The National Football League was founded on September 17th, 1904. Consisting of 14 teams from around the Midwest. Today, only two of those teams remain, and only one by its original name. The Decatur Staleys are today better known as the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers are known as the Green Bay Packers.
Professional football at that time was a fledgling enterprise. Initially, the pro game attracted little spectator attention as it was seen as the domain of the Ivy League campuses where it was born. The early professional game was far different from the one contested on the grounds of Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth. The on-field product may have been similar, but the economic conditions were miles apart. Contracts were one-sided to favor teams, salaries were low and capped harshly, and there was no guarantee of injury compensation or job security. Players were replaceable assets, and a new crop would appear each year as young men sought to grind a living out of their chosen sport.
Birth of the NFLPA
The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) was founded in 1956. The 1955 brainchild of Bert Lavelli and Abe Gibron, who asked Browns General Counsel Creigton Miller, a Cleveland attorney, to help them organized a players’ association. Initially cautious as he feared for his job and reputation, Miller eventually agreed. The first meeting of the new NFLPA was held in New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, after a majority of NFL players had signed their union cards to allow the association to represent them. The initial proposals were simple. Minimum salary of $5,000/yr, per diem while traveling, equipment provided by clubs, a guarantee of continued payment during period of injury or ill health. Unfortunately, the NFL Owners and commissioner Bert Bell did not even respond to the requests, and refused at first to recognize the union in any form.
Anti-Trust Case
In the United States, Major League Baseball enjoys an antitrust exemption (Federal Baseball Club v. National League, 1922). Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had declared that profiting from “human effort and skill” did not constitute interstate commerce, making MLB immune from antitrust legislation. The NFL assumed that since it operated on a similar basis to MLB, they too must be immune to antitrust legislation. In 1957, that changed. In Radovich v NFL, Justice Tom C. Clark ruled that the NFL was indeed interstate commerce, and that antitrust exemptions were for baseball only, citing US v. International Boxing Club of New York (1955) where the court denied a motion to extend the exemptions to professional boxing.
This was a significant win for the players, who had most of their 1956 demands met. The NFL owners knew that players would file an antitrust suit against them and would likely win if their demands were ignored again.
Growth and Recognition
By the mid-1960’s, the players’ association was no longer content with basic protections and salary guarantees. They wanted pensions, benefits, and medical from team facilities. In 1968, the first players’ strike occurred during training camp to show they meant business. The ploy paid off, and that same year the NFLPA secured the first collective bargaining agreement in league history. Though the concessions on pensions and benefits from the owners were modest, it set an important precedent.
AFL-NFL Merger and The Free Agent
In 1970, the football landscape changed again. The upstart American Football League merged with the NFL, bringing teams like Buffalo, New England, Kansas City, Houston, and Denver (among others) to the league. This increased the market share of the league as a whole and subsequently intensified labor disputes. To that point, Free Agents did not exist in the NFL. You were essentially the property of your team. Contracts were indefinite, and unless you retired or were cut, you played where they told you unless traded away.
In 1975, former NFLPA President John Mackey brought an antitrust lawsuit (Mackey v. NFL, 1975) against the league, which contested the “Rozelle rule” This rule, named after former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, which forced teams to compensate a player’s former team if they signed them as a free agent. Judge Earl Larson ruled in favor of Mackey and the NFL players, finding that the Rozelle rule decreased player bargaining power, suppressed free market forces, and hindered the movement of workers (players) across state lines. This marked a significant step towards free agency, but players were still limited by the reserve clause, which prevented 37 members of each team’s 43-man roster from becoming unrestricted free agents.
1980’s Strikes
Two major strikes by the NFLPA occurred in the 1980’s. The 1982 strike lasted 57 days and was prompted by a league CBA proposal that unfairly deprived players of revenue rights. The strike ended in the NFLPA’s favor with the establishment of the modern revenue sharing system.
The 1987 Players Strike is perhaps the most infamous of any to date. The NFL PA walked after Week 2, prompting the NFL owners to play weeks 4, 5, and 6 with “replacement players.” Cowboys owner Tex Schramm was famously brutal towards striking players, threatening to withhold all cash and void contracts. Afraid of losing their careers and paychecks, many players crossed the picket line in the end, and the strike ended in almost complete failure.
1990’s and the Unrestricted Free Agent
The 1993 collective bargaining agreement was a landmark one. In 1993, Jets running back Freeman McNeil, with the backing of the NFLPA, brough a case against the NFL (McNeil v. NFL, 1992), which challenged the reserve clause, and argued for unrestricted free agency. The courts agreed, and the NFLPA used this to leverage a CBA that stipulated that players with at least 4 years of service could now negotiate with ANY team once their contract expired. Another innovation came from this too, when the NFL implemented a salary cap to protect competitive balance and improve the on-field product.
The Modern Era
The NFLPA is and has been a powerful advocate for players rights, from its early days winning concessions on minimum player salaries to modern guarantees for player safety with mandatory concussion protocols. The NFLPA has helped players transform their role in the league from being regarded as little better than cattle to influential stakeholders in the most profitable sporting venture in the world.