[Skyy God]

I'm with Nate Jackson on providing health insurance for ex-players. Dubiously efficacious rule changes like eliminating kickoffs won't win the PR battle. This might.

So what moral obligation does the industry have? I say there is only one: health care for life for all vested NFL players. There are roughly 18,000 former players alive and breathing. It is feasible, considering the $9 billion dollars in revenue the league brings in every year, to provide health insurance for every one of them. As it stands now, players have five years of post-career health coverage: then they're on their own with a long list of pre-existing conditions. Many football-related ailments don't pop up until later. By then many of them are broke.

If it is true that football is our true national pastime, then we should protect it. That means protecting those who play, and yes, those who played. They do not disappear when they stop playing; they limp along. And every uninsured, drug-addicted, crippled, dementia-praecoxed former player who limps through his football-free world is a black eye on a league that is already up against the existential ropes. Finding a way to insure those who need it, like RGIII someday will, would be the PR boost that the league so desperately needs, with the additional virtue of being the good and ethical thing to do.

Then we could stop pointing fingers. We could stop telling lies about "safer football." We could allow the game to evolve in its own best interest instead of the best interest of the league's PR machine and litigation team. And we could enjoy the game of football again, knowing that the men who entertain us will be taken care of when their bodies are no longer healthy enough to hold our attention.

http://deadspin.com/5974523/the-heal...player-himself