NFL HEALTH CARE'S BITTER FRUIT.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: EDGE OF SPORTS

This NFL season has seen a chasm develop between the Washington, D.C., football team whose name is a racial slur and arguably its best player, an offensive lineman named Trent Williams. This might seem like an odd topic for a column in The Progressive, but the story behind it demands both examination and amplification.

It turns out that Williams, a seven-time Pro Bowler having a Hall of Fame career, turned against his team not over the normal issues of money or managerial problems, but over health care. It's a story that stinks to high heaven. As the thirty-one-year-old lineman put it, "There are some things that happened that are hard to look past."

Williams, you see, noticed a frightening-looking growth on his scalp six years ago. It turned out to be a very rare form of cancer called dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans. Speaking for eighteen minutes in front of his locker, Williams told the D.C. media why he was a holdout from the team. It was a harrowing tale that began with his asking the team medical staff about the growth and being told that it was nothing.

"I mean, the lump continued to grow over the years. It was concerning, but there was no pain involved," he said. Moreover, "the very people I put my career in the hands of" were saying he was just fine.

But a few months back, the team's medical staff told Williams to see a specialist. Once he was speaking to doctors not on the team payroll, he received quite the second opinion. Now he learned that this growth was not only cancerous but that he was just weeks away from seeing it metastasize to his skull and brain. The attendant surgery was dangerous enough that Williams, before going to the hospital, got his affairs in order and said goodbye to his two young daughters, ages nine and five.

After the surgery in Chicago, Williams said he needed 350 stitches and 75 staples on his scalp. No team officials visited him while he was hospitalized.

The story is a reminder that a team's medical staff--particularly in a violent sport such as football--is not there for the players. It is there for the team, to get and keep players on the field, not to look out for their health. It's a...