RIP Gene Upshaw

Gene Upshaw

The scene was a hotel ballroom on the east side of Manhattan, right on Lexington Avenue.  It was a September Monday in 1982 and the room was packed with reporters and television cameras.  Just as I walked into the room, a hand reached out from behind a door and grabbed my arm.  It was Tom Condon, then Chiefs starting guard and one of the leaders of the NFL Players Association.

Before I knew it, I was on a day-long odyssey with Condon and a host of NFL players, including their leader Gene Upshaw.  First, they announced in the hotel ballroom that the league’s players were going on strike at the end of the Monday night game that was coincidentally being played in the Meadowlands in New Jersey that evening.

As you could imagine, there were plenty of questions for the union leadership in that room, and the guy at the center of things was Upshaw.  At the time, Ed Garvey was the union’s executive director.  The mere mention of Garvey’s name could send an NFL owner into spasms of angry shouting.  Garvey was considered him a socialist and the owners made fun of his stated negotiating goal: getting the players 54 percent of the NFL’s gross revenue.

But on this day, Garvey was in the background and Upshaw took the lead.  After the press conference, a group of four players jumped into a limo and headed to the Manhattan studios of ABC.  I was pulled along. After Condon introduced me, Upshaw asked how I thought the announcement went and whether my media breathen understood.  I remember telling him that one-third of the group understood, one-third had no idea and another one-third was simply hoping the union would serve food and drink.

Upshaw stared at me for a second and then let loose a laugh that came from his belly and worked its way up until it filled the limo.  “Sounds like a locker room,” Upshaw said.

That moment came rushing back to me Thursday morning when word came that Upshaw had passed away, a victim of pancreatic cancer.  He died at his home in Lake Tahoe, after finding out he had this virulent form of cancer just last weekend.  Upshaw was 63.

Before that New York night in ‘82 I had only watched Upshaw play on the field.  I had never spoken to him,  never interviewed him. I knew he was the leader of a Raiders team that was the oddest collection of personalities one could ever imagine.  This was a group that ended up winning Super Bowl 15, when they knocked off Dick Vermei’s Philadelphia Eagles in January of 1981.

The players were going to ABC’s studios that night to do a half-time interview with Howard Cosell, who was across the river at Giants Stadium.  As the group was ushered into the studio, they passed the lead negotiator for the league, a guy named Jack Donlan.  There were sneers exchanged on both sides, except for Upshaw.  He stopped Donlan, shook his hand, had a few seconds of quiet conversation and moved on. I’m not sure what Upshaw said, but I do remember Donlan had the strangest look on his face after the conversation was over.

“I told him to buckle up his helmet,” Upshaw said later.  “I’m not sure he knew what I meant.”

That ‘82 players strike went for eight weeks and it was followed five years later by another strike, that led to replacement football games for three weeks.  As a result of those walkouts, the union made some gains, but it was nothing significant.  The players did not have any sort of unrestricted free agency.

That came when Upshaw led the union through decertification in the early 1990s and that allowed players to file suit individually against the NFL.  The players eventually won that suit and a new agreement between players and owners was negotiated that brought unrestricted free agency and the salary cap to the NFL.

The guy leading the way through all of that was Upshaw.  He became the union’s leader in June of ‘83, after ending his long playing career with the Oakland Raiders.  Drafted with the 17th pick of the 1967 combined AFL-NFL Draft, Al Davis selected Upshaw because of one person: Buck Buchanan of the Chiefs.  The Raiders couldn’t control Buchanan and Davis knew that if he didn’t find a blocker that could contain Kansas City’s defensive tackle, his team would struggle to win.  Upshaw was that man and he and Buchanan had some legendary battles in the pits over the next nine seasons, before Buck retired at the end of the ‘75 season.

Upshaw loved to talk about playing Buchanan.  After that evening in ‘82, I probably ran into him at least once,  maybe twice a year.  Sometimes he would show up in Kansas City during the season to meet with the players.  Other times it was at the Super Bowl, where eventually the union leader had a press conference every year.  He always said hello, always asked how things were in Kansas City, and when prompted would  go on and on about Buchanan, Bell, Lanier and the like.

For some 25 years Upshaw was in the spotlight when it came to labor relations and while it’s been years since I’ve closely followed the NFLPA business, I can tell you that the union changed the face of the game.  The owners who fumed that Garvey wanted 54 percent of the gross would love him now, since they are giving up close to 60 percent of the gross revenue.  This year the players will receive $4.5 billion in salary and benefits.   The man who was the leader through all of that was Gene Upshaw.

In less than 10 days, there will be 1,696 players on the active rosters in the National Football League.  There will be another 300-plus on practice squads and various injury lists.  Every day, they should say thank you to a guy from small town Texas who through his intelligence and leadership helped change their profession.

Rest in peace, Gene Upshaw.