Fair pay? Pension plans vary from sport to sport. Baseball players get the best benefits

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 28, 2002 | by Eric Fisher

Darrell Green's name is sprinkled through the record books of the National Football League (NFL). Once the 41-year-old defensive back wraps his career and reaches his 55th birthday, he will set yet another record: the largest pension ever paid to an NFL player. Thanks to his status as a two-decade player working entirely in the league's big-money era, Green can expect a monthly pension payment of $5,805.

"Benefits to the players have continued to increase over the years, and he's obviously played a long time," says Douglas Ell, an attorney serving as legal counsel for the NFL's pension plan. Yet Green's retirement, which would translate to a very healthy income for most Americans, pales in comparison to the $160,000 annual pension baseball's Cal Ripken Jr. can expect once he turns 62.

The vast differences between pensions of modern players and those from the 1940s and 1950s remain a source of lesser known but vicious debates. The NFL, the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Hockey League (NHL) and Major League Baseball each have received steady protests in recent years from older retirees upset with pensions that are exponentially smaller than current minimum salaries for players. And internally, each league has wrestled with balancing their meteoric economic growth with the retirement needs and demands of a fast-growing pool of former players.

"Our era built the NFL, and now they don't give a damn at all about us," says Chuck Bednarik, a Hall of Fame linebacker and center with the Philadelphia Eagles whose monthly pension check is $1,200. "We have been completely and utterly forgotten. There are a lot of unhappy former athletes out there. What we get is just so insignificant."

Bednarik and the thousands of former players like him do not claim poverty. But they have a very hard time seeing the leagues do so much to promote and market their collective heritages and so little to boost player retirement plans. And while the latest extension of the NFL's collective-bargaining agreement will double the money paid out to pre-1968 players, Bednarik remains unimpressed. "This is chump change we're talking about," he says.

Pro sports' first pension began in baseball in 1947 with the Murphy Plan, named for labor lawyer Robert Murphy, who tried to organize players into a union. Retired players received up to $100 per month, depending on the length of their careers. The figure even then was less than awe-inspiring, but it certainly beat the steel and auto industries, which offered no pensions.

The NHL followed suit later that year, the NFL in 1959 and NBA in 1965. Since then, every collective-bargaining negotiation between players and owners has included some talk of pension benefits. Besides increasing the basic payments, players have sought and won improvements such as lower thresholds for eligibility, benefits for surviving spouses and supplemental benefits such as annuities and 401(k) plans.

In baseball, where pension payments dwarf every other sport, the largess largely is the result of four decades of firm negotiating by what many consider the strongest union in the United States. Retired baseball players have generated six-figure incomes from their pensions since the late 1980s, a sum that remains significant to this day. And the large pensions in turn require much of the same financial planning as the seven and eight-figure salaries current players receive.

"Baseball has really been generous in this regard compared to the other sports, but the players have really gone after it over the years," says Joe Geier, a financial planner who represents pro athletes. "It's a big part of the portfolios of some guys. What I, and most in my industry, try to do is be very conservative and almost plan for the pension not being there. Obviously with salaries now, we can do that. But if we don't really count on it, avoid the early withdraw options, it's like a major bonus when they turn 62."

ERIC FISHER WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER DAILY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.