The professional football league’s 401k—the NFL Player Second Career Savings Plan—is routinely touted as a top-tier retirement plan.
But it’s too little/too late to help many former football greats now struggling to make ends meet.
And it’s another reminder that “do it yourself” retirement saving through a 401k might not be so bad after all, with no less than defined-contribution pioneer Ted Benna noting that the promises made by many pensions weren’t all they were cracked up to be.
A case in point is football Hall-of-Famer Jim Brown, who drew attention to the “shockingly, immorally, low” pensions for rank-and-file NFL players from the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
In a heartbreaking Op-Ed in The New York Times on Sunday, Brown pointed to one star of the New York Jets’ Super Bowl team who “now lives in a trailer; unable to afford a dentist, he barely has any teeth.”
Another doesn’t have enough to cover the medical bills from repeated concussions and the CTE that followed.
Brown called out NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who has previously said, “Nothing the league can do can ever fully express our appreciation to the players who helped build our league.”
Prove it, Brown added, “by providing an appropriate pension for past players.”
“The players may be remembered,” he concluded, “But the men are forgotten.”
Collective Bargaining Agreement
A recent AP article points to a number of former NFL stars aligning in an effort to eliminate a particularly large discrepancy between the amount players who retired before 1993 receive in pension payments, and what players retiring after 1993 receive.
In 1993, the NFL and its players’ union signed a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that ended five years of labor issues.
The agreement included more than $1 billion for a severance package, a 401k retirement plan and a doubling of pensions. But those benefits were not offered retroactively to players who had already retired.
Playing FAIR
FAIR, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which stands for Fairness for Athletes in Retirement, was created by former NFL star John Riggins and his wife Lisa-Marie, and is supported by a number of former players (including Dick Butkus, Elvin Bethea, Joe DeLamielleure, Ken Houston and more).
Its goal is to improve the often dire financial plight of players who retired before 1993 like those described by Brown.
FAIR is behind an awareness campaign to educate the public ahead of the CBA negotiations about pension inequality, the pre-1993 player experience and the misconception that recent NFLPA programs and NFL settlements have appropriately addressed the concerns of these former players.
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
