The Armchair Quarterback’s Guide To The NFL: Sharing The Wealth
Rant Of The Week
I hope this doesn’t come off as insensitive, but I’m really tired of the former NFL players coming up with lawsuit after lawsuit to try and get more money out of the NFL. While I’m sympathetic to the tole that playing in the NFL can take on the body and feel like the NFL should definitely offer lifetime healthcare to players that played in the league for any substantial amount of time, the idea that former players didn’t know that there would be health risks is absurd. It’s an incredibly violent game and it always has been. You don’t repeatedly slam your body into another human being as hard as you can, year after year without it taking a tole. I think my eight year old son could figure that one out in about two minutes flat.
This latest lawsuit alleges that the NFL “duped” players into taking painkillers that we’re supposed to believe the players didn’t want in order to hide injuries that we’re supposed to believe the players didn’t know that they had. That’s right, one of the plaintiffs claims the NFL hid his broken leg from him to try and get him to keep playing. Dwell on that for a minute. How do you not know your leg is broken?
The image that these players are trying to paint is one where the players were going “I think I’m hurt, I don’t think I should play, and I don’t think I should take these pills since I don’t have a prescription and a doctor’s consult on the list of possible side effects that could occur from putting this medication in my body!”
Does that sound like the mindset of a NFL player to you? NFL players take pride in being tough, in being warriors, in being there for their teammates. If these players are trying to sell us the idea that they weren’t begging the docs to give them whatever they needed to get back on the field and downplaying their own injuries, I’m just not buying it. Sorry, never going to happen. Is the NFL guilty of letting these players abuse their own bodies? Yes, but these players act like they weren’t responsible for their own actions.
“I didn’t know it was dangerous!”
“I didn’t even know I was injured!”
“I didn’t know that taking an endless amount of painkillers for years on end might not be a good idea!”
“I wasn’t trying to get back on the field. I wanted to play it safe and make sure I was making the right decision for my long term health, but the big, bad, NFL tricked and bullied me into going back out there!”
Way to take accountability for your own actions! Give me a break. It’s lawsuits like this one that make me lose sympathy for these athletes that did sacrifice their bodies to play the game they loved. There does need to be reliable healthcare options available to them to help them manage the pain that they are dealing with, but spare me the playing of the victim card here. The NFL is far from innocent, but the players were not just mindless sheep or pawns in all of this and claiming otherwise is insulting to everyone involved.
Click over to the last page for the beer review of the week…..