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In November 1999, the NFL disability panel approved Webster for benefits. His disability was classified as "football degenerative disability pension," and he received $100,020 annually and a retroactive payment of $309,230 to cover the 1996 through 1999 seasons. He sent most of the money back home to his family.

Three years later, on September 24, 2002, a 50-year-old Webster, suffering from depression and dementia, died of a heart attack. Doctors concluded that, during his career snapping footballs, Webster had suffered the equivalent of 25,000 automobile crashes.

In 2004, Webster's family sued the NFL for disability payments dating back to March 1991. The Websters claimed that he was disabled five years before he started receiving benefits. His estate won a $1.6 million judgment in federal court last December. A federal judge wrote that the NFL's management of the plan "indicates culpable conduct, if not bad faith."

But even after that decision, union head Upshaw was far from conciliatory, saying he'd fight the same fight over again.

"The NFL says it's Mike Webster making bad decisions," Garrett Webster says. "Well, if your brain's messed up, you're going to make bad decisions.

"They'll have to answer for it one day, whether it's to a judge or to God or whatever," he adds. "This is a human being that the NFL went out there and basically destroyed and left for dead. It cost him his family. It cost him his manhood. It cost him money, time, everything."

But Garrett says the NFL doesn't care what happens to a player's family as soon as he's off the field. "It's like you go to the butcher shop, you buy a nice $40 steak, take it home, marinate it, put nice spices on it, throw it on the grill, cook it, you eat it, you enjoy it while you're eating it and then later on you just shit it out. And you don't care. You flush it down the toilet. " Conrad Dobler traces his knee problems to the 1978 season. After six years of dominance on the St. Louis Cardinals' offensive line, Dobler suited up with the New Orleans Saints. The third game of the season pitted the Saints against the Philadelphia Eagles at the New Orleans Superdome. The early season matchup found Dobler facing a familiar foe — Eagles linebacker Bill Bergey.

New Orleans had the ball coming out of its end zone. Saints running back Chuck Muncie took a handoff and followed a bulldozing Dobler, who collided with Bergey. In the ensuing crash, Bergey pushed Dobler, whose feet tripped on the Astro Turf, tearing the cartilage in Dobler's knee.

"I went out and got it taped up and got a little medicine injected on the sideline," Dobler says. "It was just a little tear in the cartilage."

Dobler returned to the game. But on another rushing play ending in a dog pile at the line of scrimmage, Dobler's body bent in a way bodies aren't supposed to bend. In the tangle of arms and legs, Dobler's bum knee twisted, giving way under his weight and shredding his anterior cruciate ligament. His season was over.

The next day, Dobler had surgery to repair the ligament. Dobler returned the next season with the Saints (and to exact revenge, tearing up Bergey's knee and ending his rival's season). The following year, the Saints traded him to the Buffalo Bills.

"To tell you the truth, I never recovered from it," Dobler says of the cruciate tear. "I played three more years, but I would pull and drag the leg."

Since 1978, Dobler has had eight surgeries on that leg — three knee replacements and five procedures between the cruciate and the cartilage to clean out the knee.

Almost three decades later, Dobler is sitting on a table as Dr. Randall Madison removes 71 staples. Dobler sprawls on the examination table. His bare knees are a mangled mess of lumps and white-and-purple scars. With the staples, Dobler's knee looks like it has a zipper.

Dobler boasts about his battle wounds to a nurse and two medical assistants. He tells anyone who will listen about footage of the knee-replacement surgery appearing on The New York Times' Web site.

"You should have heard the doctor cussing on the film," Dobler says. "The noise of him pounding that thing out. Do you have a metal shed? If you pound the metal shed with a baseball bat, that's what it sounded like. I think he was taking full swings at it."

Dobler's face scrunches up and his voice goes in a high-pitched wail as he imitates the doctor. "Dobler, this should only have taken an hour and a half. I've been down here five hours. I've got three surgeries backed up that I'm going to have to reschedule.'"

Dobler's attention returns to Madison.

"Look at the technique he uses," Dobler commands the medical assistants, nurses and others crammed in the room.

"I haven't made him bleed or cry. Have you noticed that?" Madison asks the onlookers, before turning back to Dobler. "Got any good jokes for me?"

Dobler proceeds to tell a rambling joke about a man and a woman in bed: The man runs his fingers all over the woman's body. The woman gets turned on and repositions herself, only to have the man roll over. The woman demands to know why he stopped. "That's OK, honey," Dobler says. "I found the remote."

The nurses crack up. Dobler has another one. A man gets rear-ended by a midget. The midget gets out of the car and says, "I'm not happy."

"Then which one are you?" the man asks.

Madison asks Dobler about the status of the retirees' lawsuit against the NFL, and they joke around a bit more before Dobler gets serious. "There's a lot of people worse off than me," he says.

Madison asks about Dobler's wife, Joy, who was paralyzed in 2001. (It was the Fourth of July. Dobler was grilling out. Joy was climbing into the backyard hammock when it flipped, and Joy landed on her head. She lost feeling in her arms and legs and remains a quadriplegic.)

Dobler kicks everyone out of the room so he can put on his pants. And then he's clanking down the hallway with his walker.

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