sustaining football-related injuries, most stemming from the brutality of the game.

On Tuesday, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hosted the second congressional hearing in three months about the N.F.L.’s disability plan and the way it is administered. In June, a House subcommittee held a hearing on the payments that come from a $1.1 billion fund earmarked for disability and pension payments to the league’s retirees.

N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said in testimony Tuesday that the benefits available to retired players have improved over time. Still, both sides of the issue told the Senate that they needed Congress’s assistance to make the disability plan better or, as former Minnesota Vikings lineman Brent Boyd said, to fix a program filled with “fraud, corruption and collusion.”

    There has been a general feeling among some athletes, inside and outside the league, that the league and the players association, led by Gene Upshaw, have a much too cozy relationship–which has caused the current controversy. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that the teams are multi-million dollar corporate enterprises and, though it is hard for the average worker to feel solidarity with people who appear to have a great turn in life as professional athletes, the exploitation is not much different: employers will try to suck every last ounce of energy and sweat from an auto worker or an offensive lineman and pay as little as possible and try to have as little responsibility for that person after she or he retires. That’s the free market for you.

    If you’d like to read another analysis of the situation, here is one from Michael McCann, a law professor at Mississippi College School of Law who specializes in sports law. McCann points out:

For a number of reasons, many NFL players will eventually, and sometimes unexpectedly, rely on their pensions for sustenance. The most salient reason may be the often difficult transition from well-paid NFL player to less-profitable and less-glamorous "ex" or "retired" NFL player. Indeed, the average NFL career lasts only three and a half seasons, usually occurring between ages 21 to 25, and most players earn less than the average NFL salary, about $1.1 million. Players need to play at least three seasons in the NFL to satisfy the pension’s vesting requirement, and age 55 serves as the NFL’s designated retirement age (although players can tap in earlier at reduced payments).

    And he concludes with this apt point about the fate of most players who never become famous:

Instead, they go back home and live relatively ordinary lives, unrecognized by strangers, much like the rest of us. Consequently, their life struggles aren’t well positioned to capture the public’s attention, save for when made known to a sympathetic journalist or a compassionate politician.

And therein lies perhaps the most disheartening implication of indifference towards the plight of ex-NFL players: how many plights of other ordinary Americans are we ignoring?