Conrad Dobler can teach us much about where the league and players should be going in the CBA talks.
[img_r]http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/2010/writers/peter_king/02/14/offseason/conrad-dobler-knee.jpg[/img_r]I'm glad that both sides of the table are intent, seemingly, on giving retired players a bigger piece of the pie than they now get of the $8-billion-a-year NFL business. NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith was adamant with me in a long interview last spring that the old-timers need to be provided for better. And Roger Goodell, at his annual Super Bowl press conference, said: "We all have to do more for our retired players. There's just no two ways about it ... These are the men who helped us build this great game and we need to make sure we are doing the right thing for them.''
I would suggest that they start by looking at the knees of Dobler, a guard for the Cardinals, Saints and Bills, who made three Pro Bowls and earned $450,000 in 10 seasons, ending in 1981. His knees are more road maps than functioning joints, part of the 34-surgery nightmare he endured to be a football player.
Dobler showed up at the Super Bowl, and he will not be silenced, because there are scores of Conrad Doblers out there, former players who earned what was good money a generation or two ago and helped build the NFL to the sporting monster it is today. He showed up in shorts, just so people could see how ravaged his knees are, and he saw former Cowboy Nate Newton, who told him to please put pants on. "I can't look at that,'' Newton told him. "Those will be my knees someday.'' And when Dobler opened his mouth to whoever would listen, he made more than a little sense.
"The players of today may look at us as whiners, as people who blew their fortunes,'' Dobler said. "But all I can say to players who say that is: You will be us. Study history. You will us someday.''
Dobler has not been able to be declared permanently disabled. "WalMart's probably got more greeters on permanent disability than the NFL has,'' he told me. Nine knee replacements he's had, and his wife is a quadriplegic after a 2007 accident, and he's had one home foreclosure, and, as he says, "If you don't think about walking in front of a bus after what I've been through, you're not human.''
My over-simplistic suggestion has always been to start the reparations with older players, whose pensions are shameful (Hall of Famer running back Leroy Kelly's is $176 a month), with players and owners giving one-half of 1 percent of their gross take every year to a fund for retired players. That's a start. After that I'd suggest giving Dobler a seat at the table of the discussions about how the retired players should be treated. Look at his knees first, then listen to his words.