Blood Equity

BLOOD EQUITY - The heavy toll of playing pro football. -Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times Everybody who plays leaves with something, says retired New York Giants linebacker Harry Carson in the documentary BLOOD EQUITY but, sadly, he doesn't mean a glorious pension or athletic pride. He's referring to the physical and mental struggles of ex-football players who feel monetarily neglected by the now $7.1-billion sport and its union when, as studies increasingly show, the game's built-in brutality -- and fierce pride in playing injured -- leads to a post-career life of constant medical care. The outrage expressed by interviewees Carson, Mike Ditka, Daryl Johnston, Donnie Green and others -- whether offering personal tales of woe or sticking up for others -- is directed mostly at NFL Players Assn. head Gene Upshaw, who notoriously denied a connection between game-time concussions and increased instances of dementia among retirees. (Footage of Baltimore Colts legend John Mackey not recognizing family photos is especially heartbreaking.) Upshaw died last year, though, which indicates that director Michael Felix and ex-NFL linebacker/coach Roman Phifer, who produced, could have updated their advocacy to reflect the latest efforts to address this problem. But as rough-hewn and stylistically awkward as the film is -- editing car crash sound effects over nasty on-field collisions -- the stories make for gripping testimony.

BLOOD WITHOUT MONEY ROMAN PHIFER AND RICO MCCLINTON’S NEW DOCUMENTARY, BLOOD EQUITY, DELVES INTO HOW SUFFERING EX-NFL PLAYERS ARE BEING LEFT HIGH AND DRY BY THEIR UNION. --Eli Kooris, Venice Magazine If these guys get injured but have some good money management skills, they ll be set to do whatever they want for the rest of their lives, McClinton remarks. But the guys who first began playing in the NFL were making fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year, not getting seven to eight figure signing bonuses for a few seasons. Once they couldn t play anymore, what happens to them? This question was reiterated when McClinton and his buddy Roman Phifer, a three-time super bowl champion with the New England Patriots and current assistant football coach with the Denver Broncos, went down to Miami to hang with some ex-players for a charity golf tournament. On the course, men tend to talk about what s bothering them and the main topic of conversation was how the NFL Players Association the union for all NFL players, playing or retired wasnt supporting the veterans who had helped build the NFL despite making the owners and the league rich by season after season of killing themselves on the field. Roman and I realized there was some thing here, McClinton explains. Donning a producers cap for the first time, he and Phifer began cobbling together candid interviews with Hall of Fame ex-players and coaches like Mike Ditka, Daryl Moose Johnson, Tony Dorsett, and Willie Wood about their lives after the NFL. The response from everyone inter viewed was unanimous: the Players Association wasnt paying out what it should to retired veterans. You work in a mill or automobile plant and you hurt yourself and can t work anymore, your union makes sure you re taken care of, McClinton says. Why isnt the NFL Players Association doing the same thing for the play ers it promises to protect in the first line of its mission statement? This question is the theme of their documentary, Blood Equity, which strings all of these interviews together and repeatedly raises the question of why the NFLPA has done little to help these players, who are clearly suffering from injuries caused by their days in the old NFL, when the equipment wasnt safe and the rules allowed for chop blocks that could bend your kneecap in the opposite direction. Over 8,500 players have retired from the NFL since 1960 and less than five per cent of them have received any type of benefits. What s worse, is that the NFLPA has over a billion dollars in an account, collect ed from teams for just this purpose yet seems to be just sitting on it, despite pay ing their union president, like the late ex-player Gene Upshaw, millions of dollars per year. Corruption seems evident, yet no one from the Players Association has given a real concrete explanation for their actions or lack thereof. Because they don t have an answer, McClinton notes. But the system is set up in such a way that they don t have to give one. So that s why we made this film, because those players needed a voice. Blood Equity is a microcosm for the American health care system: those that are needed by the larger system get treatment and those that aren t needed by the larger system are ignored and tend to suffer until their dying breath.