The Mourning of the Raider Nation… Gene Upshaw #63 blocking and protecting souls in purgatory…

Life can be cruel…in fact life, for the most part cruel, with total pockets of enjoyment spaced too far apart. This weekend, the Raider Nation is in mourning for the passing of Gene Upshaw. Regardless of what you think about the current Al Davis regime, he hit the nail on the head when speaking about Gene Upshaw and his impact when he said, “The Raider Organization, the National Football League, and the world have lost a great man. Gene Upshaw’s career successes as a professional football player and a union leader are unparalleled. He is as prominent a sportsman as the world has known. He was and will remain a part of the fabric of our lives and of the Raider mystique and legacy. We loved him and he loved us. We will miss him. Our hearts go out to Terri and the boys.

Younger cats may only recognize him for his work after football with being the head of the players union. Even the younger cats in the game do not understand what he brought to them. Put against this backdrop, the fact that the most insignificant, replaceable player on the field attempted to hold a coup to oust Upshaw as the head of the NLFPA seem even more ridiculous…

Raider Nation, here is a picture of a true hater in the Bucknasty role.

If you thought that this was a young John Stockton, you would be wrong. As an aside, I love dudes who shoot like this, because when I reject the shot like a check with insufficient funds, it has the potential to go right back and hit them in the dome. It usually makes them more gun shy to shoot the following shot. This is persona non grata in the Raider House. This is Matt Stover. Most of you might be thinking, really, who is this clown? He is the kicker for the Baltimore Ravens, most known for being the ringleader of the coup attempt on Gene Upshaw. Just like I tell my kids, those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. This is where that adage is really stone cold, old country wisdom. See Matt, I remember the strike of 1987. It didn’t last all that long, but it should have been a historical lesson to you about the fragility of the life of a football player. You should know this better than anyone since you are a kicker. Remember the NFL’s most accurate kicker in history, Mike Vanderjagt? Played for the Indianapolis Colts? Well, after a much publicized run in with Peyton Manning, he found himself not just off the Colts, but out the league. I turned on a CFL game by accident on ESPN8 and saw him kicking in some god forsaken stadium with 5 people watching. (Okay, maybe it was about 14,000, but still a really small crowd) The point is that you as a kicker and the rest of the players who actually sacrifice the body every Sunday are replaceable. I know it, you know it and the owners certainly haven’t forgotten that fact. The Arizona Republic reminds those who didn’t live through those time periods. The players looked at their counterparts in other sports and shot for a bigger piece of the pie. When I was younger and this happened, I thought that it was fine, since some of my favorite players at the time walked and crossed the picket line. In reality, they were sweeping Gene Upshaw at the knees, sapping his negotiating strength.

I had this card as a kid, but when I went to college, my grandmother got rid of all my cards…

A bigger slice wasn’t forthcoming. In fact, it might get just a touch smaller. Somebody needs to remind today’s players of what happened in 1987 when a 24-day strike caved mostly because 89 players crossed the union picket line.

The NFL staged replacement games, and although attendance in some cities was non-existent and some were hammered with derisive nicknames (such as the San Francisco Phoney Niners), other teams (such as the replacement Redskins) drew big crowds, the networks were willing to televise it, and the owners, no matter how unseemly the games were, were quite content fielding teams and breaking the union.

NFL owners proved in 1987 beyond a shadow of a doubt that professional football players, with the exception of quarterbacks and a handful of others, are anonymous and that Americans don’t care who’s in the jerseys anyway as long as somebody is wearing them on Sundays.

The NFL players waved bye-bye to their leverage that fall when 15 percent of them crossed picket lines. Famous players, influential players caved, including Hall of Famers Lawrence Taylor, Steve Largent, Tony Dorsett and Randy White. Cowboys quarterback Danny White even crossed the picket line.

Today’s players probably don’t know that. But you think the owners have forgotten what kind of leverage they have and how easily the players’ resolve melted? Upshaw never forgot. It was a small but meaningful group of players, 21 years ago, who sold out Upshaw. And although he never complained publicly about it, Upshaw went about every future negotiation knowing the owners would put their foot on the players’ neck. He knew he could never make the demands Don Fehr could make for baseball players or Billy Hunter could make for basketball players.

It is an easy comparison to make with Curt Flood (who too many people forget about his contribution to baseball) since the one thing that worked out about the strike is that he won the right to have free agency and allow players to test their value on the open market. The New York Times talks about the issues that the new head of the union will have to face. The negotiations are expected to be difficult. In May, team owners opted out of the current collective bargaining agreement, forcing negotiations to avoid playing the 2010 season without a salary cap and having a work stoppage in 2011. This is good if you a fan of a team like Al Davis and the Raiders, or of Jerry Jones and the Cowboys. These are two owners that will spend to win. If a new deal is not put in place, then the league will have a work stoppage without any end in sight. The 2009-10 seasons will also mean that players next year will be signed to a lot of one year contracts, since the market will be open and the sky will be the limit for the amount of talent you can amass. The salary cap for fans meant that the talent had to be dispersed among many teams, instead of just one. If gave and gives hope to all teams at the beginning of the season, not just the top 20 television markets with additional streams of revenue. If you are a fan of a small market team, things might get rough. Owners like Jones and Davis are going to push for reduced shares of revenue sharing and more individual TV deals and licensing fees. This will mean more money for the owners of big teams, with new stadiums and popularity, but small market teams will be forced to make regional TV deals and not be able to generate new fans in different markets. It’s all a trickledown effect that leads to your team sucking…Gene Upshaw and his crew held it down and generated 60 percent share of the pie that will get smaller under new leadership in 2010.

That New York Times article continues to mention the impact of the legacy of Gene Upshaw and why players should be on their hands and knees thanking Gene. One more quick point to add before the article… We here at Too Old watched the Raider Game last night against the Arizona Cardinals (don’t ask, we looked good at times and absolutely horrible at others…) and the interview with Nmandi Asomugha was telling for me. When he was talking about the game he was fine, but when he was talking about the impact that Gene Upshaw had on him and football, he got broken up. His voice started to waver and you can see the true respect and reverence that he had for the man and made me love the Raiders even more. (It didn’t hurt that he was a CAL Bear as well)

In 1987, the players struck, which led to games with replacement players. By 1993, Upshaw and the former N.F.L. commissioner Paul Tagliabue had negotiated a deal that gave players the right to free agency in exchange for a salary cap.

It was a landmark decision for the N.F.L., assuring a measure of competitive balance, starting a period of sustained labor peace and helping to send revenues and player salaries soaring. The salary cap is $116 million per team this season and, according to owners’ figures, players will be paid a total of $4.5 billion this season. Upshaw recently said that if the league ever played a year without the cap, he would not sell it to the players again.

But his greatest achievement as a labor boss was the establishment of free agency, which granted football players the same freedom of movement that players in other sports already had. For years, Upshaw had been accused of being too close to Tagliabue, although Upshaw’s history as a player increased his currency with active players when he explained details of new deals. But before the last contract extension was approved in March 2006, Tagliabue had to ask Upshaw for a postponement to the start of that season’s free agency period to buy more time after negotiations broke down. Upshaw gave the owners 72 hours. Just after the clock expired, owners approved a deal that gave players 60 percent of revenues. Owners found the deal so favorable to players that it became untenable for them just two years later. “If that’s what happens when you’re too close, I recommend everybody be too close,” said Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots. “If anybody got an edge in that deal, he got it. It’s the reason we had to opt out of the arrangement. It just goes to show you people can be nice and cooperative, but that doesn’t mean you’re co-opted.”

Getting back to Bucknasty, I am waiting to see you do any better…