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IN THEIR OWN WORDS

   Brent Boyd About His Inclusion In The NFLPA White Pages

I don’t know what they are paying Lanny Davis, or how he got a reputation as a smart guy, but I will kick in what pittance I get from the NFL to keep him around.

 I assume Lanny and Upshaw created the NFLPA “White Paper”, released at the Sept. 18 Senate hearings. I sure wish I had time to read it before I testified that day, the white papers prove my case beyond a shadow of a doubt.

 Everyone says Mr. Goodell is a “good guy”, …well, if so he can no longer tolerate the results in my case, he must approve my full and retroactive benefits immediately and, for the sake of the league he represents, he must break up the NFL Disability Board. Goodell cannot read the NFLPA’s own version of events, combine it with all the other irregularities in my case, and continue to tolerate the stench coming from the Disability Board.

 

For instance, note this, from page 13 of the “white paper”:

 

The player trustees wanted to award Mr. Boyd the higher Football Degenerative T&P benefit, but the management trustees would not agree, in large part because Mr. Boyd had not claimed head injuries in his 1997 application

 

News flash--this vote was taken in 2001!!!  At the time, they knew clearly my concussions weren’t diagnosed until 1999 because NFL-approved doctors had pursued other courses of treatment, including drugs for pain and depression.  So, because their own doctors, upon whom I had to rely for diagnosis and treatment, had failed to identify the cause of my symptoms as organic brain damage due to concussions until 1999, I was denied disability because I didn’t claim it in my original 1997 application?  Kind of a “Catch-22” isn’t it?

 

This quote, by Upshaw himself, proves my point about how corrupt and fraudulent this process was, and it suggests the degree of collusion necessary to pull this off.  They were so set against approving any claim for head injury that  they ignored the mountain of medical evidence, including the brain scans that clearly show the brain damage, as well as the unequivocal judgments of the first two doctors they sent me to see.

 

 

But that was 1997 and, as I have told everyone over and over; my symptoms were not linked to concussions until 1999.  This quote describes an NFL disability board meeting held in 2001.  At that point in time, they all knew that my concussion damage was not discovered until 1999, so they denied my claim because I didn’t “declare” something in 1997 that I could not have known, that their doctors would not know, for two more years!

 

The quote admits I was not denied on a medical basis, but that they were looking for any semantic or clerical error as a pretext to deny my claim.

 

This is actually news to me, I just now read it, and I have to thank Lanny Davis for making available to Goodell, the media, and the fans. With this gas poured on the fire, Mr. Goodell cannot stand on the sidelines another minute. If you crack down on player’s behavior, Mr. Goodell, certainly you must put an end to this fraud and corruption in the evaluation of disability claims.

 

If Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 and the Patriots $250,000 for cheating with a stupid camera and compromising the “integrity” of the game, what should the fine be for causing needless suffering, homelessness, and suicides?  Bill Bidwell and other owners on the Board who are complicit in this process should be severely punished, Mr. Commissioner.

 

As I have said all along, and you can now print with full confidence and without fear of retribution (no more timid editors, this is the smoking gun, especially when combined with all the irregularities in my case) that Brent Boyd was a victim of a crime.  I was denied disability by fraudulent and corrupt means, and it took the full cooperation of people on both the owners’ and NFLPA side of the ball, as well as Doug Ell and Groom Law Group, who devised and implemented this unjust disability system.

 

My 1997 claim is irrelevant to my 1999 claim.  The 9th Circuit scolded the NFL every time it claimed otherwise in oral arguments.

 

Yet, it seems I wasn’t denied on medical basis, but for not seeing into the future--for not declaring what would not be known for two more years!

 

This meeting was in 2001.  Every person in that room was aware of that fact; which forces me to call Upshaw, Condon, VanNote, Taglibue and all those entrusted to advocate for a fair process DIRTY COPS! How hard would it have been for any true advocate to stand up and point out the absurd logical inconsistency here? To ask how they can deny a guy for not knowing what wouldn’t be known for 2 more years? They ALL knew I didn’t know in 1997, but not one stood up for me? How did this happen?  How could it if the process had been fair?

 

To this absurdity, let me add a short list of the other irregularities and see if you don’t find they suggest a fraudulent and corrupt process:

 

- Upon filing, I am told “not to bother, the owners will never open that can of worms” (referring to approving a claim based on head injuries).

 

- My Viking medical files mysteriously disappear!

 

-The NFL’s OWN neurologist enthusiastically approves my claim, voluntarily brings me back for 2nd day of testing, which proved his suspicion that NFL concussions had also given me vertigo.

 

- He is ignored, but the second NFL doctor also approves my claim enthusiastically, calling my case the “most profound” the NFL had ever sent him

-Both of these doctors filled out a mandatory NFL questionnaire, so they could check unambiguous boxes with regard to three essential issues—they each checked “Yes” on the questions of whether or not I was disabled, whether or not my disability came from an injury, and whether or not my injury was NFL-related.  Both NFL doctors thus agreed on each significant element of my claim, yet the NFL labeled both their evaluations as “ambiguous”.

 

So, on that ground, I was denied. They waited 9 months to do so, knowing all the while I was off –and-on homeless, living off charity, and acting as a single dad to my young son.

They forced me, against my will, to fly to Baltimore from my San Diego home to see a doctor, not from the approved NFL pre-approved list, but one specially hand-picked by plan counsel Doug Ell of the Groom Law Group, Dr. Barry Gordon of Johns Hopkins. If I refused, I was told I would have been automatically denied. I was to take a complex sophisticated neuropsychological exam (which was available in San Diego – as SSI used it in approving my disability from NFL concussions).

 

- I showed up but I did not see Dr Gordon.  Instead, a young linguistics student, Lara Atella, who had never seen this complex test before, administered the test to me—a test that takes years to administer and interpret accurately, for which a PhD in neurophysiology is normally required.

 

- Dr Gordon admits he never looked at my existing brain scans and never ordered his own—that he decided my fate by ruling on a part of my body he never bothered to look at.

 

Gordon, to this day, has never filled out the NFL’s mandatory questionnaire with its three unequivocal questions.  His answers remain unrecorded on the questions of whether I am disabled as a result of NFL injury. He never says once in his report either way, but he merely gives alternative possible reasons for my symptoms, other than concussion, which are, nevertheless, NFL- related, such as chronic pain.  The NFL interpreted this deliberately incomplete and ambiguous diagnosis as unambiguous and definitive because it would support the denial of a disability claim by a player. They only look for reasons to deny a claim, never to approve one.

 

- Gordon does admit, however, that I have my 4 main symptoms – headaches, depression, dizziness, and fatigue, - but writes that these 4 symptoms could not be caused by concussions.! (Concussions don’t cause headaches? Now, there’s some medical news!).

 

-Too late, after the 9th circuit decision, I found a 1990 medical journal with a research article by the same Dr Barry Gordon. Titled “Post Concussional Syndrome”, in “Current Therapy in Neurological Disease-3” (BC Decker publisher).  In this independent medical research article, written for review by his peers, he says the exact opposite of what he wrote when paid by the NFL.  Instead of its being impossible to link my four major symptoms to concussions, right in the first paragraph Gordon lists my same 4 symptoms as the “most common symptoms of post concussion.”

 

You decide. With the added admission in the White Paper, this adds up to a pure case in my favor, proving me correct and justifying my use of strong words like fraud, corruption, and collusion.  Mr. Goodell, you can’t hide from this list of facts any longer!

 

Lastly, I am accused by Mr. Davis and Mr. Upshaw on his new webpage “The Truth Squad” (Isn’t that hilarious? Do they expect any grown up, much less active NFL players, to read a website that sounds like Opie and the Mayberry kids named it in their clubhouse? Or like a bad Sat. morning cartoon?) of “omitting” my court losses.  On the contrary, I discuss in detail my court case--cases not judged on medical evidence, but on process and 2 poorly chosen words in ERISA – “full discretion”.

 

My Senate testimony below combines my June House Judiciary written testimony followed by “The Boyd Plan”, which I suggest you read.  It is, I believe,  the best plan for fixing this problem, and far from “omitting”, I include Congress in my suggestions--the “full discretion” wording hurts every American worker, even those of you in the media!

 

My Senate written testimony, including “The Boyd Plan” - - -click here to read

 

Thanks for reading.  This new NFLPA website is the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Yet it is one that gives you in the media full freedom and confidence to report the truth--the story of fraud, corruption, and collusion that is the NFL’s disability system, and the story of a professional sports league so devoted to denying what it deems to be expensive concussion claims that it has allowed this corruption to flourish.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Brent Boyd