Darnell Dockett: The NFL’s Dirty Laundry

[Prime Time]

http://mmqb.si.com/2015/01/31/darnell-dockett-nfl-dirty-laundry/

Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

The NFL’s Dirty Laundry
While the media obsesses over quiet players and PSI, the biggest problems in professional football go unnoticed. From concussions to non-guaranteed contracts, players are getting fed up with the league's rampant hypocrisy
By Darnell Dockett
Defensive End, Arizona Cardinals

The NFL should love you guys. All of you reporters and editors and TV personalities who have been writing and talking for two weeks about Marshawn Lynch and deflated balls. The league has to be happy about these little controversies that blow up and turn your heads, because it’s keeping you from looking for its dirty laundry.

I met Moose Johnston once. His knuckles and fingers are twisted and jagged. Tony Siragusa hurts all over his body. Junior Seau killed himself. But the NFL says concussions are down 25% and you don’t even blink. You want to know when the next Lynch press conference is going down.

You’re not asking the question many of us players are: Why aren’t our contracts guaranteed? And I’m not talking about every contract. I’m talking about established veterans on their second and third deal getting fully compensated on those big contracts that make headlines but never actually get fulfilled.

I come at this from a different place than most NFL players. I tore my ACL last summer, and I’m several months from where I want to be before I get back on a field. I’m taking my time, and making sure I’m taking care of my business so I can come out and fulfill all the career and season goals I set for myself last year.

I never loved football before I got to the NFL. When I was a kid, I wasn’t inspired by football stars or any other athletes. I glorified the neighborhood drug kingpin. I wanted to hustle. I wanted to be a millionaire. Football was an outlet for me in high school when my parents passed away. Then I started thinking about ways to become a millionaire. I wasn’t crazy about school, and once I started being decent at football, I realized I had natural ability to play the sport.

I got to college, and I looked around and saw all the money changing hands and none of it coming our way. We put the fans in the seats, and we played hurt and injured, not for any kind of compensation, but for the slim chance that we might get paid three years down the road. You can talk about getting compensated with an opportunity to get an education, and that all sounds really great. I’ve heard people say, “You’re a student-athlete, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” But the only people who say that have a lot of eggs. I didn’t have many eggs, so I put them in football. I never considered myself a student-athlete.

Then I got to the NFL and I started to fall in love with the sport, wanting to leave my mark on the game. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the emotion of it and think competition is the only thing that matters, then you see a teammate or a friend tear an ACL and—POOF—all that contract money is gone. Sorry, but the richest sports owners in the country don’t want to pay you for risking your health.

And yet, we go out there anyway with bad knees and shoulders and headaches. Because we know if we don’t play hurt and injured, we’ll be released just the same. I look at guys like Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas, laying it on the line in this Super Bowl with their elbow and shoulder injuries. In three months everybody will forget what they did and assume those injuries are 100% fine, but there is no such thing as 100% health in the NFL. You play with a bad shoulder, you retire with a bad shoulder and you die with a bad shoulder. Same goes for brains.

The NFL says it wants us to report concussions, but its actions say differently. Guys are motivated to play hurt by the threat of unemployment and lost salary because of the collective bargaining terms forced on players by the owners. If you really wanted us to report concussions and other injuries, you’d guarantee the contracts.

When you bring this up to management and ownership in conversations they tell you what you want to hear. Nobody is willing to have a real discussion about it, least of all the people making a fortune off the gladiators on the field.

They want to get along, and we want to get paid. The media? Y’all are happy to look the other way.

 

[12intheBox]

I know we aren't sposed to like players from divisional rivals - but I like that guy a lot.

 

[jap]

He is just telling it like it is---the NFL, like most sports organizations, like most employment opportunities---is a slave market.

 

[Big Willie]

I am fed up with the NFL's hypocrisy too.

 

[Stranger]

players are getting fed up with the league's rampant hypocrisy

So am I.

The media? Y’all are happy to look the other way.

Glad to see I'm not on an island regarding this issue any longer.

 

[Mackeyser]

I'd rather that they wrote smarter, incentive laden contracts that aren't like baseball or basketball so you don't have guys like Grant Hill in the league for YEARS who don't actually play, but earn huge dollars on long term guaranteed contracts only to start playing at the end of that contract again. Even if every injury was legit, his contract situation shows everything that's wrong with the NBA contract model.

The NFL model is the exact opposite.

We need something in the middle. The guys at the bottom won't get LESS nor would the guys in the middle, likely. The biggest changes would be those huge numbers at the top and that guys would be paid their full salaries in case of injuries.

Would they need to alter the CBA with respect to the cap? Sure. And I'm CERTAIN if it meant guaranteed contracts that the NFLPA would be totally on board with it adjusting the CBA.

 

[blue4]

While there are definitely changes that can be made to benefit players, I'm still waiting to see that gun to everyone's head that forces them to play football. It should be apparent from early on that football is a high contact, injury laden sport. Reminds me of an old friend who does some sort of metalworking underwater. Used to complain all the time about it being dangerous until I pointedly remarked that it should have been obvious from the start, and that complaining about it after he had made more money than a normal metalworker would ever make was kind of asinine. NFL is a slave market? The NFL really isn't all that different from real life in many of these regards. My company employs many of the same tricks and misdirection that the NFL does to hide severity and the overall number of injuries. If you get injured framing houses they don't give you your wages until the end of your union contract. They just cut you lose with as little as they can, in my case it was nothing. If teams were required to pay players who can't play thru the end of their contracts there'd be nothing but 1 year deals. What they need (and us as well) is a better settlement process. I'd like to see improvements in ALL injury treatment to employees, and that definitely includes the NFL.

 

[Ladoc]

http://mmqb.si.com/2015/01/31/darnell-dockett-nfl-dirty-laundry/

Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

The NFL’s Dirty Laundry
While the media obsesses over quiet players and PSI, the biggest problems in professional football go unnoticed. From concussions to non-guaranteed contracts, players are getting fed up with the league's rampant hypocrisy
By Darnell Dockett
Defensive End, Arizona Cardinals

The NFL should love you guys. All of you reporters and editors and TV personalities who have been writing and talking for two weeks about Marshawn Lynch and deflated balls. The league has to be happy about these little controversies that blow up and turn your heads, because it’s keeping you from looking for its dirty laundry.

I met Moose Johnston once. His knuckles and fingers are twisted and jagged. Tony Siragusa hurts all over his body. Junior Seau killed himself. But the NFL says concussions are down 25% and you don’t even blink. You want to know when the next Lynch press conference is going down.

You’re not asking the question many of us players are: Why aren’t our contracts guaranteed? And I’m not talking about every contract. I’m talking about established veterans on their second and third deal getting fully compensated on those big contracts that make headlines but never actually get fulfilled.

I come at this from a different place than most NFL players. I tore my ACL last summer, and I’m several months from where I want to be before I get back on a field. I’m taking my time, and making sure I’m taking care of my business so I can come out and fulfill all the career and season goals I set for myself last year.

I never loved football before I got to the NFL. When I was a kid, I wasn’t inspired by football stars or any other athletes. I glorified the neighborhood drug kingpin. I wanted to hustle. I wanted to be a millionaire. Football was an outlet for me in high school when my parents passed away. Then I started thinking about ways to become a millionaire. I wasn’t crazy about school, and once I started being decent at football, I realized I had natural ability to play the sport.

I got to college, and I looked around and saw all the money changing hands and none of it coming our way. We put the fans in the seats, and we played hurt and injured, not for any kind of compensation, but for the slim chance that we might get paid three years down the road. You can talk about getting compensated with an opportunity to get an education, and that all sounds really great. I’ve heard people say, “You’re a student-athlete, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” But the only people who say that have a lot of eggs. I didn’t have many eggs, so I put them in football. I never considered myself a student-athlete.

Then I got to the NFL and I started to fall in love with the sport, wanting to leave my mark on the game. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the emotion of it and think competition is the only thing that matters, then you see a teammate or a friend tear an ACL and—POOF—all that contract money is gone. Sorry, but the richest sports owners in the country don’t want to pay you for risking your health.

And yet, we go out there anyway with bad knees and shoulders and headaches. Because we know if we don’t play hurt and injured, we’ll be released just the same. I look at guys like Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas, laying it on the line in this Super Bowl with their elbow and shoulder injuries. In three months everybody will forget what they did and assume those injuries are 100% fine, but there is no such thing as 100% health in the NFL. You play with a bad shoulder, you retire with a bad shoulder and you die with a bad shoulder. Same goes for brains.

The NFL says it wants us to report concussions, but its actions say differently. Guys are motivated to play hurt by the threat of unemployment and lost salary because of the collective bargaining terms forced on players by the owners. If you really wanted us to report concussions and other injuries, you’d guarantee the contracts.

When you bring this up to management and ownership in conversations they tell you what you want to hear. Nobody is willing to have a real discussion about it, least of all the people making a fortune off the gladiators on the field.

They want to get along, and we want to get paid. The media? Y’all are happy to look the other way.

I am personally tired of hearing players complain about their injuries and disabilities. They get paid an ungodly amount of money for what they love doing. More than they are worth or should be IMO. (Check out what our servicemen get paid and pay attention to their sacrifice and disabilities.) Some make more in one year than most people make on a lifetime. I don't hear boxers complain about their injuries after they are done shining in the spotlight... Or do they?

Maybe he should have become a drug warlord or find other ways "to become a millionaire" where the "known risks" would have been acceptable to him. EVERY PLAYER knows the risks of this game. Every player knows that what they do to their bodies is not good for them especially over the long term. If they say they didn't before, they certainly do now. If they don't know, they are simply idiots. Ignorance is not a excuse in my book. Quit complaining and blaming! Why doesn't he and all the players quit now so they don't look like moose? They have 50 years of ex players they could interview to do due diligence before they start interviewing for an NFL"job".

Well we all know the answer. With all this knowledge it is interesting to see that college football thrives on Saturdays and their will be an upcoming draft where kids are aware of the risks and benefits AND alternatives to hurling their body at each other in the NFL for something they love, get paid a shitload of money ( only to blow it) and get some fame. THEY ALL HAVE CHOICES! They could go to college, get a degree and get a job that doesn't expose them to the risks they complain about. They should not be blaming the NFL for poor parenting or making bad choices (if they are complaining about the injury risk and NFL structure or disability program). Last time I went, they did hand out textbooks in high school and college. They could choose paths like the rest of us did to make less money and have less risk and more longevity.

They should not be blaming anyone. I could have played pro baseball but chose not to. I don't sue or gripe to the American medical association because as a surgeon my neck hurts after looking down in surgery for 20years. Where is my compensation? Veterans of war don't get paid enough. .. And these overpaid players are? Laughable... They chose their destiny, fully know the risks and should be 100% accountable and responsible for their own actions and decisions. Read the "informed consent and liability waiver" for being on an NFL team. Maybe it is no different than what you sign before you choose to skydive and risk death. Being unintelligent or having poor judgement to make bad decisions is ..... Well just to bad. Life isn't fair. The NFL could be better criticized for not having a program to show these players how to invest and save their money then focus on the disabilities. It's real simple... If you don't like the fact that you might ache all over your body and have headaches or you might get cut after blowing out an ACL, then get another job!!

It's like prisoners who complain about the living conditions in prison... If you don't like it, dont check in to prison again! BTW I also side with the OWNers. They "own" the team. Not the fans, not the players, not the cities. The owners worked their asses of to "buy" and assume the responsibilities for their team. Rules were put in place for structure and guidelines of opperation long before some of these players were born. The owner can take "his" team anywhere he wants as under the guidelines and mandates of this "business". I wish everyone would stop crying about it and just get direct tv. Owners have rights.. It is their team and be thankful you got to have a team in your city for what ever time they were there.

I assume there are hypocrites who were so joyous about the Rams leaving LA for ST Louis and were not to concerned with how the fans in LA felt. Those same people now can't accept them going back "home". I own my house and my business that thousands of people have enjoyed. I can move that business any where I want based solely on my preferences. A NFL team is not any different ... It is a BUSINESS. There is no obligations to the fans. If they moved to Topeka Kansas they would accumulate more fans there who would be happy about their arrival. The rest can get direct TV like the 10 million fans in LA had to. If you don't like your teams owner or your team, pick another one. Shrug

We all have choices. And players want guaranteed contract even if they can't run, catch, tackle or throw. The answer is NO. Owners want to win also and have to be financially responsible for their business. You could not have any percentage of disabled players in your team long term that could not perform and remain successful. That is just unwise. Fans would not even tolerate this. Yes it is slanted in the OWNers direction because they "own" the team. Their rules. If the players don't like this risk that they are fully aware of, simply quit the NFL and find a better job with better contracts, better perceived owners or bosses, better retirement plans, better benefits, less risk, and pay for disability insurance. Or.. Just own your own business or buy your very own NFL team.

All this is just maddening to me. If you decide you want to be a millionaire they there are clearly alternative routes to take with different risk benefit ratios. One may be getting a great education instead of spending all your time in the weight room and one may be becoming a drug lord among others. Every person has the right, opportunity, and plenty of time to make their own choice. Stop blaming everyone else for your choices. Without some risk, luck and very hard work everyone can't be millionaires.

 

[Stranger]

While there are definitely changes that can be made to benefit players, I'm still waiting to see that gun to everyone's head that forces them to play football. It should be apparent from early on that football is a high contact, injury laden sport. Reminds me of an old friend who does some sort of metalworking underwater. Used to complain all the time about it being dangerous until I pointedly remarked that it should have been obvious from the start, and that complaining about it after he had made more money than a normal metalworker would ever make was kind of asinine. NFL is a slave market? The NFL really isn't all that different from real life in many of these regards. My company employs many of the same tricks and misdirection that the NFL does to hide severity and the overall number of injuries. If you get injured framing houses they don't give you your wages until the end of your union contract. They just cut you lose with as little as they can, in my case it was nothing. If teams were required to pay players who can't play thru the end of their contracts there'd be nothing but 1 year deals. What they need (and us as well) is a better settlement process. I'd like to see improvements in ALL injury treatment to employees, and that definitely includes the NFL.

ur company doesnt ha e non profit staus, nor does it trump anti trust laws

 

[LesBaker]

IMO he comes off as an emboldened egotistical whiner complaining that he isn't getting enough millions.

Go get a job, live paycheck to paycheck like million of YOUR FANS do. Raise a kid by yourself by working two jobs like many of YOUR FANS do. Almost all of them would trade places with you in a minute.

I don't wanna hear it, especially since it is in large part inaccurate. The head trauma issue has been ALL OVER every media outlet there is, this is the post season so it's briefly pushed aside as everyone focuses on the small number of games.

He clearly cares about getting more money and little else other than wanting more money in case he has long term injuries, that's why he led with the "why isn't our money guaranteed" card.

Is he doing anything to help guys who are suffering and are broke?

I bet he would quiet down if someone asked him that question.

 

[blue4]

ur company doesnt ha e non profit staus, nor does it trump anti trust laws

Well that makes it so much better then. Glad to know that when most people get treated like that it's totally fair, unless the entity you work for has non profit status and anti trust laws. I don't see what difference that makes to players being treated as they are, or normal employees being treated as they are. That seems a totally different issue that seems to apply to the rant above about relocation more than injuries.

 

[Ladoc]

http://mmqb.si.com/2015/01/31/darnell-dockett-nfl-dirty-laundry/

Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

The NFL’s Dirty Laundry
While the media obsesses over quiet players and PSI, the biggest problems in professional football go unnoticed. From concussions to non-guaranteed contracts, players are getting fed up with the league's rampant hypocrisy
By Darnell Dockett
Defensive End, Arizona Cardinals

The NFL should love you guys. All of you reporters and editors and TV personalities who have been writing and talking for two weeks about Marshawn Lynch and deflated balls. The league has to be happy about these little controversies that blow up and turn your heads, because it’s keeping you from looking for its dirty laundry.

I met Moose Johnston once. His knuckles and fingers are twisted and jagged. Tony Siragusa hurts all over his body. Junior Seau killed himself. But the NFL says concussions are down 25% and you don’t even blink. You want to know when the next Lynch press conference is going down.

You’re not asking the question many of us players are: Why aren’t our contracts guaranteed? And I’m not talking about every contract. I’m talking about established veterans on their second and third deal getting fully compensated on those big contracts that make headlines but never actually get fulfilled.

I come at this from a different place than most NFL players. I tore my ACL last summer, and I’m several months from where I want to be before I get back on a field. I’m taking my time, and making sure I’m taking care of my business so I can come out and fulfill all the career and season goals I set for myself last year.

I never loved football before I got to the NFL. When I was a kid, I wasn’t inspired by football stars or any other athletes. I glorified the neighborhood drug kingpin. I wanted to hustle. I wanted to be a millionaire. Football was an outlet for me in high school when my parents passed away. Then I started thinking about ways to become a millionaire. I wasn’t crazy about school, and once I started being decent at football, I realized I had natural ability to play the sport.

I got to college, and I looked around and saw all the money changing hands and none of it coming our way. We put the fans in the seats, and we played hurt and injured, not for any kind of compensation, but for the slim chance that we might get paid three years down the road. You can talk about getting compensated with an opportunity to get an education, and that all sounds really great. I’ve heard people say, “You’re a student-athlete, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” But the only people who say that have a lot of eggs. I didn’t have many eggs, so I put them in football. I never considered myself a student-athlete.

Then I got to the NFL and I started to fall in love with the sport, wanting to leave my mark on the game. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the emotion of it and think competition is the only thing that matters, then you see a teammate or a friend tear an ACL and—POOF—all that contract money is gone. Sorry, but the richest sports owners in the country don’t want to pay you for risking your health.

And yet, we go out there anyway with bad knees and shoulders and headaches. Because we know if we don’t play hurt and injured, we’ll be released just the same. I look at guys like Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas, laying it on the line in this Super Bowl with their elbow and shoulder injuries. In three months everybody will forget what they did and assume those injuries are 100% fine, but there is no such thing as 100% health in the NFL. You play with a bad shoulder, you retire with a bad shoulder and you die with a bad shoulder. Same goes for brains.

The NFL says it wants us to report concussions, but its actions say differently. Guys are motivated to play hurt by the threat of unemployment and lost salary because of the collective bargaining terms forced on players by the owners. If you really wanted us to report concussions and other injuries, you’d guarantee the contracts.

When you bring this up to management and ownership in conversations they tell you what you want to hear. Nobody is willing to have a real discussion about it, least of all the people making a fortune off the gladiators on the field.

They want to get along, and we want to get paid. The media? Y’all are happy to look the other way.

My friend Don Henley said it best:
"Get Over It"

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H-Y7MAASkg&sns=em

 

[ozarkram]

Well that makes it so much better then. Glad to know that when most people get treated like that it's totally fair, unless the entity you work for has non profit status and anti trust laws. I don't see what difference that makes to players being treated as they are, or normal employees being treated as they are. That seems a totally different issue that seems to apply to the rant above about relocation more than injuries.

I think it might be about the total absurdity of the whole thing. Both sides have points that have merit yet at the same time both are wrong.

 

[LesBaker]

It's startling how much shit Goodell and the NFL get from uninformed fans that don't understand that there are two sides that have to agree to almost everything. The NFLPA gets off the hook so easy it's nearly unbelievable, they very rarely share in any of the blame while conspiracy theorists and fans who want to play the blame game and aren't paying that much attention point to the NFL and the commissioner.

There was a big discussion about all this on another board when the new CBA was put in place.

 

[Athos]

I got to college, and I looked around and saw all the money changing hands and none of it coming our way. We put the fans in the seats, and we played hurt and injured, not for any kind of compensation, but for the slim chance that we might get paid three years down the road. You can talk about getting compensated with an opportunity to get an education, and that all sounds really great. I’ve heard people say, “You’re a student-athlete, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” But the only people who say that have a lot of eggs. I didn’t have many eggs, so I put them in football. I never considered myself a student-athlete.

These lines piss me off. Thousands of people WISH they could get a free education rather than get saddled with mountainous or paying thousands out of pocket and living like a pauper to do so. This is what always pisses me off about the entitled dicks who all but get paid (depending on their chosen school) an upwards of $60K if say, you attend Michigan in-state, or over $100K out of state just to get your 3 year limit in before the NFL. So, on education, Dockett can go fuck himself. He was lucky to be blessed with the athletic ability to get his EDU.

This is my problem giving athletes extra money on the side......when many who go Pro don't give a fuck about the EDU opportunities they get blessed with.

Different strokes for different folks.

People dug coal and truly risked (still risk) their livelihoods for put food on the table and get nowhere close to what an NFL player does. I could create a never ending list of this issues. Few things tick me off than millionaires whining about more money. Yea, you get taken advantage of, just like the rest of us. Only difference is, you get paid a lot and had a real choice for taking millions for a couple risks.

He clearly cares about getting more money and little else other than wanting more money in case he has long term injuries, that's why he led with the "why isn't our money guaranteed" card.

Do regular folks get guaranteed money on their jobs that they see if they get injured/fired/let-off? Not really. A piddly severance package if you're lucky. Worse if you're somehow liable for it.

 

[Prime Time]

The average career span of an NFL player is 3.3 years. Most don't make millions. I'm much more interested in their plight than someone like Darnell Dockett.

By the time their career is over they've accumulated injuries to their bodies by also playing in high school and college. It's not like the wear and tear and trauma to their bodies begins in their first NFL game. Yeah, they've made their choice and have to live with it but the college system and the NFL could do a much better job of taking care of these players once they're out of the league.

Is there not enough money for the colleges to begin paying players? Please!

How about this NFL? Pay the players less and use the extra money you saved to set up the best insurance and pension plans to ensure that these men are well taken care of into their old age.

This should be done as well for those who work as firemen, police officers, serve in the military, and anyone else who works in high risk professions.

As far as bad contracts go, try being a professional musician, lol. The screwing they take by record companies, agents, and club owners is legendary. If players sign bad contracts that's on them and their agents. The thing is that greed may eventually tear down the NFL in the same way that's happening now to the record companies.

As for me, I knew the short-term risks when I played baseball, football, soccer, and the martial arts. What I didn't know was that the injuries I accumulated to my back and shoulders would stay with me forever and affect my quality of life. No whining allowed but when I was a young man, long-term planning wasn't part of my thinking process. I'm guessing that Darnell Dockett and most of the other NFL players are the same way.

Junior Seau was inducted into the Hall of Fame yesterday. If he were alive today I wonder what he'd say about all this?

 

[Thordaddy]

IMO he comes off as an emboldened egotistical whiner complaining that he isn't getting enough millions.

Go get a job, live paycheck to paycheck like million of YOUR FANS do. Raise a kid by yourself by working two jobs like many of YOUR FANS do. Almost all of them would trade places with you in a minute.

I don't wanna hear it, especially since it is in large part inaccurate. The head trauma issue has been ALL OVER every media outlet there is, this is the post season so it's briefly pushed aside as everyone focuses on the small number of games.

He clearly cares about getting more money and little else other than wanting more money in case he has long term injuries, that's why he led with the "why isn't our money guaranteed" card.

Is he doing anything to help guys who are suffering and are broke?

I bet he would quiet down if someone asked him that question.

IOW WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD ........................OUR WORLD

FWIW I played and can show anyone with a strong stomach some of the lasting scars I have and it lead me to conclude the human body was not designed to play this game the league understands that all too well,considering his writing style ,I'd say Dockett has reached his highest and best use and should IMO be glad he has.
OLDSAYING: Some people would bitch if you hung them with a new rope, some people I'd like to try the "theory"

 

[Boffo97]

I assume there are hypocrites who were so joyous about the Rams leaving LA for ST Louis and were not to concerned with how the fans in LA felt. Those same people now can't accept them going back "home". I own my house and my business that thousands of people have enjoyed. I can move that business any where I want based solely on my preferences. A NFL team is not any different ... It is a BUSINESS. There is no obligations to the fans. If they moved to Topeka Kansas they would accumulate more fans there who would be happy about their arrival. The rest can get direct TV like the 10 million fans in LA had to. If you don't like your teams owner or your team, pick another one. Shrug

Nice snuck in irrelevant tangent there.