Former Jets LB Grantham dies

Former New York Jets outside linebacker Larry Grantham, a starter and defensive standout on the 1969 Super Bowl team, has died. He was 78.

The Jets announced Sunday night that a funeral service for Grantham will be held Wednesday in his hometown of Crystal Springs, Mississippi.

Grantham was an original member of the New York Titans franchise, which became the Jets in 1963 after three seasons. He was a fivetime AFL All-Star during his 13 years with the team and was inducted into the Jets’ Ring of Honor in 2011.

“That probably climaxes a career and doesn’t take second place to anything,” Grantham said at the time in quotes posted on the team’s website. “I’m not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and sure, that’s a great, big honor, but to me this honor with the Jets is unbelievable. Just think of all the players they’ve had up there from 1960 till now. It’s something I can’t put into words.”

Grantham had five interceptions and three fumble recoveries as a rookie in 1960, quickly establishing himself as a playmaker for the fledgling franchise. His 43 takeaways remain a franchise career record. He went on to play in 175 of the franchise’s first 182 games.

“I always saw Larry as the captain and the leader,” former defensive end Gerry Philbin told the team’s website. “His football knowledge, the way he skirted around blockers and made tackles, he just surprised a lot of people. Pound for pound, he was the best player on the Jets.”

Grantham had three tackles and two passes defensed in the Jets’ 16-7 Super Bowl victory over the Baltimore Colts in 1969. His last season with the Jets was in 1972, but he returned to the field two years later to finish his playing career with the Florida Blazers of the World Football League.

He was a Jets radio broadcaster for a short time after his retirement before later working in the business and banking industries.

Fan sues Bears

One Green Bay Packers fan is going to court over a favorite Wisconsin pastime of disparaging the arch rival Chicago Bears.

Russell Beckman filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the Bears of violating his free-speech rights by prohibiting fans from wearing Packers apparel at Bears’ pregame warmups. He is seeking a court order lifting the ban.

Beckman lives in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, near the Illinois state line and holds Bears seasons tickets. Season-ticket holders can attend certain pregame warmups on the sidelines.

The Bears sent Beckman an email before a December Bears-Packers game warning in capital letters, “NO OPPOSING TEAM GEAR WILL BE ALLOWED.” He went in Packers apparel anyway and was turned away.

Bettis on concussions

Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis says the NFL has taken advantage of its players by not sharing with them all the information it had about the risk of concussions.

After viewing an innovation expo in Jerusalem that included a presentation from ElMindA, an Israeli neuro-technology company that can help the NFL diagnose concussions, Bettis said that he was encouraged by the progress but still perplexed about how transparent the league has been over the years.

“The problem is we don’t necessarily know all the things the league is doing. For instance, working with this company here, you don’t know if they are working with them closely to try to help solve the problem,” Bettis said. “You definitely feel as though you were taken advantage of in a way that you weren’t given that information, and you always want to have the choice of knowing, and when that is taken away from you, you feel as though you were taken advantage of.”

Bettis, the NFL’s sixth alltime leading rusher, said he suffered concussions during his 13-year career, adding, “I don’t think you’ll find many guys that had a long career, played 10-plus years, that didn’t have a concussion.”

After years of denials, the NFL eventually acknowledged the link between repeated blows to the head during football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE. The issue also garnered wide attention following the 2015 Will Smith film “Concussion.”

Just last week, the first two claims in the NFL’s billion-dollar concussion settlement were announced, with a total of $9 million in benefits. In the lawsuit filed in Philadelphia, the league was accused of hiding what it knew about the link between concussions and CTE, the degenerative brain disease that has been found in dozens of former players after their deaths.