Speaker 1: Alzon Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to It could happen hear a podcast about unions
Speaker 2: falling apart, and in this case, how they're not being
Speaker 2: put back together again. I am your host, Bio Loong,
Speaker 2: and today we are telling a somewhat unusual story for
Speaker 2: this show. It's usual in the sense that it's a
Speaker 2: story about, you know, the replacement of democracy with bureaucracy.
Speaker 2: If like the death spiral of business union of unionism,
Speaker 2: it's a story it's also as much about the defeat
Speaker 2: of the workers movement as it is like Lamar Jackson's
Speaker 2: counting stats, a thing that it also bizarrely is about.
Speaker 3: And this is the story of.
Speaker 2: The crisis of the NFL Players Association, which is the
Speaker 2: NFL's union. And it is so unhinged that the only
Speaker 2: way that this could actually be talked about reasonably is
Speaker 2: to bring in someone who knows ball, and that is
Speaker 2: Charles MacDonald of Yahoo Sports and the wonderful Football three
Speaker 2: o one podcast.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show. This is going to be a trip.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me. I've listened to a few episodes,
Speaker 4: so I was excited and you asked me to come on.
Speaker 4: Love your work, and uh yeah, this is this is
Speaker 4: gonna be a good rant because not even really a rant,
Speaker 4: because because because honestly, like when when you like when
Speaker 4: you start the Puel is back, it is really like
Speaker 4: a textbook case study from what we know on like
Speaker 4: just straight up organizational decay.
Speaker 5: Like you get such a clear picture on how.
Speaker 4: Just really a few people, in this case, thirty two
Speaker 4: NFL owners can just completely dictate the life of you know,
Speaker 4: thousands of people who are literally sacrificing their bodies to
Speaker 4: try and you know, escape whatever poverty they come from
Speaker 4: in their in their earlier life.
Speaker 5: So it's, uh, it's fascinating, it's sad.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is one of those areas that I
Speaker 4: have obviously because it's my it's my job. But it
Speaker 4: just like extreme cognitive dissonance sometimes. Like I love football,
Speaker 4: you know, I play from the time I was seven
Speaker 4: through college obviously, Like I do this work, it's kind
Speaker 4: of giving me like everything, and then you have to
Speaker 4: deal with just so much bad stuff that comes with me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I remember like covering the Colin Kaepernick season,
Speaker 4: which was ten years ago as of this.
Speaker 5: God right Jesus years ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just like seeing how alienating that was just
Speaker 4: like just writing like a column saying, hey, you know, Washington,
Speaker 4: like they should work Colin Kaepernick out because they don't
Speaker 4: have a quarterback and this guy is a startable quarterback.
Speaker 4: And you would get like hate mail over that stuff.
Speaker 4: But I'm still tuning every Sunday, you know, Lamar Jackson stuff.
Speaker 4: I was on the front lines for that, but still.
Speaker 5: Tuning in to get my racest slop every Sunday.
Speaker 2: It's a fundamental issue here. Yeah, people will still do
Speaker 2: it immediately. I am mildly proud that I wasn't watching
Speaker 2: that era, but I wasn't watching that era specifically because
Speaker 2: the Seahawks lost Super Bolt to the Patriots and then
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm fucking out for like eight.
Speaker 4: Well, I've been watching this stuff my whole life. Like
Speaker 4: I remember watching like college football with like my dad
Speaker 4: and his friends when I was like five and six
Speaker 4: years Old's like, I like, legit, just don't know anything
Speaker 4: else too, to be like, I had to use this
Speaker 4: sport as like my vehicle to kind of explore the
Speaker 4: rest of the world, like once I got out of college,
Speaker 4: just try to figure my shit out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think we have a good combination here
Speaker 2: to talk about this because you come at this from
Speaker 2: the football angle and then exploring out of the like, oh,
Speaker 2: by god, this is so unhinged. Everything is broken, And
Speaker 2: then I come at this kind of from the opposite direction,
Speaker 2: which is one of the things that's been really frustrating
Speaker 2: about the coverage of this is that, like, like there's
Speaker 2: lots of very good coverage pubble Tory, who's done a
Speaker 2: lot of very good work about this, And it's like
Speaker 2: the guy who kind of instigated the whole.
Speaker 4: Like instigator's kind of put in it is put in
Speaker 4: it lightly. I mean he got the union president fired basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he got the union president fired after it was
Speaker 2: revealed that he was using union buddy to go to
Speaker 2: strip clubs.
Speaker 5: That's like the tail end of this story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like the end of it. That's where it's showing, right.
Speaker 2: But Like, the thing that's been frustrating to me about
Speaker 2: this is like the people covering this, and people have
Speaker 2: done a lot of good work. Is there not people
Speaker 2: who cover unions at all?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And like that's like.
Speaker 2: What I do, right, And like I don't know, like
Speaker 2: I think as much as this episode is going to
Speaker 2: be us screaming about this union doing unhinged shit like
Speaker 2: we're obviously like pro union, Like I had my union
Speaker 2: that irethorganized on by show to talk about our contract
Speaker 2: against you.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, I was a member of the first
Speaker 4: box union that yeah, just god damn.
Speaker 5: That was almost ten years ago.
Speaker 4: Now is Christ so old and look like I believe
Speaker 4: in this stuff, like I like, but with the strokegle
Speaker 4: of a pan not to put it that's blasically because
Speaker 4: obviously a lot of fight went to it, but with
Speaker 4: a strugle with a pen, like I was able to
Speaker 4: live in DC after Arry broke, you know, and it's crazy,
Speaker 4: like my salary went up to Liverpool age and nothing.
Speaker 5: Died yep, right, you know, no one died.
Speaker 4: It was it was it was business as usual, honestly,
Speaker 4: like nothing was weird. So obviously people who listen to
Speaker 4: the show, like you know that these people with the
Speaker 4: money like they're out to get us obviously for their
Speaker 4: own game. And it's so just brazenly clear through like
Speaker 4: this union story, especially through the past twenty years, which
Speaker 4: is where I think you kind of have to start it.
Speaker 4: I mean, just systematically stripped down. And the one thing
Speaker 4: that even Pablo on his most recent episode because he
Speaker 4: talked about it last week because J. C.
Speaker 5: Tretder was elected director.
Speaker 3: One of the villains of this story the store, right.
Speaker 4: And you know, one thing about like Pablo and Mike Florio,
Speaker 4: who have really been on this more than like any
Speaker 4: other national journalist, is like, yeah, we still don't know
Speaker 4: a big component of like the why and the how
Speaker 4: this is happening, because you know, well, we gotta get
Speaker 4: into because basically it feels like there's two two or
Speaker 4: three guys kind of acting as liaisons to the owner
Speaker 4: while also trying to respect and you know, run the union,
Speaker 4: which are obviously just two completely incompatible ideologies when you're
Speaker 4: trying to work that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's actually a way to start talking
Speaker 2: about this kind of going back to there there used
Speaker 2: to be a time when the NFL union would go
Speaker 2: on strike, like they did pickets, like they fought scabs
Speaker 2: outside of the gates of football stadium. This was a
Speaker 2: thing that happened like regularly. Like but there's there's a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of stories of like umw A guys and
Speaker 2: like guys from like the auto unions like on these
Speaker 2: pickets with the NFL players and you know, like one
Speaker 2: of one of the sort of.
Speaker 3: Upshots of this God.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a terrible punt, I'm realizing now because this.
Speaker 5: Okay, we gotta talk about Gene, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, one of one of the guys who led
Speaker 2: this union was Gene Upshaw, who was a player for
Speaker 2: a long time and then was like ran the union
Speaker 2: for most of its history.
Speaker 3: And he's you know, he's running an actual union.
Speaker 2: Like they go on strike, they organize, they like do shit,
Speaker 2: and you know, Jane like over the course of this
Speaker 2: runs into like they start losing strikes, which is just
Speaker 2: like a nightmare, and then.
Speaker 3: He just like dies in two thousand and eight, Like
Speaker 3: this is.
Speaker 5: Really horrible thincreatic cancer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So so like not only like like Jane, Jane was
Speaker 4: a Hall of Fame offensive lineman. Yeah, like like when
Speaker 4: you think of the Raiders in the in the past,
Speaker 4: like he was kind of like the start of that
Speaker 4: era where the only basically the only area where we
Speaker 4: still think of the Raiders.
Speaker 5: As like you know, an entity.
Speaker 4: Yeah that should be respected, right, right, not a joke
Speaker 4: because well, because you know it was it was a
Speaker 4: different time in the league. Like especially when we see
Speaker 4: what the Seahawks sale ends up looking like yeah, and
Speaker 4: we've seen like the Broncos and the Commanders get sold
Speaker 4: within the past decade.
Speaker 5: These teams are now being run by people who don't
Speaker 5: have football backgrounds.
Speaker 4: Like when you think of you know, even even someone
Speaker 4: as despicable as Jerry Jones, like you can't you can't
Speaker 4: doubt at his heart that you know, he loves this
Speaker 4: sport and will be an advocate to the sport, even
Speaker 4: in ways that can be harmful to the sport at times.
Speaker 4: But now we we kind of have like this influx
Speaker 4: of people who don't have football backgrounds, but they have
Speaker 4: the capital to kind of get in and that that
Speaker 4: has also been a shift I think just from an
Speaker 4: ownership perspective over the last few years. But when you
Speaker 4: look at where Gene was coming out as a player
Speaker 4: after he retired, and think in the early eighties, he
Speaker 4: kind of set the standard for you know, he was
Speaker 4: elected he was elected executive director of the union I think,
Speaker 4: I think in the eighties and he held that position
Speaker 4: until he died in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: So yeah, he died in office.
Speaker 4: Like that's a long time and it's a lot of trust.
Speaker 4: And also I think Gene kind of solidified the idea,
Speaker 4: which is important now that players should run this union,
Speaker 4: which I agree with. You know, yeah, that's what the
Speaker 4: union is, right, That's that's what the union is. And
Speaker 4: I would say even just like as someone who played
Speaker 4: football byself, like it's kind of a cult when you're
Speaker 4: in there and you don't really really trust the outsiders
Speaker 4: to understand like what is going on here on a
Speaker 4: day to day basis. And also when you look at
Speaker 4: like the start of this union back in the fifties,
Speaker 4: training camp used to be free for the owners. They
Speaker 4: didn't get paid for training camp. Well preseason games they played.
Speaker 4: They played six free preseason games. Yeah, and didn't get
Speaker 4: paid for training camps.
Speaker 2: Unreal, unreal, Like you can like you can get serious,
Speaker 2: like people every single year get really really seriously injured,
Speaker 2: like trading camp and preseason games.
Speaker 4: And there was no free agency, right, so like the
Speaker 4: team that drafted you, like they own you until you
Speaker 4: know you're ready to call it quick till they trade
Speaker 4: you somewhere else where they cut you and you kind
Speaker 4: of got to figure it out. But like the idea
Speaker 4: that you could just like have this agency and leave
Speaker 4: and your contract expires, you can go side with someone else.
Speaker 5: That was not a thing.
Speaker 4: So obviously, when when you think about where football is now,
Speaker 4: like what I tell people is like why when they ask,
Speaker 4: like why should I care about this union?
Speaker 5: Okay, think about how bad it is now? It can
Speaker 5: get worse.
Speaker 6: It was worse.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was worse. It was significantly worse.
Speaker 4: But you know, you have like this idea that and
Speaker 4: it's a correct idea because the players are the basis
Speaker 4: of it that this person in charge of the union
Speaker 4: needs to be a player. And Gene, like, coming from
Speaker 4: his background with the Raiders, we were talking about proud
Speaker 4: football organization. Like the very like material basis of being
Speaker 4: an NFL player was extremely important to Gene. So you know,
Speaker 4: up until he passed away in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: I mean he is you know, he's like you said,
Speaker 4: he's leading strikes.
Speaker 5: He's fighting for more revenue.
Speaker 4: He's fighting for you know, more benefits on the back
Speaker 4: end after guys retire, and it kind of culminates in
Speaker 4: the two thousand and six CBA. I would say this
Speaker 4: is kind of like the Empire strikes back moment for
Speaker 4: the owners because in two thousand and six, the players
Speaker 4: in the owners. They signed a CBA that on the
Speaker 4: surface granted the players a sixty percent sixty percent revenue
Speaker 4: share against the owners forty percent. When you start actually
Speaker 4: digging through the numbers.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that's not fuck like it was fake.
Speaker 4: It was fake, right, So I'll say this. It was
Speaker 4: fake in the sense that there was something called like
Speaker 4: a revenue credit or a revenue attack or something that
Speaker 4: the owners took off of the pie before it went
Speaker 4: down to like the sixty forty split, right, So you know,
Speaker 4: and it's it started, you know in two thousand and six,
Speaker 4: Like I think the first time they cut it it
Speaker 4: was like, you know, eight hundred million dollars and then
Speaker 4: you know, with in two years, they were taking well
Speaker 4: over a billion dollars before it got passed down onto
Speaker 4: the player. So you know, the players that got sixty
Speaker 4: percent of the total revenue. But by the time you
Speaker 4: know that they the owners took a second look at
Speaker 4: that CBA and they used their opt out clause in
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight, it was functionally like a fifty
Speaker 4: one to fifty two percent split in favor of the players,
Speaker 4: which the owners deemed completely unacceptable, right, yeah, Like and
Speaker 4: it's so funny because like this is this is like
Speaker 4: the first part like where you start to see like,
Speaker 4: at least in this era of football, you get to
Speaker 4: see how greedy these people are right where you're already
Speaker 4: taking a top off of like this quote unquote total
Speaker 4: revenue and then you're you're pulling the clause in two
Speaker 4: years to get out of this. So in two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, the owners say, we are going to get
Speaker 4: out of this, and now the CBA instead of like
Speaker 4: the ten year clause is going to expire at the
Speaker 4: end of the twenty ten season, so they had two
Speaker 4: seasons to kind of figure out what was going to
Speaker 4: happen next. But unfortunately, in two thousand and eight, Gene
Speaker 4: Upshaw gets pink out of cancer and I honestly just
Speaker 4: like just deteriors pretty quickly and passes away right before
Speaker 4: the season. So, hey, listeners of this podcast probably know
Speaker 4: what do billionaires do when they see a power vacuum
Speaker 4: at the top of their labor force that they are
Speaker 4: actively you know, fighting against, They pounce and you have
Speaker 4: this vacuum of leadership. And then Damor Smith gets voted
Speaker 4: the executive director of the NFLPA and the owners at
Speaker 4: the end of the twenty ten season, they locked out
Speaker 4: the players, and that's where things really starting to hear it.
Speaker 4: You're dealing with that amount of greed where they're already
Speaker 4: taken off the top, and then they say that's not enough,
Speaker 4: so we're going to rip up the CBA. And the
Speaker 4: funny part was the twenty ten season like the last
Speaker 4: year of like the ripped up CBA. Since they didn't
Speaker 4: have an agreement on the next year, there was no
Speaker 4: salary cap for the twenty ten season, and Jerry Jones,
Speaker 4: owner of the Tabloys, and Dan Snyder, owner of the
Speaker 4: Washington football team.
Speaker 2: Oh god, what what are the worst people ever? By
Speaker 2: the way, this is we can we don't time to
Speaker 2: do this right up for like.
Speaker 5: One of the worst people ever.
Speaker 4: So like if you play Madden before, you know, sometimes
Speaker 4: you might turn off the salary cap, and what do
Speaker 4: you do you spend? And because Jerry has always been like,
Speaker 4: it's my money. Yeah, I'm gonna spend as much of
Speaker 4: it as I want to if I please, like within
Speaker 4: the rule as the salary cap. No salary cap, Jerry's
Speaker 4: gonna stand and the other owners punish those two with
Speaker 4: fines after the season. Yeah, for spending recklessly. That's how
Speaker 4: committed they are to like this consolidation of power. They
Speaker 4: will publish each other over it, which.
Speaker 2: Which by the way, is unhinged because like so one
Speaker 2: of the fundamental like issues of the NFL is that
Speaker 2: it is a monopoly.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: Now, the way they get around this is a they
Speaker 2: have the union and be the teams are supposed to
Speaker 2: be quote unquote competing with each other and they are
Speaker 2: not supposed to quote unquote collude right against the players.
Speaker 3: And it's like, okay, you can fight guys for paying people.
Speaker 5: Like right, like you find each other for the pain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is like just unreal. It's just like the
Speaker 3: Boy's collusion if.
Speaker 4: You look across like to the NBA, where like the
Speaker 4: Kawhi Leonard and Steve Balmer stuff.
Speaker 3: Is oh my god, another party but.
Speaker 5: Another politic exclusive.
Speaker 4: But hey, there's a reason why they are aggressively going
Speaker 4: after this, you know, because the other billionaires don't want
Speaker 4: people rummaging through their ship either, so you know, and
Speaker 4: ultimately they like the Microsoft guy being part of the gang,
Speaker 4: so they're not going to do anything. And that's when
Speaker 4: you see like, oh wow, there's so much power here
Speaker 4: that these guys have. And but going back to the NFL,
Speaker 4: like the twenty eleven CBA is.
Speaker 2: By the way, CBA is collective bargaining agreement. It's just
Speaker 2: there to collective bargaining agreement right between the union and
Speaker 2: the league. Right, So if there's no agreement, then like
Speaker 2: they can't play football games. Yeah, because you know, like
Speaker 2: you said, like the NFLPA sunctly just exists so the
Speaker 2: NFL doesn't get sued for like anti trust stuff, which
Speaker 2: takes us right back to the next point. So going
Speaker 2: back to twenty eleven, the players are trying to figure out,
Speaker 2: like what are we gonna do about like this lockout
Speaker 2: situation because they need to work. Honestly, you know this,
Speaker 2: this is a career that you can only do for
Speaker 2: most guys like two or three years, and the idea
Speaker 2: of missing a season is not really feasible, which the owners,
Speaker 2: you know, they take advantage of all the time, like
Speaker 2: they know that these guys are on short like short clocks.
Speaker 2: If you if you get to like year five of
Speaker 2: an NFL.
Speaker 4: Career, you are in a very very small group of
Speaker 4: players that like, honestly just represent the elite of the
Speaker 4: elite of people who have ever played football like in
Speaker 4: this country.
Speaker 2: And I think everything about this too is like that's
Speaker 2: really important. This is an unbelievably unbelievably skilled labor force.
Speaker 3: Yes, and in order to develop these skills, you have
Speaker 3: to devote your entire life to it.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: And then what you get from devoting your entire life
Speaker 2: to this thing that is killing you because you're getting
Speaker 2: injured constantly and you're getting head trauma from all of
Speaker 2: this every single time. Like, so we started from like
Speaker 2: high school, you're starting to get brain damage from concussions,
Speaker 2: and from like you're starting to get CTE. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then you have a couple of years to make money
Speaker 2: from having devoted your life to this thing.
Speaker 4: Right, so think about like it's March of twenty eleven.
Speaker 4: Now Gen upshaws and passed away. For a couple of years,
Speaker 4: they were in the Folly in the Demor Smith, in
Speaker 4: the the Moore Smith reign of union leadership. And the
Speaker 4: first move that the owners make, like now that the
Speaker 4: CBA is officially over following the twenty ten season, they
Speaker 4: lock out the players, which, as we just said, if
Speaker 4: your career is two years, the idea that you missed
Speaker 4: one of those years is kind of unfathoous. Yeah, you're
Speaker 4: earning power is just like demolished. And let's say you're
Speaker 4: you're twenty four years old, you got to play two
Speaker 4: years in the NFL. You're walking out with let's say
Speaker 4: a million in your bank account. You still got to
Speaker 4: get a job, bro, you know, like you like, you
Speaker 4: still got to find something else to do. So like,
Speaker 4: this isn't money that's going to set you up for
Speaker 4: the rest of your life for most of these guys,
Speaker 4: even though it does give you like a nice cushion
Speaker 4: to fall off to, even if you're someone who struggled
Speaker 4: a little bit. And shoot, I know when I was
Speaker 4: twenty four, I would have loved to have like seven
Speaker 4: hundred thousand dollars in my main account. Things would have
Speaker 4: things could have turned out, you know, maybe a little
Speaker 4: bit different. Probably still would have found something some way
Speaker 4: like where I'm right here. But but honestly, it's a
Speaker 4: good start. So what the Union did was a decertified
Speaker 4: as a union in twenty eleven, led by Tom Brady
Speaker 4: and Drew Brees. I'm a Falcons fan, and I will
Speaker 4: say this part has given me so much justification on
Speaker 4: my hatred Drees. It's like it went past the football
Speaker 4: into like the like the material realm of like real life.
Speaker 5: You you you guys messed up here.
Speaker 4: They tried to you know, challenge the league by DECERTI
Speaker 4: finance a union and arguing, uh, you know that now this.
Speaker 5: Is an anti trust situation. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Get down to August the time of the twenty eleven CBA
Speaker 4: in August of twenty eleven, so like this is a month,
Speaker 4: a month before the season, and the concessions that were
Speaker 4: made after like after getting locked out for what six.
Speaker 5: Like five months.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you decertified that, you go through all this
Speaker 4: work to try and get a deal done, and they
Speaker 4: gave up so much. So we said before you have
Speaker 4: the total revenue split at you know, sixty forty, but
Speaker 4: functionally it was closer to you know, fifty one to fifty.
Speaker 5: Two percent in favor of the players.
Speaker 4: That dropped to like forty seven percent in the twenty
Speaker 4: eleven CBA. So now the owners are back in charge,
Speaker 4: you know, like fifty percent revenue split in favor of
Speaker 4: the owners. So like you're you just gave him back
Speaker 4: at billions of dollars like over the course really really
Speaker 4: just like a couple of years, but over the life
Speaker 4: time of a ten year CBA.
Speaker 5: I mean that that's that's egregious and also unbelievable amount
Speaker 5: of money.
Speaker 4: Another thing that changed was Roger Goodell has now like
Speaker 4: full autonomy over player punishments. I don't know why you
Speaker 4: gave that up either. That's unhinged, right, right.
Speaker 2: That's like that that's the kind of thing that like
Speaker 2: the like, the only kind of unions that would sign
Speaker 2: something like that are like, like I don't even think
Speaker 2: the organized crime unions would sign it. I think that's
Speaker 2: just like literally the fascist unions and the unions that
Speaker 2: are directly controlled like the yellow unions that are directly
Speaker 2: controlled by corporation, or like the only ones that would
Speaker 2: sign that, even even those ones probably would want to
Speaker 2: still have like some involvement in that. That's like unbelievable
Speaker 2: for a union contract, just like right, nonsense.
Speaker 4: Right, And And what's changed here is like these players
Speaker 4: are not willing to go on strike, like to not
Speaker 4: play these games, to not have a situation like in
Speaker 4: the eighties where you know, Donald Trump has built up
Speaker 4: the USFL and saying, hey, why don't you strikeing players
Speaker 4: that come play over here, and you you have some
Speaker 4: some guys who were like NFL Hall of famers who
Speaker 4: have briefly played in the USFL during you know, during
Speaker 4: the strike stuff that that doesn't happen here.
Speaker 5: And the think about the timing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, August was it August fourth, twenty eleven, one hundred
Speaker 4: and thirty two day lockout. They signed this deal, so
Speaker 4: so I can imagine, And I was like, I'll give
Speaker 4: them this. It's hard out here, man, like you're about
Speaker 4: to You're looking at like the consequence of you know,
Speaker 4: I'm about to not have checks and I maybe have
Speaker 4: a lifestyle where I am still should be getting you know,
Speaker 4: these weeks to be paid checks. That's kind of a tough,
Speaker 4: tough draw. So I will give them like the small
Speaker 4: grace of saying at that point, man, okay, fuck it,
Speaker 4: just let's just go just get something signed. But what
Speaker 4: they gave up, I'm not sure like they were fully
Speaker 4: aware of what they gave up here. And the part
Speaker 4: of the biggest thing that where they gave up was
Speaker 4: part of the biggest thing. After they after I say
Speaker 4: they gave the money back to the owners, they gave
Speaker 4: Roger Goodell they made him dictator in terms of like
Speaker 4: the punishment workforce, but the rookie wage scale, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: a massive, holy shit, massive concession to ownership because they
Speaker 4: they as in like Tom Brady and Drew Brees more
Speaker 4: so Drew Brees from what I've gathered, kind of framed
Speaker 4: this as, hey, why are these rookies getting all this
Speaker 4: damn money? Like this is something that should be going
Speaker 4: towards the veterans, and ownership was like, oh, you see it,
Speaker 4: you think like you think that's an idea, like we
Speaker 4: can agree, we can agree to that. And what they
Speaker 4: got back was like less practice time, so you know,
Speaker 4: you know you don't have to have as many two
Speaker 4: a days. That's worth billions of dollars. Really, like in
Speaker 4: terms of like what you what you guys can set
Speaker 4: yourself up with and what the what the veteran players
Speaker 4: who were on board with this, what they thought was, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: well if the rookie wages, if the rookie wages deal,
Speaker 4: like if that gets capped at a certain amount, then
Speaker 4: that's more money for us. So like a prime example
Speaker 4: is in twenty ten, Sam Bradford was a number one
Speaker 4: overall pick to Saint Louis Rams. He signed a six year,
Speaker 4: eighty four million dollar contract. So the next year, Cam
Speaker 4: Newton is the first overall pick to the Caroline Panthers,
Speaker 4: and after this lockout ends, his contract was four years,
Speaker 4: twenty two million dollars fully guaranteed. She's christ you lost
Speaker 4: sixty million dollars in terms of value from the year before.
Speaker 4: So what the players, what the veteran players thought was, oh, okay, well,
Speaker 4: now there'll be this influx of cap space to sign
Speaker 4: veteran players. What do billionaires do when they suddenly have
Speaker 4: access to a cheap workforce. They just loaded up on rookies, right,
Speaker 4: So these veteran players they sold themselves on like the
Speaker 4: fallacy of trickle down economics and got themselves replaced out
Speaker 4: of the league. So the only people that this benefit
Speaker 4: really was people like Drew Brees, people like Tom Bray
Speaker 4: who don't need it, right and but also are so
Speaker 4: indispensable to their organizations that they can eat up the
Speaker 4: camp space that was left over from the rookies getting signed.
Speaker 4: So that's like, that's when you start to see like
Speaker 4: the quarterback contracts balloon up. Where you know, you go
Speaker 4: from like in twenty fifteen, eleven years ago or twenty sixty,
Speaker 4: I think Cam Newton signed a contract that made him
Speaker 4: the highest paid quarterback in NFL history at five years, one.
Speaker 5: Hundred million dollars.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, you know, and now that number is
Speaker 4: what like I think, man, who's the high paid?
Speaker 5: Is Joe Burrow the highest paid right now? At like
Speaker 5: feel like it's Burrow?
Speaker 3: Yeah that sounds right.
Speaker 4: But now like that deal is worth you know, closer
Speaker 4: to eighty million, you know, seventy million dollars a year
Speaker 4: than it is to anything like closer to twenty Yeah,
Speaker 4: so you gave up so much and you got this
Speaker 4: whole middle class of the league just decimating, and and yeah,
Speaker 4: like that that's still tangible today. You can just go
Speaker 4: on over the caap dot com or stop track dot
Speaker 4: com and just look at like like average money like
Speaker 4: per year, and there's a top and then the middle
Speaker 4: class is literally like a couple players and for quarterback
Speaker 4: it's like two or three guys like you have like
Speaker 4: that announced like a Malik Willis or a Daniel Jones,
Speaker 4: like forty as crazy as to saying like forty four
Speaker 4: million dollars, like that's outside the top half of what
Speaker 4: guys are getting paid and then it's.
Speaker 5: All rookies yep, like all.
Speaker 4: Rookies and guys on rookie contracts. There's no middle classic
Speaker 4: that that's gone from the NFL. And with that, like
Speaker 4: you lose some of like, but personally this is d
Speaker 4: like you lose some of like the wisdom that comes
Speaker 4: with that of guys who have played in the league
Speaker 4: because now they get now they're getting turned out so
Speaker 4: fast because the contract is so cheap. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to extend you because honestly, this game beats your
Speaker 4: body up so bad that it's better just to get
Speaker 4: a fresh body in there. And these people, they have
Speaker 4: no attachment to the sacrifices that have been built over
Speaker 4: a long time. So you kind of build this player
Speaker 4: force that doesn't know what's going on.
Speaker 5: And I say that with a grain of.
Speaker 4: Salt now because I used to be one of these
Speaker 4: guys like, oh, you know, they don't care what's going on,
Speaker 4: And there is a good chunk that don't care what's
Speaker 4: going on. But I think now it's more clear there's
Speaker 4: like an obvious force stopping them from getting like information about, yeah,
Speaker 4: what's going on with this union stuff, which is the
Speaker 4: meat of this, like the recent stuff is just like
Speaker 4: the ultimate just fucket.
Speaker 5: I guess we're ponds of the ownership stuff.
Speaker 2: You know. I think the arc of this is like
Speaker 2: it's the arc of sort of unionism in America. You know,
Speaker 2: you go back to like your early nineteen hundreds unions, right,
Speaker 2: and those unions, you know, they're unbelievably powerful.
Speaker 3: They're extremely dangerous.
Speaker 2: You know, you get to a point where like the
Speaker 2: IWW will show up to a town and like the
Speaker 2: bosses in the town will show up with guns and
Speaker 2: shoot them because they're that well organized, they're that dangerous,
Speaker 2: they're that capable of striking, they're that committed, and they're
Speaker 2: that able to tap into all of their members and
Speaker 2: have everyone in the union be a part of the
Speaker 2: union and do things with the union.
Speaker 3: And that's you know, how you can actually do collective action.
Speaker 2: And then and you can watch this with sort of
Speaker 2: like with the ability of the NFLPA, like obviously like
Speaker 2: that's a much weaker union. Then you're like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know, you're like nineteen thirty CIO or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you can watch it like sort of decay into
Speaker 2: this sort of you know what you call like a
Speaker 2: service union where instead of it being run by the players,
Speaker 2: there's like, okay, we're we have some people.
Speaker 3: They're going to go they're going to do everything for you.
Speaker 2: They're going to sometimes talk to you about it, but
Speaker 2: you know, like they're going to be the runs, like
Speaker 2: managing all of the contracts and all of the negotiations
Speaker 2: and like right, and as it like information circle gets
Speaker 2: tighter and tighter, you know, that makes it way easier
Speaker 2: for things to just get completely fucked. And then you know,
Speaker 2: and this is one of the things that you see
Speaker 2: in the nineties is the complete dominance of business unionism
Speaker 2: where it's like, nah, fuck it, we're a union, yeah right,
Speaker 2: the us of the employers actually have the same interest
Speaker 2: and we're gonna work with him to make money. And
Speaker 2: it's like, how is that going for you guys like
Speaker 2: I eh? And then that's what this sort of turns into.
Speaker 2: And one of the issues here, and you were talking
Speaker 2: about this with like the information control is what once
Speaker 2: you get into this situation where you know, a really
Speaker 2: really small number of people, like we're talking maybe thirty people,
Speaker 2: and then the executive committees even smaller than that are
Speaker 2: the ones who are you know, One of the things
Speaker 2: that happens in the later part of this is so J. C. Schretder,
Speaker 2: who's like the guy behind the scenes for like the
Speaker 2: executive the search for like the executive director, the guy who.
Speaker 3: Like completely truly was like.
Speaker 2: The most hideous guy I've ever had running this union.
Speaker 2: He changed the process so that it was completely confidential,
Speaker 2: to the point where the thirty two guys on the
Speaker 2: board who were supposed to be voting for the executive
Speaker 2: director didn't know the names of the candidates until they
Speaker 2: walked into the meeting, right, what the fuck?
Speaker 4: And to me, like that point is like so crucial
Speaker 4: because that's where iveship from. Oh, it's not that these
Speaker 4: guys don't care about this, Like they don't know what's
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's being hidden from them. They can't know.
Speaker 5: They can't know.
Speaker 4: And I will say, like, part of what makes this
Speaker 4: difficult if you are someone in there who does care
Speaker 4: and wants to wants to fix things, is they're just
Speaker 4: the truth that like even the bottom rung players are
Speaker 4: comfortably living like off of their salary. So when you
Speaker 4: start to get to guys who are veterans, like man
Speaker 4: like even if you don't take the best deal shit,
Speaker 4: Like what, I'm still making fifteen million dollars a year,
Speaker 4: Like ultimately, I'm still good. And that's what it's hard
Speaker 4: to like get people galvanized about this sometimes. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I think that that part about like players not caring
Speaker 4: has kind of been overrepresented a little bit because I
Speaker 4: think if you're paying tension now, there's so much murkiness.
Speaker 4: And I think when when you get to the like
Speaker 4: the recent CBA is like in twenty twenty, the COVID
Speaker 4: year one, So now that's like the more Smith and J. C.
Speaker 4: Trader who was playing for the Browns and then he
Speaker 4: was the president of the NFLPA as they enter like
Speaker 4: this this twenty twenty CBA at the end after the
Speaker 4: end of the twenty eleven ten year run where for
Speaker 4: ten years they locked themselves into owners Chasepion to extract
Speaker 4: like as much value, yeah, as as it seemed like
Speaker 4: they possibly could at the time. And then twenty twenty
Speaker 4: comes and the owners are basically just like, hey, there's
Speaker 4: gonna be another lockout unless you guys agree to a
Speaker 4: seventeen game, which you should say that okay, cool, because
Speaker 4: there's no circumstance where you you can lock the football
Speaker 4: and note how the horrible this game is for your body,
Speaker 4: and say we are going to play more football without
Speaker 4: like major concessions. Yeah, because I remember when that was
Speaker 4: going on. You know, I was talking to some older
Speaker 4: guys who weren't in the unit anymore, but they were
Speaker 4: looking at it like, man like if they're if they're
Speaker 4: gonna say seventeenth game, like we need something massive like
Speaker 4: giving back to us on the other hand, because that's
Speaker 4: just straight up a revenue play to get more games
Speaker 4: on TV and make these TV contracts a little bit
Speaker 4: more lucrative.
Speaker 5: And that didn't.
Speaker 4: Really happen, you know, like no, like they just gave
Speaker 4: up the seventeenth game and they got I think one
Speaker 4: percent more in terms of like the rev share, so
Speaker 4: it got to like forty eight or forty nine percent.
Speaker 7: It's like yeah, like that's it, you know, share for
Speaker 7: adding Like what what what's the percent added to the season,
Speaker 7: like right, And and.
Speaker 4: Like there were some concessions made to like players made
Speaker 4: at like at the bottom rung of the ladder, so
Speaker 4: like like the veteran minimum salaries like they got boosted.
Speaker 4: They the practice squads got a little bit longer, and
Speaker 4: now you got into the space where you see, like
Speaker 4: veterans can be on a practice squad instead of guys
Speaker 4: who are within like three years of uh you know,
Speaker 4: accrued years in the NFL. But the seven teenth game
Speaker 4: while still having inequity in terms of the revenue share,
Speaker 4: I mean, the owners, they'll sign up for that every
Speaker 4: single time. Oh we got to throw your crumbs, yep,
Speaker 4: and we still get to keep our billions. And they
Speaker 4: timed it up right so that seventeenth game being inserted
Speaker 4: to the schedule was lining up with new TV contracts
Speaker 4: with ESPN and NBC and Amazon everyone. You see, like
Speaker 4: throwing cash is so understated, Like if not throwing cash,
Speaker 4: like billions of dollars is going to the NFL. Yeah,
Speaker 4: through these TV deals. Like it's funny. I had a friend,
Speaker 4: you know, one of these Shador Sanders stands.
Speaker 5: He was arguing.
Speaker 4: He's like, oh you know he was he was like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, like the Browns like they took Shador because
Speaker 4: they need the jersey sales. I'm like, dude, Chador could
Speaker 4: have the number one selling jersey in the NFL and
Speaker 4: Jimmy hasn't didn't care about that. That's a drop of
Speaker 4: a drop of a drop in the market for like
Speaker 4: where the money's actually coming from, and that's the TV deal.
Speaker 4: So to get that seventeenth game is huge, and this
Speaker 4: term is for ten years again, so in twenty thirty
Speaker 4: they can look at, you know, renegotiation trying to figure
Speaker 4: it out. But in the meantime, like to even call
Speaker 4: this a union is so far away from like how
Speaker 4: it's actually functioning now. Now it's getting to the part
Speaker 4: like where it's kind of murky on what's happening. Because obviously,
Speaker 4: like if you're in a union and you know, like
Speaker 4: my coworkers, like they've dealt with J. C. Tradder, like
Speaker 4: I've seen him speak before, if you're in a union, obviously,
Speaker 4: like you don't want too many people outside of the
Speaker 4: union to know what's going on. Like it's just not
Speaker 4: good from a standpoint of like leverage and power. But
Speaker 4: JC Tredder like he plays off of that by keeping
Speaker 4: everything a secret.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, which is a terrible idea.
Speaker 4: Which is a terrible idea, Like yeah, well it's good
Speaker 4: for him, right right, right, Like maybe you don't want
Speaker 4: to tell me a reporter of like what's going on,
Speaker 4: but you should tell like the other people within your union,
Speaker 4: what's going on. Like when you see like a lack
Speaker 4: of information about or any information about like what's going
Speaker 4: on with these with these elections, it's because no one's
Speaker 4: being told what's going on these elections. And that's how
Speaker 4: you end up with Lloyd Howe, which is just dude.
Speaker 2: Oh god, okay, okay, let let's let's talk about Lloyd Howell,
Speaker 2: who is oh my god, yeah, one of the worst
Speaker 2: people to run a union I have ever seen.
Speaker 1: Yes, but it's purposefully bad, you know, like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: Lloyd Howell like secret election, Like it's not not even
Speaker 1: to say, like I was, you know, somewhat somewhat of
Speaker 1: a secret now a secret of election.
Speaker 4: Basically to get Lloyd Howell hired. What what do you
Speaker 4: somewhere for Booz Allen Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah he was.
Speaker 7: He was the CFO of Booz Allen Hamilton, Right, Like
Speaker 7: his background was in busting unions.
Speaker 5: Uh huh, right, that's his background.
Speaker 4: And this but this is where you get like such
Speaker 4: a look at the ideology of someone like Jacy Tratterer
Speaker 4: who also studied labor unions in college.
Speaker 5: That's what you guys, degree labor labor relations and labor
Speaker 5: rangement from Harvard. Yep, yeah, you're not.
Speaker 2: You're not doing the labor relations degree to like being
Speaker 2: a union. Like like the people the people who like
Speaker 2: organize for unions are like fucking grad students who you know,
Speaker 2: have like a I don't know like they have they
Speaker 2: have some random degree. And then they were like, fucking
Speaker 2: I organize my graduation. You know, I'm gonna go organize
Speaker 2: the field. This is not what you go into that
Speaker 2: way you go into this union busting.
Speaker 5: Yeah. But so J. C.
Speaker 4: Tredder and you know, the people around him, they viewed
Speaker 4: that experience from wood Howell busting unions as a positive
Speaker 4: because you know, there's this train of thought like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: you know, well, if we know someone who knows how
Speaker 4: to destroy us, if we hire them, surely they will
Speaker 4: change their ways and they will start to help us.
Speaker 4: Like we're gonna get inside knowledge on how to bust
Speaker 4: a union, so maybe we could weaponize that and turn
Speaker 4: it back the other way. Man, that's dumb as hell.
Speaker 5: Why would you like? That's oh my god? Right, And
Speaker 5: not only that, but but but how who who?
Speaker 4: Who is elected the executive director of the union is
Speaker 4: also a part of a hedge fund that is investing
Speaker 4: in NFL teams in minorities six yeat the Carlisle Group.
Speaker 8: Like you, you're an executive director of the union works
Speaker 8: for hedge funds that are extracting value from these teams
Speaker 8: like like two players.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's disqualifying, Like it should be disqualifying.
Speaker 3: She's on camera.
Speaker 2: The union posted a video of him on camera talking
Speaker 2: about how he was talking to the owners about letting
Speaker 2: about letting the investment group in.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It's as close as I've ever seen outside of again,
Speaker 2: a union that is literally run by the bosses to
Speaker 2: like my union guy works for managements.
Speaker 5: Like it's like baffling.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's like it's it's like state integrated
Speaker 3: CCP shit, right, Like it's like.
Speaker 5: Dude, yes, you have a corporate consultant.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is your union liaison to thirty two billionaires and
Speaker 4: Roger Goodell? Like yeah, it's completely incompatible on like a
Speaker 4: basic like ideological level. And then you start getting to like, well, okay,
Speaker 4: well now he has like direct control over people's lives
Speaker 4: and the funds of the union, which, as ESPN and
Speaker 4: Paulo Torrea found out, he was using to go to
Speaker 4: the goddamn strip club in Miami. Yeah, and to spend
Speaker 4: on other stuff. And also he was sued for sexual
Speaker 4: harassment while he was at Booz Allen. So he's hidden
Speaker 4: like the check marks for everything you see, like corporate sociopathy, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: and they're like, that's our guy, that's our guy. Once
Speaker 4: all this stuff comes out about how he spends his
Speaker 4: money and and you know how he's misappropriating funds, that
Speaker 4: was what got him out, more so than like the
Speaker 4: material practices that he excepti FI while he was running
Speaker 4: the union, which involved hiding the fact that the owners
Speaker 4: were colluding against them.
Speaker 2: It is completely unhinged, and unfortunately, the other thing that's
Speaker 2: unhinged is that's going to be all for today. However,
Speaker 2: come there is more to this story tomorrow as we
Speaker 2: finish part two of this interview, and oh my god,
Speaker 2: holy shit, somehow the worst is yet to come. So
Speaker 2: join us for part two tomorrow, in which question mark
Speaker 2: there seems to be good evidence of the NFL paying
Speaker 2: a guy specifically to be able to keep control of
Speaker 2: the union.
Speaker 3: Oh dear.
Speaker 2: So, if you want to find more of Charles McDonald's work,
Speaker 2: you can do so at the Football three oh one
Speaker 2: podcast and at Yahoo Sports, where he writes the column
Speaker 2: for verts.
Speaker 3: It's quite good. You should listen to it and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dear God, I don't know foreign unions. If you're
Speaker 2: in unions that suck, make better ones.
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