Dave Pear's Blog

Maybe we should be thanking DeMaurice Smith. After all, he signed the 2008 LM-2 even though he didn’t step into office until this Spring. Some of these items seem to be listed out in more detail than last year and there are other details that weren’t disclosed in the 2007 LM-2.

• Electronic Arts Inc. Pg. 48 Amount $29,873,436.00 (WOW! here we go again – EA paid royalties for 2008 that totaled MORE than what the entire settlement was for the Players Inc. lawsuit, folks!) (Question: Just how many retired players have current GLA agreements for Players Inc. now? Or perhaps we should say, “How few?”)
• NFL Ventures: Sports Organizations Pg. 56 Amount $41,513,624.00 (Please explain)
• Don Russ Playoff Inc. (Licensee): pg. 59 $6,715,129.00
• Octagon Football: pg. 779 Amount: $411,929.00 (What is Octagon Football?)
• Super Bowl Game (tickets?) pg 789 Amount: $289,800.00 ( Who were these tickets for?)
• Washington Redskins: Pg. 794 Amount $141,929.00 ( What is this for?)
• NFL Coaches Assoc. (Group licensing) Pg. 776 Amount $500,000.00 (Does the NFLPA also represent NFL coaches now?)
• NFL Management Council Pg. 777 Amount $221,774.00 (What could this be for?)
• Weil, Gotshal & Manages: (Attorney fees) : Pg. 794 Amount $628,646.00 (What services did they provide?)
• NFL Experience (tickets) Pg. 777 Amount $8,033.00 (Even more tickets? Heck – between all the free tickets given to the NFLPA, the Alumni AND the NFL, no wonder paid tickets cost so damn much!)
• Dewey, Leboef: (Attorney fees) Pg. 756 Amount $8,146,976 (Was this all for the Players Inc. debacle?)
• Groom Law Group (Attorney fees) Pg. 762 Amount $586,355.00 (Which part of the disability debacle is this for?)
• The Fairmont Kea Lani Maui: Pg. 798 Amount $1,369, 082.00 Nothing but the best for the NFLPA Leadership. (Guess this must this include room service?)
• The Nanny Connection (again): Hawaii: child care provider 2008 NFLPA board meeting pg. 801 Amount $7,112.00 (How many children were each NFLPA leader allowed to bring?)
• NFLPA Board Meeting (United Airlines) Pg. 805 Amount $322,399,00 (These were first class seats? Just exactly how many people do they have?)
• Ritz- Carlton Hotel: Puerto Rico NFLPA Retired Players 2008 convention Pg. 803 Amount $227,040,00 (Steering Committee: Where’s the next meeting?)
• Gaguas, Puerto Rico: NFLPA Retired players 2008 convention Pg. 799 Amount $28,255.00 (Is this another child care expense or…?)
• Retired Chapters Officers Meeting Pg. 799 Amount $52,806.00 (Where did this important meeting take place? We KNOW we didn’t spend this much to put on our entire Summit!)

Find any other juicy LM-2 goodies that we need to point out? Drop us a line!

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We’re always astounded with the creative accounting that comes out of the NFLPA. Now that the 2008 LM-2 (see the earlier post and full LM-2 HERE) has been finally released, there’s going to be a lot of articles and commentary on what different people find when reading this 810-page tree killer. Daniel Kaplan and Liz Mullen from Sports Business Journal pointed out a couple of their favorite tidbits this morning (read the entire piece HERE). Among the gems in the Journal article was the fact that Gene Upshaw’s widow received her husband’s deferred compensation probably in excess of $10 million.

“The union attributed the $16.5 million decline, to $276.7 million, to a deferred compensation payout to late Executive Director Gene Upshaw’s estate and to soft apparel sales. The decline is disclosed in the union’s latest annual report, which was filed late last month with the Labor Department and covers the period of March 1, 2008, through Feb. 28, 2009.

“There was a deferred compensation held in trust for Gene Upshaw that was paid to his estate upon his death,” said NFLPA general counsel Richard Berthelsen. “Under these deferred compensation plans, the employer holds the deferred comp as an asset until it is paid out to the employee.”

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Getting our hands on the NFLPA’s 2007 LM-2 financial report to the US Dept. of Labor was as close as we can get to a forensic audit of how the Union spent (or misspent) everyone’s money (read that post from last February about 2007′s LM-2 HERE). And once again, it took a while to find it and even longer to download (crashed my browser a few times) and save as a PDF file (crashed a couple of times again!). But now we have all 810 pages of this file and it was around 5 Meg of data. Then we also had to break it up into smaller sections so the special document viewer wouldn’t choke on it. So at last, here it is!

Some interesting things we noticed on first glance:

It was signed by NFLPA President Kevin Mawae and new Executive Director DeMaurice Smith on May 28th, 2009 (like last year). But DeMaurice Smith wasn’t the head honcho in 2008. It was Gene Upshaw until August 2008 and then General Counsel Richard Berthelsen was acting Executive Director until a permanent replacement was put in place this year. Does that make DeMaurice Smith fiscally responsible for what happened last year BEFORE his watch?

You may remember the Jeff Nixon post about Drew Brees and the ensuing comments from retired players about his callous attitude towards them (read that HERE). Guess what? On Page 14 under the section All Officers and Disbursements to Officers, Brees was paid a total of $434,847 as Vice President of the NFLPA (page 14). While we haven’t yet looked into the details of what all that money was for, he was definitely better paid than former President Troy Vincent who only received $24,841 (before he was kicked out by Gene Upshaw for bringing up the idea of a successor) and current President Kevin Mawae, who received a paltry $27,442. Now we understand! Perhaps THAT’S why they call Drew Brees VICE President! All the other Vice Presidents received around $20 – $25,000 apiece last year (?).

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