MUST READ: Death and distress haunt members of the 2001 title team

[PatsFanInVa]

I’m a pension actuary myself - I’ve heard that joke numerous times (pension people tend to fall in that “extroverted” category as they need to be consultants). The translating from actuarial nerd speak to real human being language is the toughest part of my job! I felt comfortable bringing up the NFL and MLB pension since neither I nor my company work for either of them, but I do feel very comfortable with the thought process that was used to set those assumptions.

Not to get too far off topic, but to your point on the conspiracy theories, there would need to be a significant number of entities involved to pull that off - from the companies themselves to the actuaries and their firms, to the actuarial profession itself, to the audit firms, and then finally the government itself. Way too many areas for a potential breakdown, which should hopefully put a kibosh on those theories!

LOL I am reading your last paragraph and wholeheartedly agree, and at the same time wondering if you're saying to yourself "yeah now that I read it over, I hear it." These are guys that make up pedophilia and cannibalism rings operating in the basements of buildings with no basement.

But were they burdened by the old-school "germ of truth" requirement, I just think they could do better picking on "social insurance" and promoting pension envy. It's also right in line with most of their politics.

Of course reason and fact are the sworn enemies of speculation, and vice versa. Of course conspiracies requiring thousands to act in concert with perfect silence and discipline are inherently laughable... although the profession does itself no favors with terms like "longevity risk!"

 

[Stu Pidassle]

Why is Ohrnberger's opinion any more valid than Ted Johnson's? They both played here and by the sound of it they had different experiences.

I never said it was, just proving some balance.

 

[BTTA]

My daughter is terrible with her money.

I'm frugal, my wife is frugal, her nanny and husband (single dad) were frugal.
We all taught her about being frugal and managing money.

She's in the Navy and gets free financial counselling. None of it helps. She spends every penny and has nothing to show for it.
Her bills go unpaid and she has to pay late fees.
If I go through a period of spending, at least I have guns and knives to show for it.
I helped her buy a house in San Diego and set her up with $75,000 in mutual funds. She's in the process of selling the house and will make $90,000 in profit. She gets over $2000/month housing allowance (tax free) and had 2 roommates paying $800/mo each. I told her the money from the roomies should be surplus and go straight into the bank. She talks **** to her coworkers about they should buy a house and get ahead, but without my help, she'd be 30, renting, and broke.

I recently told her to get some counselling. "Your mother had a drug and alcohol problem. You have a spending problem."
I'll keep nagging her until she gets help.

I'll say out loud what everyone is thinking: she probably isn't going to change until you stop helping financially. Being obnoxious here, of course, and I apologize for that, but we all need that feedback sometimes.

 

[Marko]

The thing is NFL players in general seem to have shorter life spans than a lot of people. I read somewhere that the life expectancy of an average NFL player is in his mid to late -50s. It was a long time ago that I saw that (like maybe a decade). So that number may have changed. But compared to the general male population, NFL players have short lifespans.

You would think lineman would skew this as the majority are over 300 lbs to start

 

[Marko]

I was just listening to Calvin Johnson talk about all the stuff he used to take just to function, nvm play. Just unbelievable example of where our heads at with these issues.

We're still testing for pot while handing out Vic's, OC's, Fentanyl and other dope. That does far more harm than good if abused even a little.

I can only imagine the access the money these guys have gets them. That's what's scary to me. If you grew up in Boston or East Coast in the last 30 years you're very familiar with the opiate game. What kind is popular. What kind is fake. Who has them. Where they come from. Regular drug dealers will have doctors in big hospitals or clinics in their pocket. Writing script after script until their license gets flagged. I can't imagine the access and doors that money opens up.

My son was injured in practice last year in High School, and when we went to the ER the doc didn’t tell me his elbow was dislocated, and she said can we give you some Tylenol or fentanyl? First off i thought wow that escalated and said “no way” as one of my best friends died from a fentanyl overdose. Later on when I did realize he was hurt more seriously, I said yeah get him some morphine as you snap his arm back in. During the season he is in some sort of pain in a weekly basis. Imagine the pain pros go through!

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

Not quite as bad as it looks, at first glance.

Period Life Expectancies, Historical Period

www.ssa.gov

1940 M average was 61.4
1967 M average, 67.0

However, by the time you are toward the later years, being in the NFL even for a little while probably might additionally skew the notoriously correlated variable of income. Seven years ain't nothin', and when you consider that if anything, they should be doing better than the average, if their time in the league was decently compensated, it's definitely still a "wow."

Interesting to look back and remember all those years we couldn't imagine this metric dropping year to year!

Covid and opioid deaths ( 100K this year , mostly 25-34 year olds) are the main reason life expectancy is dropping, The Covid deaths are predominantly over 65 year olds (90%) so they have less of an effect than opioid deaths...

 

[SlowGettingUp]

An NFL player who is 21 in 1959, was born in 1938. The Life expectancy of black males born in 1938 was 54 years old. A white male was 62.1 years old.

An NFL player who was 21 in 1988 was born in 1967. The life expectancy of black males born in 1967 was 60. For white males it was 68.

You have to look at remaining life expectancy from around age 20, not from birth. Blacks have much greater infant mortality, which skews the numbers. All these players made it beyond age 20, so mortality prior to that is not relevant.

This is a very interesting study comparing NFL players to MLB players - NFL players had nearly 3x the incidence of neurodegenerative disease and nearly 2.5x of cardiovascular and died at 25% higher rate;

Results By the end of follow-up, there were 517 deaths (mean [SD] age, 59.6 [13.2] years) in the NFL cohort and 431 deaths (mean [SD] age, 66.7 [12.3] years) in the MLB cohort. Cardiovascular and neurodegenerative conditions, respectively, were noted as underlying or contributing causes in 498 and 39 deaths in the NFL and 225 and 16 deaths in the MLB. Compared with MLB players, NFL players had significantly elevated rates of all-cause (HR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.10-1.44), cardiovascular disease (HR, 2.40; 95% CI, 2.03-2.84), and neurodegenerative disease (HR, 2.99; 95% CI, 1.64-5.45) mortality. Comparing hypothetical populations of 1000 NFL and 1000 MLB players followed up to age 75 years, there would be an excess 21 all-cause deaths among NFL players, as well as 77 and 11 more deaths with underlying or contributing causes that included cardiovascular and neurodegenerative conditions, respectively.

Mortality Among US NFL Players and MLB Players

This cohort study compares all-cause and cause-specific mortality (including deaths associated with cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases) between US National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB) players.

jamanetwork.com

 

[TomPatriot]

Depressing and sad.