Four Winds Casino Resort News
Da Coach & Four Winds Casino Team up
Four Winds Casino goers who walked through the main entrance (rotunda) on Sunday, August 24th got a little extra excitement. NFL Hall of Famer and former Chicago Bears Coach Mike Ditka was there receiving check from Matt Harkness, General Manager of the Four Winds Casino Resort for $20,000.
You see Mike had brought a few friends to town for a little Blackjack. Notre Dame and Green Packer's legend Paul Hornung, former Bears great Gale Sayers, Conrad Dobler, Mercury Morris, Deacon Jones and Jack Youngblood among those taking part in a fund raiser for Da Coach's charity 'Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund' - benefiting retired and injured NFL players who don't make the big bucks like today's players.
For an entry fee for $750 a player had the opportunity to play next to an NFL legend and a chance to win up to $15,000 if they took first place in the tournament.
Mike Ditka's fund raiser is, as he explained, just a way to help out the guys who played the game, retired early (maybe for medical reasons) and got a very small pension (a few hundred dollars a month) and are now having a rough time. Insisting that his charity is not a solution – only a band-aid, Ditka says the NFL disability system is flawed.
"The only people who aren't getting anything are the people in dire need and the people who took their pension early. "I didn't take my pension early, so I get a good pension. But a lot of guys took their pension early because they were recommended to take it early, so there is a little bit of an injustice there. But that's not what we are complaining about. We are complaining about a disability system that is not a good system. Period," Ditka explained.
The Four Winds Casino donated an additional $15,000 to the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund after the celebrity blackjack tournament had concluded.
The Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund is a non-profit organization that provides financial assistance, social and medical services to retired NFL players in dire need. The organization focuses on the humanitarian side of post-football related issues, providing hands-on assistance to help retired players deal with hardships they may face after football. For more information about the Coach Ditka's Charity, visit www.GridIronGreats.org
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