The news that the NFL and the Players Association hierarchy colluded to hide an allegation of collusion ought to be more surprising, and not just because the story has been leaking out in drips and drabs for two weeks now. After first being broken by Meadowlark Media's Pablo Torre, ESPN's follow-up, by Don Van Natta Jr. and Kalyn Kahler, is an indication that players are slowly coming to realize that their union leadership did them dirty on the basic task of keeping them informed.
In this case, NFLPA leadership opted to join the league in covering up an arbitrator’s finding that owners conspired to avoid handing out guaranteed contracts. The broader cultural tilt toward the powerful has rarely been more pronounced, and the NFLPA leadership has always operated on the notion that keeping the owners happy is the path to survival for the hundreds of players whose careers are too short for them to be willing to endure a lengthy work stoppage, so in the grand scheme this is just a slightly more outrageous ask by the owners, and a slightly more outrageous cave by the union.
To suggest that the new NFLPA head, Lloyd Howell Jr., may as well be on retainer to the league office is hyperbole only until you read Van Natta and Kahler’s latest, which reveals he is actually a paid part-time consultant for The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm which is trying to gain ownership stakes within the league.
These are the days for that sort of thing. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is going directly to players to ask them to support a salary cap that its union has traditionally considered the third rail, which while transparently understandable is also clumsy to the point of ham-handed. The NFL has always been much better at its backroom union-busting, and working with NFLPA leadership to the exclusion of its membership takes that mastery to new levels.
The NFLPA is now talking about appealing the original arbitration ruling, issued in January, that it signed off on and agreed to conceal. Without subjecting this to the guesses of lawyers, it would seem that the union screwed its players to the point that the players might have to rid itself of their leadership and try to hire the one kind of person it has never wanted: the Marvin Miller–type union head who is willing to go to the mattresses to get the players the salary and medical protections the owners have cheerfully withheld and even actively denied.
In that circumstance, the players would have to find a way to grow comfortable with the kind of career risks they have never been eager to take. The owners only need to be the owners, because they've been at it and will be at it far longer than either the players or union leadership. They might be annoyed with the eight owners and league officials (including The Ginger Avenger Himself) caught on the record in the original arbitrator's finding for leaving the laundry out where outsiders can see, which MLB owners learned not to do 40 years ago, but they are notoriously solid on their own self-interest.
In sum, the owners did what they always do, the union did what it should never do, and the players got hosed by the people they pay to represent them—sadly, like they too often do.
