Prayers For Damar Hamlin | NFL Player Safety, Race-Norming, CTE, and More NFL Problems

First and foremost on this video, my prayers go out to DeMar Hamlin, the young man who recently collapsed on the field and he plays for the Buffalo Bills. My prayers go out to DeMar Hamlin, to his family, and to his loved ones, first and foremost. Nothing else matters in this video more than that. First and foremost, prayers to the young man. So I just want to say that up front, first and foremost. Now on this video, I'm going to explain something, some things that may be shocking to some of you that you may not have heard anywhere else about the NFL. So I want you to brace yourself because you may not know some of these things about your beloved NFL and they're not so distant history in what they've been doing. And listen, let me say this also up front. I'm a former fan of the NFL, you know, multi-time fantasy football league champion and a person that watched the game and enjoyed the game of the NFL professional football for many, many years, probably 35, 40 years, right up until a few years ago when I stopped watching the NFL because of some of the things I'm going to share with you in this video that you may not know. Now, looking at the popularity of the NFL and some of the things I'm going to talk about, more people should probably be very, very concerned about this league. More people should probably be very, very concerned about the health of the players that play in this league, right? And some of the practices that the NFL has done and had done over many, many years to cover up some of these issues, right? So I want to have this conversation because this conversation needs to be had with the health of that young man that collapsed on the field. We need to be having this conversation about professional football. The NFL is a company or a corporation, but they don't really consider themselves a company or a corporation. The NFL is actually considered a trade association and it's made up of 32 teams and it's funded by those 32 teams. And we'll talk about a little bit about that, but they handle themselves as sort of a business and their bottom line is profit. And what I need you guys to start to understand is that the NFL is not really, really concerned with, as much as you think they are, about player safety. And they've done some really, really shy stuff over the years that a lot of people are not aware of, don't know about. You may heard of the CTE, but you just don't know some of the things that the NFL has done because you can't get this information readily available on NBC and ESPN. They're not going to cover this stuff. CBS and ABC, they're not going to cover this stuff in detail thoroughly because there's sort of a conflict of interest, right? These media outlets, they have billions, some of them have billion dollar contracts with the NFL that lasts for years and years. So the media would be sort of shooting itself in the foot if they reported some of this stuff fully. And if they had town meetings and conferences that are televised and televised debates and all the deep dives into this topic, the media would be shooting itself in the foot because they have a relationship with the NFL that's based on billion dollar contracts. So the media would stand to lose billions if they cover these topics thoroughly. They'll give you a sound bite or a quick blurb, but they never go into these things in full detail, right? The first thing you need to understand about the NFL is this. For many, many years, the NFL used race norming as a factor in their dementia testing when making payouts of the lawsuit. Specifically, let me say that again in a different way so you really understand it. The large billion dollar lawsuit that the NFL lost eight or nine or 10 years ago for the CTE issues, the billion dollar lawsuit, they started doing race norming as a factor to who they would pay or to who they would pay what to in terms of the dementia testing that they were doing based on that lawsuit. In other words, the NFL said, if you were black, specifically, if you were black, you have already been predisposed to having lower cognitive functioning due to your socioeconomic conditions and your poor background as a black person. Just because you're black, you were automatically predisposed to having lower socioeconomic conditions and therefore a lower cognitive functioning. Just because you were black, period. This is what the NFL was saying. Basically saying that you have lower level thinking already because you're black. Therefore, you hundreds and hundreds of black former NFL, ex-NFL players, you're going to receive lower scores on your dementia test and because you receive those lower scores, you're now going to be paid less. Therefore, you're going to receive less payout from this large settlement because you are black and because you previously were predisposed to having lower cognitive functioning and because you're come from a lower socioeconomic conditions in your background. So we're going to give you less money because of that. Now, this is what the NFL was doing for many, many years up until just a couple of years ago. This is what the NFL, your beloved NFL was saying to former black ex-NFL players. The only reason it came to light is because around 2018, two former NFL, black NFL players sued the NFL because they said the black former players were receiving less payout money. And guess what? They won their lawsuit. So the NFL was paying less money to black players, former black players for having less dementia because of the way they were scoring them on the test because they were black. This is your NFL. This is what they were doing to former black NFL players. Now, just so you know that what I'm saying is legitimate. There's an article from the New York Times just a few months ago from written by a writer named Ken Belson. And I'm going to give you just some information from the article that talks about this. And I'm reading verbatim here. Dozens of black retired NFL players will now be eligible for payouts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NFL's billion dollar concussion settlement, reversing previous decisions made because of cognitive tests that used race based measures to determine whether the players had dementia or not. This decision included a status report filed by the settlement administrator that was entered into the court docket. And it came two years after two former players sued the NFL to end the use of race as a criteria in evaluating players claims, which is a process known as norming. The settlement found that 646 black players who had been tested for dementia, but didn't qualify for cash payouts now can have their tests automatically rescored without using race as a criteria. Now, once it did that, 61 of those players were found to have moderate or severe dementia, and then another 246 were found to have mild dementia. So thousands of players have now qualified for examinations that will now not use race as a factor. So the results were the latest chapter. I'm still reading the results for the latest chapter in the landmark concussion settlement that has resulted in about $1 billion in claims being paid to former NFL players with a range of cognitive and neurological diseases, including dementia, Parkinson's, CTE. So for years, former black players and their families have accused the NFL of making it difficult, if not impossible to receive payouts from that settlement. And they have claimed that the plaintiff's attorney who represents every player in the class action suit was not doing enough to fight for them. In August, 2020, two retired players, Kevin Henry and Najee Davenport challenged the seven-year-old settlement and accused the league of explicitly and deliberately discriminating against black players by using separate race-based benchmarks to determine whether those players were eligible for dementia-based payments. So in other words, I'm just telling you this directly from an article. Now, the league went on, the NFL denied that it was trying to exclude black players, but agreed to remove race as a criteria. So just recently, a couple of months ago, the league and the attorneys for the players agreed to stop using players' race. This is just a couple of months ago. This isn't 1995, 2015, 2020. This is just a couple of months ago where the players and the league agreed to actually stop using the race as a determining factor on who gets what amount of money. Guys, this is incredible that this is the league. And I stopped reading the article now. This is incredible that this is the league that you support and 70% of the players are black. And the only reason it came to light is because two people sued the league and they won. Guys, this is your beloved NFL. This is the NFL that you buy tickets to go watch. This is the NFL that you buy jerseys for and you put on those jerseys and it has an NFL logo and you're making them richer and richer. You buy the 50 and 80 and $100 parking pass and you buy the 200 and 300 and $500 and $1,000 ticket and you go to tailgate for them all day long. You voted and you're using your tax dollars to put the bill on some of their stadiums. You see that owner in the booth and you think nothing about it, but this is your NFL. The NFL, by the way, guys, is paid very, very handsomely. The NFL has what they call a national revenue from TV deals, stadium naming right deals, merchandising, licensing. When you see that NFL logo on a shirt that you purchased, all of that money goes to the NFL and that money is shared amongst the teams, right? The national revenue was $11 billion in 2021, 11 billion. Now it's likely to be more in 2022 as the pandemic ended and things kind of got back to normal and stadiums begin to fill up again. NFL teams also get money from local revenue, ticket sales, parking, corporate sponsorships, a corporation, buying out a suite, whatever it may be. All 32 teams right now in the NFL are worth $5 billion and up. All of them are worth $5 billion and more. There's a lot of money being made in the NFL, a lot of money. They are living a lap of luxury. At the same time, they're doing things like race norming and doing things like not really focusing on player safety. I'll tell you why in just a moment. The other thing that needs to be talked about in terms of the NFL is guaranteed contracts. Typically, NFL players will receive at least some guaranteed money when they sign their contract, but that money usually comes in the form of contract bonuses and signing bonuses, right? While a player's base salary will occasionally be guaranteed for a season or two, usually their future seasons for their contract are not fully guaranteed unless you're one of the top 1% of players in the league or top 10% of players in the league. Most of these players are not even working off guaranteed contracts. I know some of these things that we talk about are based on the players union and the collective bargaining agreement, what they call the CBA, right? The collective bargaining agreement between the owners and the actual players and the players' representatives, right? So the third thing to think about with the NFL is the NFL talks player safety all the time. Again, player safety. Our prayers are with the young man who collapsed on the field recently, right? DeMar Hamlin. Our prayers are with him. But you have an NFL who talks player safety, but at the same time, they just added a 17th game. They fought hard against the collective bargaining agreement not long ago to add a 17th game, another game, another game. And there's talk of adding an 18th game by the 2025 season. Of course, they're going to do some collective bargaining to see what happens with that. But here's your owners who are steady adding games, steady adding more opportunities for players to get hurt, for players to get Parkinson's disease, for players to get CTE, for players to get dementia, for players to bang their heads around and get more life-changing and life-altering diseases. But they're still bargaining to play more and more games. What does that tell you? You can't talk about protocols and safety issues out of one side of your mouth and then on the other side of your mouth be adding games. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. But this is your NFL that you love and that you put so much time and money and energy into. The other thing is this. This is the same NFL that knew about CTE for decades and didn't even acknowledge it or acknowledge the concussion issues until 2009. Even after it was found in 2002 by an African doctor who did the autopsy on the former player Mike Webster. In 2002, that was done. He alerted the NFL about it. They didn't even recognize it until 2009. Then they had to fight in court over a lawsuit that they didn't settle until 2012 or 2013. That's the major lawsuit that I mentioned earlier where they were doing the race-norming testing. Was that billion-dollar lawsuit from 2013 or so. While the NFL was race-norming in their testing for dementia in 2013, 2014, and 2015. While they were race-norming and saying that black players should be getting less money for dementia because they came from a worse socioeconomic status. Also, they have lower cognitive abilities to begin. While the NFL was saying that, they were also marching 70% of their players out on the field who were black and who were going to get hit more and continue to pick up dangerous, life-altering, and life-threatening diseases. 70% of the league is black players, but they're putting 70% of these black players out there and adding games. Where is the player safety in that? Where's the care and concern about these players, 70% of whom are black? Of course, there's all nationalities in the NFL. This really goes for all nationalities, but I know that 70% are black. If 70% of them are black, it becomes an issue that we need to be thinking about. By the way, there are studies that have shown that cardiac arrest or heart problems are the biggest cause of death among former NFL players. There's also studies that show the lifespan of an NFL player is shorter than the lifespan of other major sports and shorter than the average American male. Those studies are out there. Do your research. When you look at the drugs, and when I say drugs, I mean things that the players have to take and inject just to get out there on the field one time, but now you're asking them to get out. First, they would get down on the field 10 times, then 14 times, then you went up to 16 times. Now, you got them out there 17 times, and now you got them out there and you're thinking about 18 times. At what point does it stop? You really begin to show that you care about player safety. When you look at the things that's pumped in those players, the loads of weightlifting and stress on the body and stress on the heart and hits to the head and all the history in the background of this gladiator-like sport, when you look at all of that history, it's a sport that you may want to think twice about sending your child out to play, sending your child out to battle as a young person. I know people that play football. All I can do and all I do is pray for the young people that are out there playing in those sports because we don't want anybody to get hurt. We don't want anybody to come up with some type of damage to their body at all, but it's a rough sport. We got to restart rethinking what our thinking is about football and then particularly specifically about by the time they get to the NFL and what is happening to these NFL bodies and brains based on what's going on with the sport of football. You may be saying to yourself, well, you know what? These players, they choose to go out there. They choose to go play the game. I totally get it. I totally understand it, and I totally agree. They make that choice, but do they have all the information to make that wise choice? Do they have all the information through the media and through readily available research to make an informed decision at an early age? Do parents have all that information? Maybe, maybe not. Ask yourself that. I'm just posing the question. I just want us to think about this. I'm all for business. I'm all for in the NFL. On this channel, we talk money, and this is why we're doing this video. We talk money, but we also talk about how money affects us. And in terms of player safety, NFL, such a popular sport, and in light of what happened to the young man on the field, I thought this video was important because I'm all for business, but I'm not all for players dying on the field. I'm not all for players dying early. I'm not all for brain damage. I'm not all for players developing early onset Parkinson's or CTE. I'm not for that. I'm not for players not being able to walk by the age of 40 and not being able to think clearly by the age of 35. That's not cool, NFL. That's not cool. So if you really want to be about player safety and you want to see the NFL about player safety, you've got some choices. Me, I bowed out of the NFL several years ago because of these types of issues and how this corporation or how this conglomerate of teams runs its business. I didn't pull out of the NFL because they didn't support Colin Kaepernick when he dropped to a knee. That was an unfortunate issue, and it was unfortunate how he was blackballed in the NFL by these owners when he stood up and said something. But it's also unfortunate, and one of the main reasons that I left the NFL is because of CTE, because of these issues about player safety, because you have an NFL who talks out of one side of the mouth about player safety, but on the other side of their mouth about adding games and doing things that don't look like they're too worried about player safety, and then about this race norming and treating and giving black former players less money because you were using race as a criteria to actually pay the lawsuit for dementia, as a criteria to say, hey, you were born black, so you were born in a lower socioeconomic level. You were born with lower cognitive function. That's a slap in the face. It's disrespectful. It's mean, it's rude, it's disrespectful, and it's flat out wrong. But they were doing this for years, and nobody has said nothing. And the reason you haven't seen this all on TV, splattered all over everywhere, is because it's a conflict of interest for the media to report it. They're not going to report something when they have a billion-dollar deal on the table or a billion-dollar contract with the NFL. Understand what's happening, folks. Be aware. And that's what this channel is all about. It's helping you understand money, but it's also helping you understand the role of money in our lives and what's going on around us. Hey, listen, guys. That's my talk about the NFL. Again, prayers out to the young man and his family. We really hope that all is well going forward with the young man. And I want to see the NFL make some real changes and not just talk a good game and make up for all of this unfair treatment of the former black NFL players that was going on for several years, many years, while they were doing their dementia testing. Hey, listen, if you got anything out of this video, smash the like button. If you got anything out of the video, share the video with somebody else. Drop a comment below. What are your thoughts? I want to know what you think. Listen, the best person that's going to take care of the old you is the young you right now. Take care of yourself and take care of other people until the next video.