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IN THEIR OWN WORDS
BRENT BOYD'S OPEN LETTER: HIS TRUTH
Brent Boyds statement about the truth squad Brent Boyd Responds To The White Papers
Life in Lanny’s Gunsights By: Brent Boyd
“Surreal” does not even begin to explain my life today. Before I explain, let me give Thanks to Gridiron Greats for all they do, they have helped me and my family in times of dire need. They have been there just as friends even when things are not so dire. They have saved lives doing what everyone assumes NFL/NFLPA takes on as a basic humanitarian duty. Thanks also to GGAF for this forum to answer Lanny Davis’ cheap attacks and to announce Upshaw’s fumbling White Papers prove my case SHOULD AND WILL be approved!!! Thanks to Gene’s White Papers, they have no way out now.
By surreal, I mean I am a penniless guy being smeared by Lanny Davis himself! The man who invented the “politics of destruction”, the man who wrote and convinced Clinton this line was a good ides//” I did not have sex with that woman..”
I would ask all clients of Tom Condon to reconsider, while you can, hiring him for representation. Ramificatations are coming to you players if you stick with Condon….As co-chair of the NFL disability board, this dirty cop is behind every one of these cases that have brought even the highest possible attention, the US Congress, House and Senate. Tom Condon, who was supposed to stand up for us, is more responsible than anyone for allowing this carnage.. a warning to current players….if you continue to pay him, you will be now held publicly accountable.
Guys, Lanny is on the attack. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, but he’s very actively making an ass out of himself. In my case, he is regurgitating the same old arguments used in 2001, arguments that may have worked back in a rigged NFL disability system, and then passed on to a hogtied court who rules on “full discretion”, NOT medical evidence.
He has ignored my written testimonies in BOTH Houses of Congress, which if he actually read would have answered all his concerns and eliminated the need for that God-awfully embarrassingly bad website the Truth Squad…and he is supposed to be a genius?
Remember in the June hearings, 2 of the highest paid slick talking lawyers were sweating bullets and stumbling for words? These arrogant bastards cannot believe anyone has the balls to question their absolute powers.
The full discretion laws protect you from the truth in ERISA, Lanny, but you can’t run from the truth in the US House or Senate.
I apologize to GGAF, instead of making fun of this gang of thieves, I need to burn this space to defend myself. Part of Lanny’s tactics, I’m sure, just as in the White House...to ignore the obvious truth, pretend Lanny’s version is true, try to get as many media hacks as you can buy to plant your BS stories, muddy the waters so some question the reality and their own memories, to make us waste time defending BS charges and ridiculous claims that, in my case, ignore all the new evidence found in my case since 2001…
Lanny, your piss poor attempts to fool reporters and current players conveniently left out some little tidbits, all not known except to the NFL in 2001…so you can go on pretending it’s still 2001 and your secrets are kept, or you can deal with the following, award me and ALL the others our benefits, and let’s all move on as one big happy family.
Here is what’s left out of anything Lanny, the NFLPA, and the Commissioner’s office is telling Congress, media, and now current player’s on Opie’s Truth Squad webpage::
-Brain scans clearly show EXACT location of my brain damage, it is indisputable...you can’t pretend they don’t exist, although you would later order your 3rd doctor NOT to look at those scans when he denied me.
-the prophetic warning I received when filing the original claim – “the owners will never open this can of worms by approving a claim for a head injury”…Miki-Yaras-Davis NFLPA, 2000
-then, my Vikings medical files mysteriously disappearing into thin air...the sacred trust that the NFL shall keep our files and produce them if needed is broken when those files contain PROOF of concussions. Groom Law Group and NFL had my files destroyed to remove pesky contemporaneous notes and to clear the path for their manipulation of the process.
- your own NFL neurologist enthusiastically approves my claim, voluntarily brings me back a second day to confirm his suspicion these concussions also gave me vertigo, which was proven correct…THAT IS THE ONLY THOROUGH 2 DAY EXAM,, all spent with an actual neurologist, not your Baltimore linguistics kid
- your own 2nd NFL doctor, this time a psychiatrist, even more enthusiastically supports my claim, calling it the most “profound” case the NFL has ever sent him
- these first two NFL doctors filled out your own mandatory questionnaire. This allows doctors to remove doubts by checking boxes to questions like “is this man disabled, is the disability from an injury, and, is this injury NFL related”...these TWO NFL doctors both checked YES to all
- forcing me, a single dad, to leave my young 4th grade son in San Diego, where we lived, to fly all the way to Baltimore to see a doctor not off the pre-approved list of physicians, but hand selected by Groom Law Group
- but I don’t see the doctor you forced me to see or you would automatically deny me if I disagreed…I spent those “most thorough exam” days, as you try to convince others, WITH A YOUNG LINGUISTICS STUDENT, not a doctor, not a nurse, not even a med student!!!
- this kid, Lara Atella, administers to me one of the most sophisticated and complex tests known to neurology..a neuropsychological exam. This test takes years to learn how to administer, it should only be given by a PhD, a neuropsychologist….you flew me coast to coast just for this test, and didn’t bother hiring a neuropsychologist?
- this shameful doctor admits he NEVER LOOKED AT MY EXISTING BRAIN SCANS and never ordered any scans of his own!!! Did you read that? He opined on a part of my body HE NEVER LOOKED AT! He was the only doctor ever who didn’t look at the scans, he is the only doctor who says I don’t have concussion damage…it’s clear as day in those pictures.
-of course this test was just a ruse so Groom Law could write a fake doctor’s report. Dr Barry Gordon signed the report, but any neurologist will tell you he did not write it, it makes no medical sense and is too legally precise in it’s wording.
-This Dr Gordon, oddly hand picked, does NOT fill out the questionnaire, where he would check the boxes yes or no to the questions of my disability and was it caused by NFL injury..we don’t know his answer to this day! He NEVER says in his report that I am NOT disabled by NFL injury, and gives alternative reasons for my symptoms that are still NFL related and would qualify me for my full benefits..such as chronic pain being a probable cause for depression and headaches…these alternatives were never argued by my “advocates”.
-Gordon finishes his report saying concussions COULD NOT CAUSE HEADACHES. He admits to my 4 main symptoms, headaches, depression, dizziness, and fatigue, but goes on to say it is impossible to link those symptoms to concussions.
Gordon, though, wrote a 1990 medical journal ,titled “post concussional syndrome”, in “Current Therapy in Neurological Disease-3”, BC Decker publisher.
-The same Dr Gordon, when writing for review of peers and disclosing his OWN medical research, writes…in the first paragraph mind you!..that those 4 symptoms of mine are the MOST COMMON SYMPTOMS OF POST-CONCUSSION”..EVEN CREATES ON PG 1 A CHART. Titled “Most common symptoms of PCS”, and damn if every one of my symptoms aren’t right there at the top of the chart..as most common symptoms for concussions.
He lied, they paid him, they fraudulently denied my claim and went WAY out of their way to do it.
I can confidently use words like FRAUD, CORRUPTION, AND COLLUSION without fear, everything you just read proves those words true.
Fake doctor reports, an independent research article by that same doctor that 100% contradicts what he wrote when collecting NFL money, a linguistic student pretending to be PhD neuropsychologist, “MISSING Viking medical files, the one dissenting doctor admitting to never have LOOKED at a brain scan…little things that most people add up as fraud, corruption, and collusion.
I am just a penniless guy disabled by NFL concussions. I get Social Security disability, SSI says I am disabled by NFL concussions.
I am a 50 year old and on dementia/Alzheimer’s meds, crammed with my wife and son into an aging 900 sf house, I am bedridden most of the time. But when I get an idea or a few moments of feeling better, I roll out of bed to my “office”, which is the computer next to my bed. Then, I roll back into bed until I have a few moments of feeling more “normal”. Those moments are few and fleeting.
I hid in pain and shame, both physical and financial shame, for years, and in shock at how the NFL raped me in public and got away with it…I think crime victims describe the same reaction, and I consider myself a victim of a crime. I didn’t crawl out from my blanket until the beginning of this year. In this short time since, I have testified to the House Judiciary subcommittee in June and to the US Senate Commerce Committee on Sept 18.
Each day I have to watch my 50-something wife go work her ass off as a postal mechanic, working overtime to make ends meet. Hard, dirty work. Each day she walks out that door I am emasculated, reminded of my anger at the NFL, and am baffled why Goodell is taking so long to correct the decision in my case. This letter will get to why he no longer has a choice..
I graduated with Honors from UCLA, was drafted 3 round by the Vikings in1980. Made 1st team All-Rookie team then a series of injuries took their toll. I retired in 1986, and spent about a dozen years filled with failure, an odd feeling for a hard driven man used to success.
My life is reduced to going from one doctor to another..and each doctor has had to tell me, often they are in tears, that there is nothing they can do, no drug to help, because I have irreversible brain damage. From concussions Dr. Upshaw says I don’t have? Each doctor’s visit brings up anew the anger at the NFLPA and Upshaw for selling me out. Dirty Cops!
In the meantime, I must now suffer the slings and arrows of the lowest sleaziest operators in a town, DC, that is full of the lowest and sleaziest. Congrats.
Today, I am truthfully telling the world of the corrupt NFL Disability process, the rigged system, and the fraudulent ways they allow doctor shopping and commonly deny legitimate claims…
why did they do it? Because they thought they had absolute power and never dreamed they would be held accountable, just the same attitude found in war crimes trials. These hearings have given the NFL/NFLPA that war criminal look, defiant to the end, so used to power they spit on those who dare challenge their decisions. At the top of their power, in days not long ago, they would destroy any person meddling with inconvenient truths. Now, they are facing judgment day.
Although introduced in 1993, against ERISA law, I was never informed of this disability program until 1997., I reinjured a knee in 1997 that I had totally reconstructed my 2nd of 7 seasons (1981), I filed an informal inquiry, was never told to get a lawyer or learn this monster called ERISA. I was sent to an orthopedist, he never asked about anything but ortho injuries. I was never told I could appeal.
Upshaw’s “White Papers” released at the Senate hearing included new evidence to slam the door in my favor…woo-hoo!!! this is exciting new development, but terribly sad when you imagine how many other denials don’t have my paper trail and admissions of guilt such as this…
Mr. Goodell, this gives you the right...no, the OBLIGATION, to approve my claim today, in full and retroactive….
In the White Papers is the quote that will force Goodell to approve my claim TODAY …. every member of the 6-man disability board was aware of the fact that it wasn’t until 1999 that my concussion symptoms were correctly diagnosed, and scans show the exact damage right in the picture…but here it is in the White Papers the quote that proves fraud, corruption, and collusion, because everyone in the room, especially my “advocates”, knew the 1999 concussion diagnosis date..here’s the White Paper quote, describing a 2001 vote!!!:
“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 “ end quote
Remember, this describes a vote taken in 2001 about a 2000 claim for concussions that wasn’t diagnosed until 1999, denying my claim for me not knowing in 1997 what wouldn’t be known until 1999..can this get more bizarre? My “Dirty Cops” advocates ALL knew this, and have the balls to admit THIS is why I was denied? It would only take ONE of them to be honest enough to stand up and call bullshit…instead, like dirty cops, they turned their heads and let the crime progress.
Upshaw knew, Taglubue knew, Doug Ell and Groom Law knew, all 6 voting members, including the 3 voting “dirty cops” who knew but allowed this vote to happen in front of their eyes..most prominently Tom Condon and Falcon’s TV announcer Jeff VanNote ( one of the 3 owners reps voting on the board was Van Note’s boss, Falcons owner Taylor Smith!)
They all knew it was crap to vote to deny my claim based on the statement that I didn’t declare in 1997 what wasn’t known to anyone until 1999, and the 2 claims have nothing to do with each other!
These dirty cops needed only to call bullshit, to simply remind everyone in that meeting that they could NOT deny me based on a diagnosis that was 2 years AFTER 1997! NO ONE advocated, Tom Condon is most responsible, no one did their job, no one on that corrupted disability board will speak up for a player, and THIS NEW EVIDENCE PROVES IT BEYOND A SHADOW OF DOUBT
So thanks for reading, I didn’t want to write this much, but things are getting serious and we need to rally together now more than ever. Perhaps GGAF will give me another chance when I can get back to what I do best…making fun of the blunders the NFL/NFLPA commits everyday! Thanks again GGAF, everyone PLEASE support www.GridironGreats.org, they truly do the work of saints, are all great people and have the biggest hearts you will ever find. Until the NFL grows a conscience, it is up to GGAF, 4th and Goal, Ditka’s Hall of Fame Assistance Trust, and others to bust their ass doing what everyone would expect the NFL/NFLPA to have been doing all along.
Thanks and God Bless GGAF.
Next time (if they give me a next time) I promise to have fun and to parody these fools and their corrupt practices. In a page or two!
Thanks
Brent Boyd
Vikings 1980-86
