Tom Lowman's ReportGuest Commentator: Ray Schoenke

Dear Retired NFL Players,

This is to inform you that Tom Lowman, Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) has posted on his company website (http://www.boltonpartners.com/NFL%20Retirees%20Q%20and%20As%20092606.pdf) his report on the July 25th Goucher College meeting. Tom was retained by the DC and Baltimore Chapters, at a cost of $1000. He was to provide an actuarial overview and insight for the Retired Players on the NFL Pension Plan, as well as presentations made by other participants at the July 25th meeting. Tom participated along with Bob Williams of AON, a pension consultant, representing the NFL, and Doug Allen and his staff for the NFLPA. We owe a debt of gratitude to Tom for this report. He wanted to do an extensive review for us following the meeting. However, we could not come up with additional monies for his fee. Tom agreed to do a condensed version of the report without charging a fee, but it had to be worked in with his commitments to paying clients. Consequently, that is the reason for the delay in our receiving his report.

I did not feel it was appropriate to give my overview or respond to the commentaries made about this meeting until Tom’s report was complete. I had hoped by now, that Doug Allen and Bob Williams would have also filed theirs as they had agreed. My objective in actively participating and helping to coordinate the events of the evening was to provide a stage whereby we as retired players would be given factual information about our Pension Plan. With that information, we could then determine what was or was not achievable. I believe that goal was met. Tom’s report will help us as we try to determine the best course moving forward. I think we all agree our Pension should be dramatically increased. While I think we all appreciate the increases we recently received, I believe that all retired players benefits should be increased to the active players level which is currently $467.50 per month per credited season @ age 55. Based on Tom’s evaluation the cost to move everyone to that level is an additional $760 million or $134 million over 7 years or $80 million over 15 years. This practice by the NFLPA of parceling out pension increases and spreading them out only pits one generation against another and in our case we will never get caught up.

Whatever our goal is, we need to determine the best course of action in order to be ready for the next CBA. Will we work under the current structure provided to us by the NFLPA or will we create a new one? There is clearly a trust issue with the NFLPA that has to be overcome. We should give them the time and commitment to see if they can sufficiently address this issue. If not we should consider creating a new one. Our major problem is the NFLPA has both the money and the power. Would they agree to transfer money and influence to a third party, independent of them and would more often than not have an adversarial relationship? Probably not, but it is something to consider. While our group is blessed with successful, smart individuals we will need qualified professional help. They cost money, lots of money which we do not have. How to overcome this issue is something we all need to think about.
 
As we go forward, I would encourage everyone to be respectful of one another. While I am sure we will disagree with one another over ideas and strategies, please try to support your comments when ever possible with factual information. We should all recognize that some of the late additional Pension increases and new benefits under the latest CBA were achieved because of the enormous pressure brought on by us the Retired Players.

Respectfully,

Ray Schoenke

Dallas Cowboys 1963-65

Washington Redskins 1966-75

Fw: [Retired NFL Players] When the Cheering Stops

From: "Baltimore Colts Alumni" <baltimorecoltsalumni@msn.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 13:37:34
To:"Retired NFL Players" <Retired-NFL-Players@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Retired NFL Players] When the Cheering Stops

When the Cheering Stops
Fearing that players weren't prepared emotionally or financially for
life after football, the NFL looked to business schools for help

By FARA WARNER
Wall Street Journal
September 16, 2006

When star quarterback Drew Brees first folded his lanky 6-foot frame
into a cramped chair in one of the Wharton School's austere auditoriums
in the spring of 2005, he had reason to wonder why he was sitting at a
desk instead of chilling out during the off-season.

Twenty-six years old at the time, Mr. Brees figured he had at least a
decade or more of play left in him. He was already one of the top-paid
players in the National Football League, and that was before he signed
a six-year $60 million deal with the New Orleans Saints earlier this
year.

He'd also made certain he got his college degree -- in industrial
management at Purdue University -- if he needed something to fall back
on. But it didn't take long before the steady stream of talk about
competition, market analysis and exit strategies from Wharton
professors got him asking tough questions. "If football ended right
now, what would I do?" he remembers thinking.

It was exactly the kind of question the NFL and its players union hoped
players would ask themselves when they enrolled in the league's
business-management program.

Started in April 2005 at Wharton and Harvard Business School, the
program now includes Northwestern and Stanford, with close to 200
football players having graduated from the program so far.

So Many Sad Stories

Despite growing salaries for players over the decades and basic
financial education offered through the players association, the NFL
had noticed a troubling trend of players being unprepared --
financially and emotionally -- for a life after football.

On the money front, there were enough sad stories of players ending up
broke after retirement that the league knew it needed to take action.
"Not everyone in the NFL is going to make $10 million," says
Christopher L. Henry, the NFL's director of player development. Mr.
Henry says the average player makes $1.4 million a year, with a
significant number making far below $1 million. The starting salary for
players is $275,000 a year. While that may sound like a lot to the
average viewer of Monday Night Football, that salary may be short-lived
if a player gets injured or doesn't have his contract picked up.

Even trickier was the emotional side, where players had to grapple with
finding a career that could come close to replacing one that includes
fame and adoring fans.

"It's not about the financial state I'll be in that worries me," said
Matt Joyce, a veteran of 11 NFL seasons as an offensive lineman, during
a break at the Wharton program. "It's the mental state I need to think
about. I need something that will challenge me."

No Coddling

In an effort to address both the financial and emotional challenges,
the league decided to partner with respected business schools, Mr.
Henry says. It wanted programs designed to push, not coddle, players in
ways they rarely get pushed off the field.

Players must apply for the 120 positions available across the four
universities. They need letters of recommendation and must write an
essay. They also pay between $4,500 and $10,000 for the program,
reimbursed by their teams. In the first year, there was a waiting list
at Wharton.

Each school offers classes on investment strategies and watching out
for stock and real-estate scams. But from that base they differ widely.
Wharton focuses on entrepreneurship and real-estate investments during
its six-day course, which is split into two three-day seminars. It
offers business coaches for at least a year to the players to help them
move forward with business plans they may have created during the
program. Harvard, which also offers two three-day seminar programs,
focuses on management. Northwestern offers a specialization in
marketing, and Stanford focuses on sports business and
entrepreneurship. Those last two programs are only 3½ days.

Wharton's professors say they have been most surprised by the intensity
the players bring to the classroom. In fact, some players -- such as
the Buffalo Bills' Troy Vincent -- have gone to three of the programs
already.

"They're the best students you could imagine," says Mori Taheripour, a
Wharton lecturer in legal studies and associate director of the Wharton
Sports Business Initiative, which helped create the curriculum with the
business school. "They would be as excited at 7 p.m. to learn as they
were at 9 a.m."

Ms. Taheripour, who served as Mr. Brees's business coach over the past
year, teaches a negotiation class where typically one player pretends
to be a team owner and the other is a player. They are taught how to
give up certain demands, but stay firm on others. It's often an intense
class and one that many of the players continue to talk about during
breaks.

"It's humbling for them because they usually have agents who negotiate
their contracts for them," says Ms. Taheripour. "But they won't have
that when they are out in business. So the learning curve can be really
huge when they have to do it on their own for the first time."

Talking Fears and Hopes

Outside the formal lectures and classes, Wharton builds in time for
one-on-one meetings with their business coaches and small groups so
that the players feel comfortable talking about their fears and hopes
about life after football.

"It's not as easy as having them read 'What Color is My Parachute?'"
says Kenneth Shropshire, director of the Wharton Sports Business
Initiative. "Most of these guys aren't going to get a job. What they
need is something that will be as fulfilling as the cheering they got
on the field."

It likely will take more than a few days in the classroom for most
players to find anything close to that, but for Messrs. Joyce and Brees
a few days at Wharton at least sparked some ideas for what will happen
when they do leave the gridiron.

Mr. Joyce says he'd like to think of a way to turn what's been a
not-so-great situation -- numerous surgeries -- into a business. "You
name a body part and it's probably been worked on," he says as he
touches both shoulders and points to a scar on his hand, where pins
hold a bone together. "So maybe I'll get into medical devices."

A year later, Mr. Brees says he finds himself dreaming up business
ventures during airplane rides. He toys with writing business plans and
researching the competition.

He hasn't found one that he wants to stick with yet, he says. But
Wharton gave him at least one concrete idea for what he wants after
football. "I know exactly what my first steps will be when football
ends," he says. "I want to get an M.B.A...at Wharton."

--Ms. Warner is a writer in Ann Arbor, Mich. She can be reached at
reports@wsj.com5.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115813097630461778.html
Copyright 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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They manage pain and then get the message

 by Brian Ettkin, Albany News

First published: Thursday, September 7, 2006

They manage the pain, then get the message

Bob Whitfield aches.

His joints creak like a rusty barn hinge and rasp truths he'd rather not hear.
"They tell me stuff, 'You can't do that little maneuver you used to do, try this one,' " said Whitfield, the Giants' 34-year-old offensive tackle.

Whitfield was once a Pro Bowl player in Atlanta. But he aged, broke a fibula, had bone spurs surgically removed from his ankles. You don't start 169 NFL games (playing in 204 altogether), ramming your 310-pound body at full speed into another 70 times or so per game, each impact as forceful as a minor car accident, without the hits and collisions damaging your body and psyche.

The theme of this NFL special section is not a favorite topic of veteran players. Who likes to be reminded they're aging in a young man's game?
Although the compensation and rewards for playing this game are beyond anything Joe Six-Pack could imagine, there's a reason the job of NFL player is ranked among the worst by the reference book "Jobs Rated Almanac."

The job's occupational hazards cripple bodies and minds.

The average NFL player's career lasts fewer than four years. Some play longer, much longer, but it becomes harder in a player's 30s, when leg fatigue becomes more acute, said Hall of Fame defensive end Jack Youngblood; consequently, quickness, concentration and reaction time suffer.
Older players heal slower, too.

"No longer is Tuesday (following a game) when you're ready to go," said Youngblood, who played in seven straight Pro Bowls for the Rams. "It becomes Wednesday, it becomes Thursday when you feel you're back up to speed."

"You notice over the years this (body) does not ever feel right," Whitfield said. "But then you understand that I guess that it's never going to feel right, so how do I play with it?"
With a cocktail of drugs, a resolute will and the ability to perform mental gymnastics.

"I'm one of the oldest guys on the team," said Whitfield, who started a franchise-record 123 consecutive games for the Falcons. "How many practices do I miss? I don't miss any. My (body) hurts all the time, but I don't miss practice. ... Even when it hurt, it don't hurt, so you're going to have to break it to hurt it. You just don't feel the pain, and do whatever it takes not to be hampered by it.
"A lot of it is psychological. You know when you can't go. Until I can't walk, I can go. Because I'd rather be in the game and get broke up then be sitting on the sideline thinking, Well, maybe I can go a little bit. (Forget) that."

Youngblood famously played in 3 1/2 games with a broken leg. After he suffered a stress fracture of his fibula in the 1979 divisional playoffs against Dallas, trainers shot Youngblood up, taped him up, and he returned to play, sacking Roger Staubach. Youngblood played every down the following weeks in the NFC Championship Game and Super Bowl XIV (with a two-week break afterward, he even played in the Pro Bowl).

Youngblood, who played in a franchise-record 201 straight games for the Rams and missed just one game in his 14-year career, retired when he was 34, though he had 9.5 sacks in his final year.

"I left the game with something left in the tank, but I didn't feel as thoughI could play at the same level for an entire season," Youngblood said. "I could have gotten double-digit sacks.
The goal was always 16. It would be a detriment to what I had already established." Youngblood chose to retire.

The thing about aging in the NFL: The choice is usually made for you because players' bodies shout out messages their minds ignore.
"I don't care how good you are -- you could be a Hall of Famer -- you play the game long enough, you're going to get replaced," said Joe Cribbs, the former Buffalo Bills Pro Bowl running back. "That's just the nature of the way football is organized. "A professional athlete never sees it coming."

They feel it, though
David E. Garnett
President
iAM Solutions, LLC
703.926-9134 - mobile

Bottom Line Today's Players are in it for the money

In his induction speech, John Madden swore the busts inside the Pro
Football Hall of Fame chatted with each other in the middle of the
night.

The old legends from a nickel-and-dime era must talk about money. They
won't argue that they were better players. They already know that. They
just happened to play in a time when the NFL was a second-string sport
to the college game and sports television was just a crazy idea.

In retrospect, the staggering rise in player salaries has been the most
significant change in the 87-year history of the pro game. The players
are bigger and faster. And the 1977 rules changes made the NFL the land
of milk and honey for quarterbacks and receivers. Yet, the busts of
those legends will tell you the biggest change in the game involves
salaries.

Credit former players executive director Ed Garvey and attorney Dick
Berthelsen for the money tree. They finally won enough court fights to
gain the right to obtain copies of each player contract.

"It was essential," Garvey said, "because not knowing what other
players were getting, you had no bargaining leverage whatsoever. The
word was out that Vince Lombardi had two sets of contracts." Garvey
even recalled hearing that Forrest Gregg, an all-pro Packers tackle,
had played for $19,000.

The players union distributed its first salary survey after the 1982
season. The numbers were shockers. St. Louis Cardinals quarterback Neil
Lomax ($130,000) earned only $30,000 more than Joe Bostic, one of his
guards. Many earned less than $40,000.

Everson Walls, a cornerback signed by Dallas in 1981 as a free agent,
intercepted 18 passes in his first two years. His salaries were $32,000
and $37,000. After two Pro Bowls, the Cowboys offered him a modest
raise that Walls rejected.

"Ronnie Lott and Lawrence Taylor used to kid me about my salary at the
Pro Bowl," Walls said. "One night, Ron Springs and I had a couple of
beers and came up with a plan. I didn't want to get fined, so I retired
for five days."

The fuming Cowboys brought Walls back with a $125,000 signing bonus and
a $120,000 base. When the nervy United States Football League launched
a salary war, the Cowboys signed Walls to an annuity deal that
guaranteed him $100,000 for 10 years.

Meanwhile, the NFL owners agreed to a historic free-agency/salary-cap
system in which the players were guaranteed a percentage of gross
revenue and were free to move after four years. Garvey had proposed the
system for years.

"It was one of the greatest innovations for salaries in terms of labor
peace," Garvey said. To keep their players, teams began offering
signing bonuses right up there with CEO deals.

Today teams employ money crunchers known as capologists. And if they
never touched a football, who cares - as long as they keep the team
under the $102 million salary cap. Players last year earned 65.5% of
DGR (defined gross revenue such as ticket sales; TV revenue, etc.). In
1973, teams paid players only 39.2% of gross income, an average of
$2.452 million a team.

Agent Leigh Steinberg said there were two factors that held salaries
down before the boom. "The revenue base was exponentially smaller," he
said. "And there was no free agency."

Then the base exploded, with each new TV deal virtually doubling
revenue. There were renegotiations and huge bonuses and tricky
free-agent deals in which the capologists were magicians with the
numbers. "Pro football became an established primacy, the No. 1
attraction in the United States," Steinberg said.

As the late George Young once said, "It was a great time to be a
player." Yet, agent Peter Schaffer notes the owners prospered, too,
with franchise values soaring past the billion-dollar mark. "Everyone
associated with this fantastic sport recouped the benefits," he said.

So the game is draped in thick layers of money. It is the perfect sport
for TV in terms of action, event spacing and time frame. Remarkably,
there isn't a tiny clue that revenue will eventually level off.

The busts in Canton will tell you they played for the love of the game.
Now they play for the love of the big money.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/columnist/forbes/2006-09-07-forbes-column_x.htm

David E. Garnett
President
iAM Solutions, LLC
703.926-9134 - mobile

Ruettgers provides transition support for Athletes

>By DAVE BOLING
>August 29, 2006
>
>The frequency of failure startled Ken Ruettgers.
>
>Some former colleagues struggled desperately with finances or their
>marriages, some dealt with addictions and depression. One troubled
>friend escaped from a psychiatric hospital and was gunned down in a
>police standoff.
>
>Like Ruettgers, they were NFL alumni.
>
>Ruettgers saw that this is what can happen when players spend most of
>their lives preparing for games on Sundays, and almost none of it for
>what happens when the games are over.
>
>Finding very little in the way of structured assistance for athletes,
>Ruettgers started GamesOver.org, a nonprofit organization based in
>Sisters, Ore. It offers counseling and support to post-competition
>athletes.
>
>NFL roster cuts often bring a rude introduction to a vastly different
>world. Ruettgers will be busy.
>
>The statistics he offers are stunning.
>
>"Seventy-eight percent of NFL players are bankrupt, divorced or
>unemployed in two years (after retirement)," Ruettgers said.
>
>He said he recently conducted a small conference with former athletes
>of various professional sports in which the players reported problems
>with "infidelity, addiction, gambling, bankruptcy, drinking,
>unemployment and domestic abuse," he said. "And that was in a
>conference with just 12 guys."
>
>Getting players to even address the issues is a major challenge,
>Ruettgers said, because it runs counter to the programming they've
>faced for decades.
>
>"They've been trained their whole lives to never show a weakness," he
>said. "They've been trained not to get help when they need it."
>
>Ruettgers was a first-round draft pick out of Southern California, and
>played 12 years on the offensive line for the Green Bay Packers. He had
>a bachelor's degree and an MBA, and a position waiting at a publishing
>firm when he retired.
>
>Yet the transition was still difficult for him.
>
>"It's such a big change, and if you don't start making changes yourself
>when your career ends, you're going to fail your marriage, your
>finances, that sort of thing," he said.
>
>Of the players who get divorced after their careers, 50 percent do so
>in the first year, Ruettgers said.
>
>"Such a dramatic change also changes your relationship; it's an
>identity change even for the wife," he said. "It can be as hard for
>them as it is for the player. It's an identity issue, and a lot of it
>is a matter of expectations not being met.
>
>"In some cases, football has been an excuse for guys not growing up and
>the wife says, 'OK, football is over, now you're going to grow up.' But
>he doesn't, and the wife says, 'I'm not going to put up with this
>little-boy stuff anymore.'"
>
>With larger contracts accompanying the advent of free agency,
>bankruptcy is not as prevalent as it once was, but players still are
>vulnerable to the misperception that all are set up for life.
>
>"The perception is that everybody is a Brett Favre or a Trent Dilfer or
>a Matt Hasselbeck," Ruettgers said. "They think they're going to play
>12 to 15 years and have millions in the bank. The reality is that only
>50 percent of NFL players play more than three years. Those guys are
>averaging about $450,000 a year. That is a lot of money, but with Uncle
>Sam and an agent, you're losing half of it right off the top."
>
>The physical toll of a career in the NFL is obvious, as anyone can
>witness at an alumni event or gathering of "old-timers." Ruettgers sees
>the damage extending well beyond the collection of bad knees and
>mangled fingers.
>
>"You go to a retired players event or NFL alumni golf tournaments, and
>a lot of the guys in their 50s and 60s are still angry about the way
>they left the game," he said. "Some of them are bitter, angry old men.
>They are still upset over things that they think didn't go their way.
>That's a problem with not taking responsibility for yourself and your
>future."
>
>And with it sometimes comes depression.
>
>"Sports psychologists have said it's a type of social death when a
>player leaves professional athletics; there's a lot of denial, and then
>anger and depression," he said.
>Ruettgers doesn't expect fans to feel sorry for players who had
>big-money and high-profile careers. Likewise, he has to work to not
>allow former athletes to feel as if they're victims. As he points out,
>this is not the case of single mothers holding down multiple jobs to
>feed their children.
>
>"They may want to feel like they're victims of having been cut, or of
>not getting a fair shot," he said. "We try to help them see what it
>means to be a man of responsibility. Most of these guys grow up in the
>sports culture from as early as elementary school, where they aren't
>forced to be responsible.
>
>"There's always somebody there to pick up their towel, to pick up their
>jock, and to tell them to sign on the dotted line."
>
>After 20 or 30 years of such pampered treatment, to be suddenly cut
>loose can be wickedly disorienting.
>
>"People will say, 'Quit your crying, you were a pro athlete and you
>have the whole world going for you,'" Ruettgers said. "But it sure
>doesn't feel like that. It comes back to self-worth and value and
>identity. We're trying to get them to understand this and to navigate
>the transition so they can move on in life and do even greater things
>than they did as athletes."
>
David E. Garnett
President
iAM Solutions, LLC
703.926-9134 - mobile