Stepping Up to the Plate
This piece just arrived from The Boston Globe’s Ron Borges. Mixed in between the lines on the great news about a quarterback- Tom Brady – finally breaking ranks with his counterparts is another completely separate story: It’s one of the best outlines detailing some of the sordid history of side deals that set the stage for the upcoming lockout. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
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After reading this piece, if you don’t get a real understanding of the long-term pattern of divisive tactics that the League has used to keep all the players in a contentious position with each other, you’re living on Mars. Ron Borges provides a remarkable insight into the real business of football.
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Tom Brady adds star power to off-field negotiations
By Ron BorgesFriday, December 4, 2009
FOXBORO — Nearly all the significant things Tom Brady [stats] has done in pro football have been well publicized, but potentially one of the biggest has gone all but ignored — until now.
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Earlier this year, Brady agreed to become the Patriots [team stats] assistant player rep, breaking what has been a long, shameful history of many of the game’s top quarterbacks turning their backs on a union that has fought for them against long odds since the 1950s and which, after a 20-year legal battle, provided them with the free agency that exists today. Quarterbacks formed a major roadblock to those struggles when 10 of the biggest names accepted guarantees of $500,000 each in the early 1990s to renounce their union’s group licensing agreement and sign with NFL Properties, management’s marketing wing.
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Jim Kelly, Warren Moon, Dan Marino, John Elway, Troy Aikman, Phil Simms, Bubby Brister, Boomer Esiason, Jim Everett and Randall Cunningham took the NFL’s money and ended their association with the NFLPA’s licensing effort to form The Quarterbacks Club. Within two years, more than 700 players had signed licensing deals with NFL Properties, some for as little as $10,000, cutting the underpinnings out from the union, which was using licensing revenue to fund multimillion dollar lawsuits on the players’ behalf against the league. (our emphasis)
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To get the rest of this weekend reading, click HERE.
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Dave Pear
December 4th, 2009 at 10:21 am #
Congress should read this!
More divide-and-conquer by Roger Goodell the League and the Owners.
More business as usual.
Regards,
Dave & Heidi Pear
Walt "Flea" Roberts
December 4th, 2009 at 11:59 am #
The very first strike in the NFL took place in 1968! Many players were blackballed from the League. Does anyone care to remember? They paid Union dues and have no representation.
Walt “Flea” Roberts
Cleveland Browns NFL champs 64 (65 & 66)
New Orleans Saints 1967
Washington Redskins l969 & 1970