"HAS TRENT GREEN BEEN TREATED UNFAIRLY?"
By John Landsberg, June 2007
Here’s hoping that newly anointed quarterback Brodie Croyle has been taking notes about how the Chiefs treats their players. If so, he can learn a valuable lesson by the way the team has puked all over former QB Trent Green.
In six years with the Chiefs Green has operated on and off the field with total class. No one could have played or worked harder to enhance the team’s image on and off the field. He lived here year-round and never appeared on the police blotter unlike so many of his teammates.
Green was a Pro Bowl quarterback in 2003 and 2005 and played in all 16 games since joining the Chiefs in 2001 until last season. Last year he was limited to eight games after a cheap hit that nearly killed him. (Brittle Brodie was injured more in college at Alabama than Green was with the Chiefs.)
If the Chiefs won Green praised the team. If they lost because someone missed a field goal, fumbled or dropped a pass he never criticized the guilty party. Imagine what he really thought of self-obsessed Larry Johnson. Or when he would take the team in for what should have been the winning TD, but then opponents would go right through our porous defense for the winning score.
Tony Gonzales has dropped a number of key passes during games. However, when the team lost he was the first to whine he was open and wasn’t thrown to enough. Tony proved there was no “I” in “TEAM,” but there certainly is a “ME.” When the season ended he was jetting to California before all the fans had filed out of Arrowhead.
Here’s hoping that by the time this column appears Green is playing with the Miami Dolphins. Of course, it might be tough selling a house that he has just refurbished and is in the midst of a major construction project. But what do the Chiefs care? They have Brody (and his backup Damon Huard ready to go).
Wherever he goes it is my hope that he leads his team down the field in the final seconds through KC’s porous defense.
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I will be the first to admit that I have never been KC Star columnist Jason Whitlock’s biggest fan. It seemed as if one day he would write a great column; the next one he would “phone in.”
His column written after the Don Imus firing incident has generated a firestorm of controversy, particularly with minority journalists. Quite honestly, I never realized the immense pressure on black journalists to write only positive stories about other blacks. It’s not really journalism as much as advocacy.
In a nasty column, Etan Thomas, NBA player and author, warned Whitlock that “he is coming across worse than Bill Cosby.” Thomas also warned him, “I know that you don't want to be known as the "Uncle Tom of journalism." It is truly sad that Whitlock cannot express his views without being threatened.
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Last December I wrote a column talking about ex-NFL great Conrad Dobler’s problems in getting any medical assistance from the league he helped build. The 56-year-old Leawood resident’s knees are mush, he has surgeries on a regular basis, and he is in constant pain. Since my column he has also told his story on HBO and to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
How did the league react to Dobler and other players’ criticisms of their treatment? In April, Gene Upshaw of the NFL Players Union said he wants former players to stop criticizing the lack of support they receive once their playing days end. If they don’t, Upshaw warned, he will dissolve their alumni chapters.
In response to the NFL’s latest tactics Dobler has developed a Web site that discusses his situation: http://www.conraddobler.com/ . He was courageous on the field and is just as courageous off the field.