Thursday, August 18, 2011

Was It Worth Being A Pro Football Player?

Football players who were good enough to make it to the professional level got to play in front of thousands of adoring fans, make a very good salary, play few years and get an NFL pension and may never have to work again if you were a star.
But on the other hand, it seems like many pro football players, especially some stars, also have had it rough in retirement- from injuries that severely injured their knees, back and the worst, dementia.
From ESPN: Seven former players have sued the NFL in Philadelphia over the league's handling of concussion-related injuries, the first potential class-action lawsuit of its kind.
The players accuse the league of training players to hit with their heads, failing to properly treat them for concussions and trying to conceal for decades any links between football and brain injuries.
The plaintiffs include two-time Super Bowl champion Jim McMahon, who has said he played through five concussions but now frequently walks around "in a daze" and forgets why he entered a room....
Radloff's wife, Garland, wants players and their wives to know they don't have to wait for an autopsy to learn if a player has suffered a brain injury, but can get diagnosed through advanced brain scans.
Her husband suffered one of his more devastating blows in September 1988, one that knocked him out cold and yielded the headline: "Falcons Say Radloff Had a Game to Remember, If Only He Could."
The Radloffs, together since his playing days at the University of Georgia and married nearly 28 years, each turned 50 this year. He suffers from dementia and other problems associated with his Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, and can no longer hold down his post-football job in real estate.
"It is a brutal way to see somebody die, and to live with it daily and the ups and downs. It's breaking our family's heart," Garland Radloff, a nursing aide who lives with her husband in Hilton Head, S.C., told The Associated Press on Thursday. She and several other wives are also named plaintiffs in the suit.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/6874906/jim-mcmahon-other-players-sue-nfl-concussions
So, you love the game of football, but if you know that you could be senile by the time you are 50 and maybe dead by the time you get to age 60, would you do it? I don't think I would.

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