National Football League Players Association - Early History

Early History

The establishment of the National Football League in 1920 featured early franchises haphazardly formed and often saddled with financial difficulties, poor player talent and attendance rates. As the league expanded through the years, players were provided with no formal representation and received few if any benefits. In 1943, Roy Zimmerman's refusal to play an exhibition game without compensation resulted in his trade from the Washington Redskins to the Philadelphia Eagles. With the formation of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) in 1946, NFL owners instituted a rule which banned a player for five years from NFL-associated employment if he left the league to join the AAFC.

Bill Radovich, an offensive lineman, was one player who "jumped" leagues; he played for the Detroit Lions in 1945 and then joined the Los Angeles Dons of the AAFC after the team offered him a greater salary. Subsequently, Radovich was blacklisted by the NFL and was denied a tryout with the NFL-affiliated San Francisco Seals baseball team of the Pacific Coast League. Unable to attain a job in either league, Radovich filed a lawsuit against the NFL in 1957. In 1964, Green Bay Packers Pro Bowl and All-Pro center Jim Ringo approached head coach Vince Lombardi to negotiate a raise. Lombardi was angered by the presence of Ringo's agent, and excused himself; five minutes later he returned to inform the two that Ringo had been traded to the Philadelphia Eagles. The players grew tired of incidents such as these and complained amongst one another. One sore point was playing in training camp and preseason exhibition games without pay; no contract payment was made until a player made a regular season roster.

The NFLPA began when two players from the Cleveland Browns, Abe Gibron and Dante Lavelli, approached a lawyer and former Notre Dame football player, Creighton Miller, to help form an association to advocate for the players. Miller was initially reluctant but accepted in 1956. He contacted Don Shula (a Baltimore Colts player at the time), John Gordy of the Detroit Lions, Frank Gifford and Sam Huff of the New York Giants, and Norm Van Brocklin of the Los Angeles Rams to aid in the development of the association. Representatives of 11 of the 12 teams in the league at the time joined the association; the Chicago Bears were the sole dissenter; by November 1956 a majority of the players signed cards allowing the NFLPA to represent them. The first meeting took place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in November where players decided on demands to be submitted to league commissioner Bert Bell. The new association's initial agenda included a league-wide minimum salary, plus a per diem when teams were on the road, that uniforms and equipment be paid for and maintained at the clubs' expense, and continued payment of salaries when players were injured. The NFLPA hoped to meet with Bell during the owners' meeting in January 1957 to discuss the demands; however, no meeting took place. The owners, for their part, were not enthused by the concept of a player's union and this sentiment was reflected when Miller, who served as an assistant coach with the Cleveland Browns, was removed from the team photo at the request of Paul Brown. Gibron, Lavelli, and Miller were instrumental in the founding of the union as they had become chagrined by Paul Brown's staunch view that "it was both just and necessary that management could cut, trade, bench, blackball and own in perpetuity anyone and everyone that it wanted".

Miller continued to represent the NFLPA in their early days. Unable to win the owners' attention by forming the union, the NFLPA threatened to bring an antitrust lawsuit against the league. The antitrust laws are meant to protect "free and fair competition in the marketplace" and prohibit practices that may give industries or businesses an unfair advantage over their competitors. That threat became much more credible when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Radovich v. National Football League, 352 U.S. 445 (1957), that the NFL did not enjoy the same antitrust immunity that Major League Baseball did, meaning that players like Radovich had been wrongfully barred from finding new employment. Jarett Bell of USA Today noted in 2011, the Radovich ruling "set the foundation for a series of court battles that have continued to present times" largely over disagreements in compensation. Rather than face another lawsuit, the owners agreed to a league minimum salary of $5,000, $50 for each exhibition game played, and medical and hospital coverage. Although most of the NFLPA's requests were met, the owners did not enter into a collective bargaining agreement with the association or formally recognize it as the players' exclusive bargaining representative, instead agreeing to change the standard player contract and alter governing documents to reflect the deal.

From the inception of the NFLPA, its members were divided over whether it should act as a professional association or a union. Against the wishes of NFLPA presidents Pete Retzlaff and Bernie Parrish, Miller ran the association as a "'grievance committee'" rather than engaging in collective bargaining. The standard collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a contract between organized workers and management that determines the wages and hours worked by employees and can also determine the scope of one's work and what benefits employees receive. The association continued to use the threat of antitrust litigation over the next few years as a lever to gain better benefits, including a pension plan and health insurance. In the 1960s the NFL also faced competition from the new American Football League (AFL). NFL players viewed the new league as potential leverage for them to improve their contracts. The NFL tried to discourage this idea by changing the owner-controlled pension plan to add a clause saying that a player would lose his pension if he went to another league.

On January 14, 1964, players in the newer league formed the AFL Players Association, and elected linebacker Tom Addison of the Boston Patriots as president. Rather than working with the AFLPA, the NFLPA chose to remain apart and tried to block the merger between the two leagues in 1966, though lack of funding prevented it from mounting a formal challenge. With the merger complete, the players could no longer use the leverage of being able to sign with an AFL team to attain more money.

Parrish, upset with the ineffectiveness of the association, proposed forming a players' union, that would be independent of the NFLPA, with the assistance of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). The IBT pushed for the NFLPA to join the trucking union. In early November 1967, Parrish, with support from former Cleveland Browns player Jim Brown, began distributing union cards to form a Teamsters affiliate known as the American Federation of Pro Athletes. The NFLPA rejected the overture at its meeting in Hollywood, Florida during the first week of January 1968 and declared itself an independent union. Although Parrish's proposal was defeated, Miller left his position as counsel to the union. He was later replaced by two Chicago labor lawyers, Dan Schulman and Bernie Baum.