Upshaw, RIP

Wow. NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw has died. Who knew he was battling pancreatic cancer? I would think this throws the collective bargaining agreements – the owners’ desire to open it up early and any possible re-negotiation – into turmoil.

 

Upshaw’s legacy is mixed. His leadership made the union stronger, but it is still the weak sister to the uber-powerful baseball union. Those weaknesses are directly attributable to his cozy – some say much too cozy – relationship with then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

 

Yes, salaries are up, but that’s because league revenues have skyrocketed, not because of anything Upshaw did. And salaries of marquee NFL players still lag well below middling MLB journeymen. Moreover, salaries are skewed toward a small minority of players and there is an imbalance in the pay given to highly drafted rookies. The union also has not been strong in defending its members from league jurisprudence to say nothing of being positively impotent in the face of more teams aggressively trying to recoup signing bonuses from players (see guaranteed contracts above, and Vick, Michael, Williams, Ricky, Arrington, LaVar, etc.)

 

And it is an inexplicable crime that NFL players still don’t have guaranteed contracts. And we haven’t even mentioned the ongoing scandal surrounding the retired players’ pension fund.

 

And yet, on the positive sign, it does appear that Upshaw negotiated a pretty good CBA this last time around, even though owners still have too much latitude to siphon off ancillary revenues that for accounting purposes are not included in cap calculations. The deal is supposedly so good for the players that the owners want to terminate it early (which I think is a huge mistake on their part).