Posted on 05/10/2013 4:15:58 PM PDT by Huntress
After 24 knee operations, the National Football League’s former Man of the Year leans heavily on a crutch. When Reggie Williams pulls up his pants leg, what’s underneath looks like the trimmings from a butcher shop. His right leg is so ravaged that it’s three inches shorter than his left. Worse, it’s uninsured.
Once, Williams was the NFL’s high ideal. From 1976 to 1989 he was a spring-legged linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals who set franchise records and played in two Super Bowls. Off the field, he was a civic-minded Dartmouth graduate who won humanitarian awards and served as a city councilman while he was still playing. He was so loyal to the game that he was a pallbearer at legendary team founder Paul Brown’s funeral. He would even be invited to apply for the job of NFL commissioner.
But now, Williams and his battered legs amount to a bill no one wants to pay. Since 2005 Williams, 58, has suffered a cascade of health problems he says stem from his 14-year football career, including multiple knee replacements and a bone infection, which he estimates have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket.
Williams says he is unable to qualify for most NFL disability benefits, and the Bengals — the only team for whom he played — are opposing him in a workers’ compensation claim that would provide for his medical care. These tedious battles have transformed him from a league champion into a critic. “All they’ve done is fought me on everything,” he says, “including even sending me a Band-Aid.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Hello - isn’t that part of the sport? You choose to play a game for a living that involves intense physical contact, you get paid a salary that is more than the majority of their average fans... then plan for that. Put money back for that.
A fellow that was a couple of years behind me in high school, eventually went on to have a pretty successful career in the NFL. I remember when he was drafted, he pursued all sorts of insurance policies to insure his future against injuries and other troubles that can come from the game. The insurance is out there. It’s expensive (but so is insurance for someone who is extremely obese and also engages in extremely unsafe activities).
It seems strange that Williams would not have been advised to take out such insurance. Or maybe he did and this report
doesn’t tell the “rest of the story”?
Regardless - I am just waiting for someone to suggest the government bail him and others out...
I think that is a fair question....Reggie, what happened to all the money you got paid?
You knew that football was a high risk/high reward endeavor. Didn’t you plan anything for life after football. Didn’t you acquire any other skills while in college? Something ? Anything ?
We appreciate your humanitarian work, but you should have been more prudent with your altruism and how you were going to finance that. A good job with decent insurance would cover these problems or is working a 2080 hour day job beneath you?
Destroying your body for financial gain is stupid and irresponsible.
I don’t feel even a little sorry for these players.
Looking at typical salaries... he earned about 90K a year for about 13 years. Chances are you will make more over the course of your career.
Anyway, this is on the league and the union to do the right thing.
The fans.
He probably made in the neighborhood of 1.4 Million... average salaries where less than 100k when he entered the league.
That's why players have agents and contracts.........
With that being said, as expected, we only have Reggie's side of the story
Not in the 70s and 80s.
The lawyers are going to get rich and NFL football as we know it will be ruined.
Explain? Tony Mandrich.
Most of the posts on here are pretty conservative, the owners and players pay. There was one funny sarc comment about ObamaCare paying
You should be upset with NFL owners making money playing in Taxpayer funded stadiums. The welfare receiving owners should take some responsibility. Or, is Business Socialism OK with you?
No sympathy for NFL owners who get our tax dollars for their stadiums (except the Redskins and Dolphins...who play in privately owned stadium....er maybe not Dolphins....they just begged the state of FL for a taxpayer funded stadium)
The injuries are work related and are a responsibility of the employer.
The players are being paid market rate for the value they bring to the business, not for the long term health effects of the work they do.
Because the employers have refused to do what is right their business is going to end as we know it before much longer.
So oil field workers injured on the job should have to cover their own medical costs?
You sound jealous, perhaps we should redistribute the money more evenly.
You mean the same league that has teams strong-arming cities to spend $hundreds of millions (or billions now!) on new stadiums, even though the teams and the owners make huge sums of profit, and the NFL itself that makes huge profits... yet wants taxpayers to foot the bills for every other aspect...
yeah - that’s gonna happen.
“Oh, Good God.... These players make exponentially more than 99% of everyone else. How about a little self-responsibility?”
No kidding. They knew the risks. They accepted the risks in order to make fame and fortune. ‘Nuff said.
What a concept - a co-op to share the risks. Seems to logical. Especially when they can cry to other people and try to force them (taxpayers) to foot the bill.
high-rent leeches.
You've almost got it right. Actually, these guys got rich off the owners, they should have a little responsibility to buy themselves insurance.
They were paid market rate for hte value they bring to the business, that is true. But ... did the contracts they signed stipulate medical care coverage? If not, why not? Yet they signed the contracts anyway. Sounds to me their respective agents should’ve pursued that little detail.
And..their medical care they received with their respective teams is far and away what common folk receive.
“The recipient of an academic scholarship”...to an IVY LEAGUE school, none the less...
Did football knock his brains loose???
From 1976 to 1989. That's a huge chunk o' change back then. That's the equivalent of the high-100s now. If it's so important, why didn't the players have language put into their contracts to cover them?
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