That is true, but to be honest I have no idea what retirement or pension is like for professional football players.

The pension is $200 a month for each Season played in the NFL.

Averege NFL Career length is 3 and a half seasons.

So... $800 a month for the average player to be generous.   Or $9,600 a year.  Starting at age 55.

Granted their conditions aren't going to be bad as your 10 season guys... but even a 10 season guy is only getting 24,000 a year... and probably has some serious day to day pain and or mental impairments.

Thats ridiculously low.  I've read studies of football players having much higher rates of alzheimer's, so that with the obvious physical problems that these guys have they do deserve to get reimbursed for their efforts.

Its hard to believe that a warrior like Brett Favre can play 20 seasons and only get $40,000 a year for all the pain and suffering he's going to have for it.

Yep, it's pretty horrible.  It's why I'm pretty much always on the player's side when it comes to contracts and collective bargaining disputes.   Even when a player threatens to sit out when signed under contract.

NFL contracts are pretty 1-sided both in the macro and player wise due to the NFL being allowed to collectivly bargain.

Why it's not ruled a monopoly or unfair collusion I'm not sure.  I really think it should be.

That's one law the government really should pass, but probably won't because it'd be unpopular with some football fans if spun the right way.

Donald Trump actually took the NFL to court with that idea when his football league, the USFL, went under in the 1980's.  He actually won the damages suit, but the terms were hilarious:

The USFL finally received a check for $3.76 in damages in 1990, the additional 76¢ representing interest earned while litigation had continued.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Football_League

I thought they won a dollar, so you can imagine my suprise when I read the wikipedia article and was off by four times the actual figure...

Yeah, i saw that in an ESPN 30 for 30 documentry about trump and the USFL.

Thank Gawd for college football!

I was at that game...

Vikings won because they didn't try to lose the game as hard as the cowboys did. Man do those two teams suck at the moment.

I would only care if they had no idea what they were getting into. They do.

With the kind of money they make while they play the game, they can setup something so they can take care of themselves.

The base pay is 310K. If you can't find a way to make that work for you, I don't know what to tell ya. There are many jobs in the world with more danger and less pay.

They can deal with it.

Correction.....They suck ass at the moment and will probably continue to suck throughout the remainder of the season if they don't get it together.