DeMaurice Smith: On an NFL Lockout and Inspiration From Egypt

By Dave Zirin 
The Nation blog 
February 14, 2011

http://www.thenation.com/blog/158553/demaurice-smith-nfl-lockout-and-inspiration-egypt

There is no form of entertainment in this country more
popular than football, and there is no one, save Barack
Obama, being scrutinized more closely these days than
DeMaurice Smith. Smith heads the National Football League's
Players Association-a union that's being threatened with
being locked out unless players give back substantial amounts
in wages and agree to lengthen the season to eighteen games.
NFL players make large sums of money but risk a lifetime of
physical debilitation and the average career lasts only three
and a half years. Owners are banking on the fact that
players, with their short window to make their money, will
cave to every demand. Smith is banking on something bigger: a
sense of history, sacrifice and community that's greater than
sports.

I spoke with Smith last Friday, the day after NFL
Commissioner Roger Goodell walked away from the table during
negotiations. I asked Smith, on a scale of one to ten,
whether he felt there would be a lockout. "On a scale of one
to ten, it's still fourteen," he said. "We're preparing our
guys for the worst, we're hoping for the best. I'm going to
keep negotiating. We've got our guys on standby right now to
be virtually anywhere in the country whenever they want to
talk. That's the way we're going to roll. I've told them that
we're going to negotiate day and night until we get it done,
but it takes two."

Smith is negotiating with-or trying to negotiate with-some of
the most powerful, politically connected corporate actors in
the United States. Their reach truly inspires awe. When the
NFLPA produced a television ad in an effort to garner fan
support, the networks first agreed and then refused to air
it, presumably after pressure exerted by the league.
DeMaurice Smith deemed the censorship "stunning."

You might think, faced with such power, this would make him
pessimistic about the prospects for players, but Smith finds
himself inspired by events far removed from the world of
football.

"You know," he said, "we watched things unfold in a far-off
country where a lot of the discussion preceding the protests
was purely social media, people connecting. We have an
ability to get our `let us play' ad out. We know that anybody
listening can type in `let us play' and that ad will pop up
and, frankly, if networks want to make a decision to boycott
us, keep us off, those are the kind of things that get me
fired up and let me know that I'm on the right side of
right."

The events in Egypt clearly put wind in Smith's sails. And
why not? After all, Roger Goodell seems much less
intimidating when compared to Hosni Mubarak. As Smith said,
"There are some socially and politically significant things
occurring in the world that don't have anything to do with
the final score. So the other day I was with [Baltimore
Ravens player] Dominique Foxworth, and he says, `I've just
been glued to what's been going on in Egypt and the way in
which ordinary people are taking a stand against what they
feel is oppression.' And let's get it clear, those folks are
risking everything to take ownership of what their lives are
going to look like. This is also Black History Month. That's
the time to remember and reflect that people across the
generations have historically taken stands and been willing
to risk everything for causes that they deem are important.
The Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of
Independence knew that if they lost, they had signed their
own death warrants with their names on that document. Well,
that's the spirit of our country and I dig it. And no, I
don't want to equate what [the NFLPA] is doing on that scale,
but what I've asked our players to do is to recognize their
place in history in this fight for a new collective
bargaining agreement.. You have to realize that there is a
solid line between players like Jack Youngblood, Deacon
Jones, Boomer Esiason, Reggie White, Freeman McNeil on to
players today like Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Brian Dawkins
and those who are leaders in this fight."

There is a social movement unionism aspect to how Smith is
running this negotiation that stands apart from any sports
labor conflict we've seen since the days of Curt Flood. The
NFLPA had taken part in a press conference the previous day
with the organization American Rights at Work and low-wage
stadium workers in Detroit who would find themselves locked
out if there are no games this fall. I asked Smith if this
was aimed at placing pressure on Goodell and the owners by
pointing out the thousands of workers who would be hurt by a
lockout.

"I don't know if it places pressure on him or not, whether it
places pressure on the owners or not, and frankly, I don't
care. This is what we do. The business of football means that
there's over 150 thousand people who work in [businesses
connected to game day during the season.] Whether it is car
services, food services, trash removal, the moving of people
to and from the game, the money in the bars and the
restaurants, the hotels. this is the business of our
business. So if you draw a circle around football it's a $9
billion entity inside the circle. When you draw the
concentric circle outside of football it's got to be in the
$20 to $30 billion range. So to say that we can live, work
and operate in a world where we can intellectually or morally
divorce ourselves from everything that's going on outside of
our circle, you can't, you simply can't."

Smith's pleasure reading of choice these days was also
interesting: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years,
by Taylor Branch. Branch's book focuses on the small, unsung
struggles that made up the fabric of the civil rights
movement. I heard Branch's brilliant text in Smith's closing
comments to me, a plea to owners who might be less rapacious
than Goodell and the hardliners who are itching for a fight.
"I just continue to believe, whether it's the arc of history
or the arc of moral justice, that more people than not want
to do what's right. And I know for a fact that there are
owner families out there who are inextricably tied to their
communities. You don't have to look much further than Green
Bay and Pittsburgh to know that those teams are defined by
their communities, and vice versa."

Smith has a fight on his hands but he is willing to make it
as public as he has to in order to make sure that next season
happens without imperiling the financial and medical futures
of the players. I asked him if there could be any NFLPA
action around the upcoming NFL draft, and for the first time
he smiled ear to ear and said, "Well, you're just going to
have to wait and see."

[Dave Zirin is the author of "Bad Sports: How Owners are
Ruining the Games we Love" (Scribner) and just made the new
documentary "Not Just a Game." Receive his column every week
by emailing [log in to unmask] Contact him at
[log in to unmask]]

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate