Some of football’s all-time greats will step aside unless the NFL does right by their fellow legends.
A group of Pro Football Hall of Famers threatened to boycott future induction ceremonies unless the NFL provides health insurance and an annual salary for Hall of Fame players, according to ESPN’s Arash Markazi. The newly formed Hall of Fame Board wrote NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith and Pro Football Hall of Fame president C. David Baker a letter, which lays out its case for improved health care and financial benefits.
“We, the undersigned Pro Football Hall of Famers, were integral to the creation of the modern NFL, which in 2017 generated $14 billion in revenue,” the letter says, per Markazi. “But when the league enshrined us as the greatest ever to play America’s most popular sport, they gave us a gold jacket, a bust and a ring — and that was it.
“People know us from our highlight reels. They see us honored and mythologized before games and at halftime, and it would be reasonable if they thought life was good for us,” the letter notes. “But on balance, it’s not. As a group we are struggling with severe health and financial problems. To build this game, we sacrificed our bodies. In many cases, and despite the fact that we were led to believe otherwise, we sacrificed our minds.”
The Hall of Fame Board cites Major League Baseball as an example for how a league should treat its retired players.
“A baseball player who has appeared on a Major League roster for one day is entitled to health insurance for the rest of his life,” the letter says. “A player employed on a roster for 43 days gets a lifelong pension .. the NFL is the only major American corporation that is set up this way.”
Legendary NFL running back Eric Dickerson leads the list of signatures, which also includes Jim Brown, Marshall Faulk, Curtis Martin, Joe Namath, Jerry Rice, Deion Sanders and others.
The NFL, NFLPA and Pro Football Hall of Fame should be wary of ignoring demands from a lineup this illustrious, as the ex-players’ absences from future ceremonies in Canton, Ohio, would be glaring, perhaps embarrassing.
