WASHINGTON -- Responding to often-emotional testimony, several U.S. senators Tuesday threatened to step in and fix the NFL's pension and medical disability program if league and players' union officials don't quickly improve the system -- one that retirees increasingly describe as dysfunctional.
The possibility of congressional oversight came during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in which NFL Players Assn. Executive Director Gene Upshaw agreed there are problems and asked Congress to change federal law that requires the plan to be jointly operated by the league and union, suggesting the structure is partly to blame.
The two-hour session also offered a grim look at the final days of now-deceased former Pittsburgh Steelers star Mike Webster, as seen through the eyes of his son.
Garrett Webster said that his father, who died at age 50 in the middle of a bitter legal battle with the NFL and NFLPA over a medical disability benefit, had been reduced to begging for food outside of restaurants and living in a rat-infested motel.
Webster, now 23, told of a phone call he received a decade ago during which his father -- by then in constant pain -- threatened suicide.
Mike Webster, who played for 17 seasons and was easily elected to the Hall of Fame, blamed his severe physical and mental problems on the battering his body and brain absorbed while playing football.
"I have lived through things I would not wish on my worst enemy," Webster told committee members, begging them to "expose the deceptions in that system that will rob other children of fathers, mothers of sons, and wives of husbands if it is allowed to continue."
Since last year, a growing number of former NFL players, some of whom testified Tuesday, have grown increasingly agitated over the plight of men who made the game what it is today, but who struggle with financial and medical problems that some blame on an inadequate retirement plan.
Upshaw and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, both of whom skipped a pair of House subcommittee hearings on the same divisive issues, on Tuesday defended professional football's retirement programs yet acknowledged the system isn't perfect.
Goodell testified that recent rule changes and other improvements being contemplated will reduce paperwork and make the disability application process less onerous for aging NFL retirees. The commissioner also said that "we have more work to do. . . . The men who played professional football decades ago deserve our respect and recognition, and their contributions to our game must never be overlooked."
