In May, eight former NFL players filed a class action lawsuit against the league.
These players, including Richard Dent, Jim McMahon and Keith Van Horne of the 1985 Super Bowl Champion Chicago Bears, alleged the NFL supplied them with illegally obtained drugs and painkillers, failed to inform them of the health risks associated with the drugs, and that the players are now suffering from debilitating medical complications resulting from the continued use of the drugs. Or, as Deadspin’s Tom Ley succinctly put it, the suit alleges the “NFL doped them up like racehorses.”
The players claim they “received hundreds, if not thousands, of injections from doctors and pills from trainers, including but not limited to NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) and Percodan.” Jeremy Newberry, an offensive lineman for San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego from 1999-2008, claims he “received hundreds of Toradol injections over the course of his career, and for many games, would receive as many as five or six injections of other medications during the course of a game.” These medications have debilitating side effects and the players continue to deal with them through this day.
As the faces of the well-publicized concussion scandal have grown in number over recent years, the NFL has appeared increasingly grotesque in its handling of player health issues. The details of lives lost or ruined by CTE (chronic traumatic encephelopathy) like Mike Webster’s or Junior Seau’s, have only been made more appalling by the findings in League of Denial that the NFL refused to provide insurance or other medical services to former players who showed symptoms. The allegations in this new suit are particularly distressing, however, as they show not just a lack of care for players in retirement but a dangerous and disturbing standard of treatment for players during their time in the league.
The drug issues only scratch the surface of the players’ claims. Their suit alleges the league lied and concealed information about potentially career or life-threatening injuries:
Named Plaintiff Jim McMahon discovered for the first time in 2011 or 2012 that he had suffered a broken neck at some point in his career. He believes it happened during a 1993 playoff game when, after a hit, his legs went numb. Rather than sit out, he received medications and was pushed back on the field. No one from the NFL ever told him of this injury. In addition, he learned only a few years ago that he had broken an ankle while playing; at the time, he was told it was a sprain.
Similarly, while any doctor who looked at named Plaintiff Jeremy Newberry’s records should have seen the decreasing kidney function from his blood levels, Mr. Newberry was never told about that problem while with the League. Indeed, if not for one night after retiring that Newberry’s blood pressure was measured at 250 over 160, at which point he was hospitalized for days, Newberry might have died from his kidney problems.
The league would have little reason to worry if these claims could be considered isolated incidents. The NFL has been hit with multiple similar suits over the years from individuals. Kenny Easley, a safety whose career overlapped with some of the plaintiffs in the new suit, sued the Seattle Seahawks over kidney failure caused by large amounts of Advil taken from an unmarked bin in the club’s training room. Mike Siani, a wide receiver who played in the 1970s, sued the Raiders after “drugs were injected into his broken toes 16 times in one season.” And Dick Butkus sued Theodore Fox, his doctor with the Bears, alleging Fox “put the short-term needs of the club ahead of his long-term health by repeatedly injecting his knees with cortisone and other drugs.” These suits have typically been settled out of court, limiting the public relations and financial damage to the league.
As horror stories piled up, the concussion issue exploded from one concerning afflicted retirees like Webster and Seau to a national scandal encompassing every current and former player in the league. A look through football’s historical record suggests the NFL could be in for another explosion over clear and obvious disregard for the health of the players.
[S]teroid use has been known in the NFL since at least 1963. It was the original San Diego Charger team, a team that coincidentally Al Davis helped coach from 1960 to 1963, that put anabolic steroids on everyone’s plate and even threatened fines for those players who didn't take the dinner pill.
The above comes from Rob Huizenga’s book, You’re Okay, It’s Just a Bruise, a detailed description of the practices of an NFL locker room from Huizenga’s perspective as a Raiders team doctor. Huizenga relates countless instances of medical negligence, from stories of the Raiders’ own bins of pills, to stories of botched injections, and even Al Davis’s reluctance to use stretchers unless absolutely necessary.
Huizenga relays the story of Marc Wilson, a former Raiders backup quarterback who was forced into action by an injury to starter Jim Plunkett in 1985. Three games into his time as replacement, Wilson himself suffered a nasty separated left (non-throwing) shoulder, but was able to play through the injury.
Later in the season, Huizenga recalls Wilson stepping into his office. Wilson asked, “Do you think I should take these, doc?” and then handed Huizenga a prescription in his name for an anabolic steroid, signed by lead Raiders doctor Robert Rosenfeld. “Rosenfeld said it’ll make my shoulder heal quicker,” Wilson told Huizenga.
The medical community had known about the dangers of steroids well before 1985. But it was Robert Rosenfeld’s job to make sure Al Davis’s players were on the field, and that they were strong once they got there. Huizenga, one of the first major proponents of steroid testing, wrote that he was concerned other doctors had prescribed steroids as well. Given Cincinnati Bengals strength coach Kim Wood’s comments from a 1985 Sports Illustrated report on steroid use, chances are Huizenga was correct:
Strength coaches justify giving steroids to their kids this way: “It’s my job to get them good stuff, not let them go to some scumbag on the streets.” They say, “Steroids are the individual’s decision,” but somehow the drug seems to always be there.
Steve Courson spent eight seasons in the NFL as an offensive guard for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1978 through 1985. Courson was a fifth-round pick and never made a Pro Bowl or an All-Pro team. Rather, Courson is best known for admitting to the regular use of anabolic steroids in a 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated. Courson told SI, “Seventy-five percent of linemen in the NFL are on steroids and 95 percent have probably tried them.” This was the bombshell of the SI story, one of three reports on steroid use in the issue.
But Courson makes it clear that steroids were far from the only popular drug in NFL locker rooms.
I use ‘roids to build up my strength in the offseason, but I never use speed to play. Guys are out there using speed. Why don’t they outlaw that? Coaches say, “Hey, steroids are no good for you.” Well, how good is taking a painkiller in the ankle or the knee?
In the wake of the story, focus was almost exclusively on the gigantic proportion of NFL players using steroids. But Courson’s statement reveals a locker room culture that took the presence of painkillers for granted. And few blinked at the admittance that players were using speed to gear up for games, just as Major League Baseball’s issue with amphetamines went largely unnoticed and unreported.
Walt Sweeney was a rookie on the 1963 Chargers team Huizenga called the first to put steroids on the plate of its athletes. Sweeney played 13 years in the NFL, 11 of them with San Diego. He earned All-Pro honors six times. He played in 181 consecutive games as an offensive guard. “If I had to play against Sweeney every day, I’d rather sell used cars,” Hall of Famer Merlin Olson once said.
Sweeney used painkillers provided by the Chargers to get through those 181 consecutive games. After his career ended in 1975, he remained on the pills. Eventually, Sweeney sued the NFL. The hulking offensive lineman claimed he had been given prescription painkilling drugs regularly throughout his career, that players were fined if they did not take steroids, and that teams made many other pills available. These claims are all echoed either by Huizenga, by the new lawsuit filed by Dent, McMahon et al., or both.
“My drug addiction is directly related to the game,” Sweeney said. “These guys broke my mind.”
San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Nick Canepa relays a similarly striking account from Ron Mix, a Hall of Fame teammate of Sweeney’s on the Chargers offensive line.
In 1963, the Chargers became the first team to hire a full-time strength coach, Alvin Roy from LSU,” Mix said. “The first day of training camp he told us he wanted us to start lifting weights. I had been lifting but most players back then didn’t. He said we have to assimilate more protein. He held up a bottle of pink pills, Dianabol, and we didn’t know it was a steroid. He put them out in cereal bowls.
In 2011, ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” reported on a disturbing study of painkiller use in former NFL players performed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis. Of 644 retired players who responded to a survey, 52 percent said they had used prescription opioids (painkillers) during their career. Of those 335 players, 71 percent said they misused the drugs during their career, and of those, 15 percent said they had misused painkillers just within the past 30 days.
As shocking as those numbers might be, they probably paint an optimistic picture of the situation. The study was performed via a telephone survey. Of the 1,184 eligible players in the 2009 retired NFL Players Association Directory, seven percent refused to take part in the study and another 38.4 percent were unreachable.
In the accompanying video report, we see the story of Dan Johnson, a tight end from 1983-87 with the Miami Dolphins who developed a painkiller addiction during his time in the league. When ESPN originally visited Johnson, the former tight end lied about the extent of his painkiller usage, as he did not tell reporter John Barr he was taking nearly three times the recommended dosage of his pills. Johnson later explained he was worried his doctors would take away his prescriptions.
It seems reasonable to believe, then, that at least a portion of the 45.4 percent of players who were unreachable or refused to take part may have had an even higher rate of prescription painkiller use and abuse than the 644 players studied. And considering nearly half of the players in the study were over 50 — meaning their NFL careers likely began before the 1980s, when painkiller use was reaching a peak — the study likely catches some players who were in and out of the league before painkillers and steroids became so widespread.
The lawsuit filed by Dent, McMahon, Newberry et al. will take time to resolve, as it navigates the morass that is the United States legal system. The bigger worry for the NFL should be the historical record, which clearly shows the eight players to file suit in May are far from alone. NFL teams have been putting substances in their players for years with blatant disregard for the consequences, short-term or long-term. Whether or not this new lawsuit succeeds, the numbers and the history don’t lie: a day of reckoning could be coming, and soon.
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