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By BERNIE LINCICOME
Scripps Howard News Service
Sad stories from violent sports, from football, from boxing, from hockey, from games where angry men smack other angry men, are almost clichis, the addled old jock far from the glory he chased.
Muhammad Ali is certainly the greatest illustration of this, and John Unitas could not even sign his name to sell his autograph near the end. Hockey fans still lament the blunted gifts of Eric Lindros, constantly concussed.
Congress, almost always late to these things, just listened to NFL veterans, heirs and widows tell the touching tales of how America's favorite sport had crippled them and their loved ones.
Sympathy is too mild a word for the emotions wrung.
Other than to change the games or to ban the games _ as has been threatened before _ what can be done is unclear, except for more money for pain, an inadequate reward no matter the amount.
One wonders if there should not be a warning label on every helmet: This game could be hazardous to your health, and if it were not, no one would be watching.
The oft-repeated definition of football said with pride and usually credited to former Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty, is that it is not a contact sport, it is a collision sport.
I caught only edited replays of the congressional testimony, but I understand it brought tears and threats. And it is possible that someone asked the question: Knowing this is how you would be later, would you not have played football?
This is not the issue under discussion, of course. It was whether today's players, benefiting from the toil of those before, are obligated to take better care of their disabled predecessors.
Well, of course they are. So is the league itself, rolling in money these days, still using old players as props for their product, if only in rings of fame or video composites of glory years, in promotions for reunions so that fans can judge if their heroes have aged worse than themselves.
Sometimes, these things are painfully poignant, and even that is part of the appeal. Who does not recall a wobbly Ali lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta -- not to keep equating boxing and football, but boxing's stories are just more heartbreaking.
And I suppose Congress can spend two hours on old football players if it then spends time on the concerns of other retirees, those anonymous toilers whose pensions have been mismanaged or evaporated altogether, whose health claims are denied and delayed, who do not have the advantage of fame, or Mike Ditka, to press their cases.
One can only imagine that Enron ruined more lives than did all the head slaps and crackback blocks put together.
The periodic scandals of veterans' hospital mistreatment flame and fade without causing as many tears as the tale of the Pittsburgh Steeler who took too many blows and lived his later years in his pickup truck, a garbage bag taped over the broken window in an effort to keep out the cold.
That would be Hall of Famer Mike Webster _ "Iron Mike," like Ditka -- and even Ditka lists as he walks from artificial hips.
And no coach I was ever around sneered more openly about injuries than did Ditka.
The danger of football and the awareness of what it can do is exactly the appeal of football. We are guilty of cheering the loudest for the hardest hits, but no more so than the players themselves. And the coaches.
As a young reporter covering the Miami Dolphins, I was required to watch game film on Mondays before a press session with the coach, Don Shula. This was Shula's notion of making sure we knew what we were talking about --not that we ever did.
In the small, darkened room, the camera would whir, and every so often, we would hear a grunt and an "Oof!" from behind us. What that meant was that Shula was in the room, vicariously reliving the game, especially the hardest hits.
The mythology of football is to play through pain, play with pain, do what lesser men can't. Be tough.
The toll taken is part of the fascination, and the crash cart is sideline equipment.
When it is not just pain but real impairment, usefulness gone, things happen such as happened with Denver linebacker Al Wilson, no tougher man ever. The Broncos first tried to foist Wilson off on the Giants and then just released him, and Wilson himself yearns to get back into harm's way, holding no grudges.
At some point in the future, when the next generation of NFL players disdain Wilson's time as this bunch is doing to those who preceded them, nitpicking over pennies, we will have new tough guys to cheer.
They will gladly let us.
(Contact Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)
