Players Were Lucky to Have Upshaw as Union Chief

By Michael Wilbon
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
Saturday, August 23, 2008; E01


Gene Upshaw and Paul Tagliabue

Gene Upshaw had the most difficult job in professional sports. Represent a group of men who had nowhere near the leverage they fancied against the most ruthless management in the history of the industry. The head of the NFL Players Association needed to have the intelligence and orneriness of a guard, the pride of a champion, the sense of accomplishment of a Hall of Famer and the respect of a giant. The players, though many of them never knew it, were damn lucky to have Upshaw lead them for 25 years.

They were lucky to have him through two chaotic work stoppages, through skillful negotiation that bumped their average salary from $90,000 per year in the early 1980s when Upshaw took over to an average of $1.75 million last year. They were lucky to have not just a union leader but an insider, somebody who had sense and savvy enough to take the only road that was going to improve and maintain the life of the modern day football player.
And the union would be very hard-pressed to find someone with Upshaw's stature and skill to run the operation now that he's gone. In fact, turning to longtime legal counsel Richard Berthelsen, Upshaw's capable lieutenant, beyond the interim basis is probably the way to go.

It was annoying to hear, increasingly in recent years, dissatisfaction with Upshaw from the rank and file, much of it directed at his amicable relationship with commissioners Paul Tagliabue and Roger Goodell. Of course, Upshaw wasn't infallible as a union chief. The NFLPA should have and could have done even more than it has to address pension and health issues for the players of, well, Upshaw's era and before. But this notion that Upshaw had somehow sold out and become too cozy with management was as stupid as it was insulting.

Somewhere along the line, football players took a peek at their professional peers in baseball and basketball and got jealous. They apparently saw the wages and commercial endorsements and no-cut contracts and wanted a bigger slice of the professional football pie, bigger than the 60 percent of the gross cut Upshaw had negotiated.

A bigger slice wasn't forthcoming. In fact, it might get just a touch smaller. Somebody needs to remind today's players of what happened in 1987 when a 24-day strike caved mostly because 89 players crossed the union picket line.

The NFL staged replacement games, and while attendance in some cities was nonexistent and some were hammered with derisive nicknames (like the San Francisco Phoney Niners), other teams (like the replacement Redskins) drew big crowds, the networks were willing to televise it, and the owners, no matter how unseemly the games were, were quite content fielding teams and breaking the union.

NFL owners proved in 1987 beyond a shadow of a doubt that professional football players, with the exception of quarterbacks and a handful of others, are anonymous and that Americans don't care who's in the jerseys as long as somebody is wearing them on Sundays.

The NFL players waved bye-bye to their leverage that fall when 15 percent of them crossed picket lines. Famous and influential players caved, including Hall of Famers Lawrence Taylor, Steve Largent, Tony Dorsett and Randy White. The Cowboys' quarterback, Danny White, even crossed the picket line.

Today's players probably don't know that. But you think the owners have forgotten what kind of leverage they have and how easily the players' resolve melted? Upshaw never forgot. It was a small but meaningful group of players, 21 years ago, who sold out Upshaw. And while he never complained publicly about it, Upshaw went about every future negotiation knowing the owners would put their foot on the players' neck. He knew he could never make the demands Don Fehr could make for baseball players or Billy Hunter could make for basketball players.

You think Upshaw, a Raider, a Hall of Famer, a guard at a time when defensive players enjoyed every rules advantage, was less competitive than Fehr and Hunter? I'd make the counter argument, that Upshaw cared about his league in a way neither cared about theirs because he invested much more than they had in the way of blood and sweat.

He gave so much more of himself physically and emotionally than other union chiefs. As Tagliabue said yesterday, Upshaw "never lost sight of the big picture." Upshaw had to be a partner with the NFL in ways Fehr and Hunter never would have accepted. No matter how it might have looked, Upshaw's constituents were better served.

Players prospered. As former Vikings running back Robert Smith, now an analyst for ESPN, told The Post's Mark Maske: "A lot of people forget there's no such thing as unanimous support in any body you represent. But from a results standpoint, what more could you want? The retired players, some of them are getting four times what they would have gotten if Gene hadn't been there. The stuff about being too close to [Paul] Tagliabue, I'd like to have anyone explain to me how the players haven't been served by Gene. The owners just opted out of this labor deal because it was such a bad deal for them and such a good deal for the players."

Upshaw planned to be front and center for another negotiation, but pancreatic cancer took him Wednesday night at age 63. Nobody knew in recent weeks, perhaps nobody beyond Gene, Terri and their sons, exactly what the weight loss meant, what the back pain meant. A decrease in his usual number of rounds of golf in the summer just meant he probably had too much work on his plate.

Upshaw was one of the former players who seemed physically invincible even in his early 60s. He looked years younger than he was, was fitter and a lot more youthful than most men his age. It didn't seem possible his Hall of Fame career with the Raiders had started more than 40 years ago or that he had been so prominent and devoted a figure in professional football for all his adult life.