The NFL Players Association has a better relationship with NFL management than with its former players.
That’s not merely a fact, it’s an indictment.
And if it isn’t universally true, it’s true in enough cases, in enough broken lives and tears, to explain why some former players, the guys who built the multibillion-dollar league, formed another union of sorts just to deal with the NFLPA.
Let me lay my cards on the table. I’ve never respected the NFLPA because in a world of greed, it is a worthy competitor. I still hold to the forgotten values that a union should represent the laborers who provide the means of production. But the NFLPA is not an organization solely dedicated to representing the interests of its working men, but rather another commercially driven institution that uses the sweat of its labor force to make money. I have nothing against making money; I just believe that unions shouldn’t do it.
Leigh Steinberg once told me, when I questioned the multimillion-dollar marketing deals that Players Inc., the union’s marketing arm, has with management, that I was a dinosaur. He said the new standard for labor is one of cooperation and business partnership that produces revenue for both sides.
There’s no doubt that I’m a dinosaur. I cling to the belief that the natural conflict between management and labor produces, through strife, debate and compromise, a working relationship that provides for both sides.
When labor is in bed with management, someone gets screwed.
The last time I wrote about this, I characterized the dues-paying members as the victims, those guys clinging to jobs in a profession where serious injury is a prevalent occupational hazard, where career expectancy is less than two years, where guaranteed contracts are nonexistent and where everyone is expendable. It’s exactly the kind of profession that needs a strong union. How can a grievance by an expendable be contended when the union is in the back rooms doing deals with management?
It’s not that I went looking for another opportunity to kick the unholy alliance that produces favorable fixed labor costs for management and sweet salaries for labor bosses. I’ve said my piece and if the players are too powerless to get fair treatment, there’s consolation in knowing that they are well-paid during their short careers.
So I haven’t crusaded against the NFLPA’s adoration of management’s money-making machinery. I even ignored Sylvia Mackey’s struggles for her husband, John, a Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end whose dementia can be traced directly to the head injuries he sustained while playing for the Baltimore Colts. It was a well-publicized example that exposes the indifference of management and labor toward its retired players.
As the season progressed toward its climax and the league prepared to celebrate another Super Bowl, I came across an organization whose goals have little connection to the gaudy display of wealth and celebrity. Bruce Laird put together a group of retired players under the banner of Fourth & Goal to fight for the guys who built the league.
“We had to form a union just to deal with the union,” Laird said.
It was his introduction to the struggles of retired players and to two NFL widows, who faced destitution with dignity, that compelled me to take up the issue.
The NFL’s Plan 88, named for John Mackey’s
Colts number, provides treatment for former
players.
Sylvia Mackey’s anger was assuaged with the NFL’s Plan 88 (her husband’s number), which was written into the labor agreement. It provides treatment for former players suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia. “I think they are slow taking care of players, but that’s to be expected. I have no more bitterness.”
But anger is not as easily set aside by Suzie Heywood, whose Marine colonel husband Ralph was the only NFL player to fight in three wars. He died last April. Through tears, she told me how his dementia-related medical bills forced her to sell their Texas ranch. “I moved Ralph into one of our horse trailers to cut down on the bills. I sold everything so that I could afford the care my husband needed. Nobody would help us and Ralph just faded away.”
Syndi and Don Shy lost their San Diego restaurant as dementia-related medical bills piled up. They moved back to Ohio where Don died in October 2006. She and son Brandon were left penniless. “We were on the street.” They lived through the Ohio winter in their 1982 Plymouth Voyager.
Both women remember in detail how their pleas to the league and the union went unanswered. Their bitterness is as overwhelming as their tears are moving and focuses more on the union because they expected help.
“How can they be in business with management?” said Syndi, a former union member. “That’s not a union.”
Suzie said, “My least favorite person in the world is Gene Upshaw and his $7 million salary.”
As if to illustrate their frustration, Upshaw, the union’s executive director, refused to answer questions. NFLPA spokesman Carl Francis wrote: “Gene is currently not addressing retired players’ issues. … This issue has received so much negative press that even the writers we do accommodate write the story with a negative slant. This issue is very complex and difficult to explain through an article.”
Perhaps it’s too difficult to defend because the union is obviously more concerned with its marketing dollars than with its retired players. It’s a disgrace. When guys with compassion, like Laird and other retired players, were coming to the aid of Sylvia, Suzie and Syndi, the NFLPA was planning its Super Bowl parties to celebrate with its business partners.
John Genzale (johngenzale@gmail.com) is founding editor of SportsBusiness Journal.
