Today’s NFL linemen have to be bigger than ever.

Today’s post comes to us from our colleague Len Jernigan of North Carolina. Football is a topic near and dear to the hearts of the folks at Rehm, Bennett & Moore, as we know it is for so many Nebraskans. As Len discusses, like all athletes professional football players face some dire work-related health problems. We’ll continue to cover this and similar topics from time to time on our blog.

Most people know that football is dangerous. We see reports of NFL players with every kind of gruesome injury imaginable. Even suicidal depression, it turns out, is a potential hazard of playing football. Of course playing in the NFL is both rewarding and risky.

There is one common health problem among NFL players, however, that usually goes unmentioned. We thought it was a fitting topic for our workers’ law blog because NFL linemen must embrace this condition in order to stay in peak performance. It’s called chronic obesity.

These days, to be an NFL lineman, you not only have to be fast and strong, you also have to be fat.

Since the 1990s, Continue reading →