And for those of us with shorter attention spans, the highlights are now up on YouTube from our June 20th 2011 Retired Football Players Press Conference. We’ve uploaded it to YouTube in HD – you can enlarge it to full screen for easier viewing using the enlarge button in the lower right corner of the video window.
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And once again, thanks to Jennifer Thibeaux and her crew. We’re working on shorter individual clips to also be posted daily on YouTube over the following weeks to keep this issue front and center with the fans and general public. Retired Players are NOT going away!
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And for those of us with shorter attention spans, the highlights are now up on YouTube from our June 20th 2011 Retired Football Players Press Conference. We’ve uploaded it to YouTube in HD – you can enlarge it to full screen for easier viewing using the enlarge button in the lower right corner of the video window.
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And once again, thanks to Jennifer Thibeaux and her crew. We’re working on shorter individual clips to also be posted daily on YouTube over the following weeks to keep this issue front and center with the fans and general public. Retired Players are NOT going away!
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And a little something extra: Hall-of-Famer Gale Sayers is mad too!
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HOW YOU CAN HELP: Click on the Like button on YouTube, as well as passing these videos along to all of your friends. You can also post our video links to your Facebook page if you have a Facebook account and Tweet it to Twitter (you can use those buttons at the bottom of each of our posts). And please be sure to click on the Sign Our Petition link at the top of the sidebar on the right to let everyone know you support these guys!
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And the Highlights from Our Press Conference
June 27th, 2011 
robertinseattle Retired Football Players June 20th Press Conference
June 25th, 2011 robertinseattle Thanks to Jennifer Thibeaux and her crew, we now have the full June 20th 2011 Retired Football Players Press Conference held at the Washington Press Club. We’ve uploaded it to Veoh in HD – you can enlarge it to full screen for easier viewing using the enlarge button in the lower right corner of the video window.
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Retired Players Scorecard So Far
June 23rd, 2011 robertinseattle 
Negotiations between the NFL and its current players are near conclusion. Reliable sources are reporting that a deal to end the current lockout is imminent.
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Left outside of the negotiating process has been the NFL’s retired players. Retirees are routinely forgotten by both the league they helped build and a Union that has abandoned them. We must not forget these heroes of our youth, the titans who built the game and turned the NFL into the multibillion-dollar industry that it is today. Most retired players played the game at a time when big money did not rule the sport, but nonetheless the names of these athletes are burned in the memories of fans forever. Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Y.A. Title, Lenny Moore, Lem Barney and Art Donovan to name a few.
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Fans of the game would be shocked and saddened if they knew the harsh realities faced by NFL retirees:
- A majority of NFL retirees never made the millions of dollars being paid to current players;
- A majority of NFL retirees have spent more money on medical expenses than they ever made playing football;
- The NFL’s disability system currently provides money for only 4% of its retired players;
- Draconian rules set-up by the League and a Union that does not represent the interest of its retirees, leave most former players needing to rely on Social Security to fix their broken bodies;
- Underfunded pension benefits have left even some Hall-of-Famers receiving less than $200 per month to live on.
Retired NFL Players Need Your Help Today!
June 22nd, 2011 robertinseattle Negotiations between the NFL and its current players are near conclusion. Reliable sources are reporting that a deal to end the current lockout is imminent.
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Left outside of the negotiating process has been the NFL’s retired players. Retirees are routinely forgotten by both the league they helped build and a Union that has abandoned them. We must not forget these heroes of our youth, the titans who built the game and turned the NFL into the multibillion-dollar industry that it is today. Most retired players played the game at a time when big money did not rule the sport, but nonetheless the names of these athletes are burned in the memories of fans forever. Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Y.A. Title, Lenny Moore, Lem Barney and Art Donovan to name a few.
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Fans of the game would be shocked and saddened if they knew the harsh realities faced by NFL retirees:
- A majority of NFL retirees never made the millions of dollars being paid to current players;
- A majority of NFL retirees have spent more money on medical expenses than they ever made playing football;
- The NFL’s disability system currently provides money for only 4% of its retired players;
- Draconian rules set-up by the League and a Union that does not represent the interest of its retirees, leave most former players needing to rely on Social Security to fix their broken bodies;
- Underfunded pension benefits have left even some Hall-of-Famers receiving less than $200 per month to live on.
Live from Our Conference in Las Vegas
March 25th, 2011 robertinseattle And Now for Our Next Act…
March 13th, 2011 DavePear 
We haven’t been posting as much the past couple of weeks (Thanks for picking up the slack, Evan!) because we’ve been getting things ready for our upcoming Conference later this month at The South Point in Las Vegas. If you haven’t signed up yet, time’s running out to book your trip.
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As many of you know, we’re now going into our fourth year of publishing this blog and it’s been quite a ride. During our first year, many of the posts were my personal experiences in dealing with the NFL and the NFLPA to get full access to my earned benefits. We wanted to get the story out to as many readers as possible – especially other retired football players. We not only wanted to encourage other players to step forward and tell their own personal horror stories but also we wanted to educate and inform the fans and the general public about what really goes on behind-the-scenes once we left the field. That first year was focused on building an audience of loyal readers.
Who We Are
January 4th, 2011 DavePear 
If you’ve managed to find this page, congratulations! We’ll have a full-blown website and blog up and running shortly.
After nearly three years of going at this completely on our own, we finally made the tough decision to take our efforts to the next level. We need to raise some funding to cover our growing expenses as well as to assist some of our retired football players in getting to the assistance that many of them desperately need. Our approach has been to prove ourselves first before even asking for the support of others. By taking this battle online for disability and pension reform – as well as pointing out the injustices and outright fraud that retired football players face after they leave the game – we’d like to think our efforts have helped in small ways to provide a strong voice for a community that has been silenced for too long.
But now it’s finally time to introduce our new nonprofit for Independent Football Veterans. Up to this point Heidi and I have worked with our friend, Robert Lee, to slowly build and develop a blog and platform to provide news and information that’s relevant and important to our brotherhood of retired professional football players. Over the past three years, our readers and fans have helped us realize that the most important issues were pension and disability reform, as well as medical care after retirement. It’s quite simple: The average professional football player has to pack an entire career into what might seem to be a short, average span of less than 3 years. While some players go on to play longer, most players leave the game before they even meet that high 3-year bar to qualify for full disability and pension benefits. So while most fans may believe that football players work for a few years and can then retire to a life of ease, the reality is that most of us have worked hard all through school, college and then finally the NFL to reach the pinnacle of a very tough career that’s certainly a lot longer than just those 3 years in the League. Then our employer – and our Union – stacks the deck against you so that you can’t collect any disability benefits and that terrific pension is actually many years away (if you manage to live that long). And for those older retired players, it turns out to be a whole lot less than what anyone would possibly imagine for the physical toll we’ve all taken with our bodies. This is the story most of our fans still don’t know or understand. So it was for these reasons we do what we do.
We continue to embrace a philosophy of unwavering unity and respectful equality among all members. We’re starting with a fundamental belief that anyone and everyone who helps our common cause is a friend and no one individual will be treated as more or less important than another, regardless of personal opinions or affiliations. It’s the only way that we will ever prevail.
What I’ve Learned So Far
January 1st, 2011 robertinseattle 
It’s been nearly 3 years since Dave and I first ventured into blogging about professional football and what actually happens behind the scenes in the lives of those men who have played the game once they leave that field for the last time. Dave‘s been at this for over 30 years since being sidelined after Superbowl XV in 1980 with a broken neck and subsequently denied his disability benefits several times – even in spite of the NFL’s own doctor declaring him to be 80+% disabled in 1995.
As someone who has never had any serious interest in professional sports in general and football in particular, it’s been a real eye-opening 3 years to hear about how so many of these injustices have continued. And in the open. Fortunately, the Internet has enabled people to communicate more openly and transparently about anything and everything. And many more of the players have been coming forward with their own stories after years of suffering quietly because they were finally encouraged to do so after realizing that they weren’t suffering alone.
Being a small part of this paradigm shift has been a real privilege. I’ve met some incredible people and made some new friends along the way. Of course, I’ve also been told by a few that I have no dog in the game and not even being a fan makes me the ultimate outsider, undeserving of even so much as the “privilege” of carrying someone’s jockstrap. To those long worn-out arguments: I continue to point out that not a single juror, lawyer nor even the judge in the recent Players Inc. lawsuit was a retired football player. And that was how the suit was actually won. And I’ve had it pointed out to me that there have even been a few retired football players who have gone on to become Congressmen and Senators; I ask just how many of THEM have actually stood up and proposed legislation or initiated investigations into the egregious abuse that continues today?
Ron Mix on Our First IFV Conference
Hall-of-Famer Ron Mix attended and spoke at our first Annual Independent Football Veterans Conference last week, held at the South Point Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. We received Ron’s overview and editorial letter this morning and we’re posting it in its entirety below. Thanks, Ron!
You can view and read more of the entire event by going to the site by clicking HERE. (We will be updating the site constantly all week long as we finalize sound enhancements on all our videos as well as add more commentary and PowerPoints from our speakers.) And if you would like to help advance our cause by being a founding donor, please feel free to go to our IFV Donation page by clicking HERE.
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