Short edition this week with a review of a newly published book looking back at the NFL’s labour struggles in the 1970s and 80s.
Usual list of upcoming titles included below too.
🏈 Never Ask "Why": Football Players' Fight for Freedom in the NFL by Ed Garvey (edited by Chuck Cascio)
Most NFL players don’t have guaranteed contracts meaning they can be cut at any time without getting paid anymore. It’s a uniquely one-sided employer-employee relationship that doesn’t exist in baseball or soccer for example. A huge spotlight has been shone on that fact recently as a result of Damar Hamlin collapsing during a game (thankfully, he appears to be making an excellent recovery). Under the terms of Hamlin’s contract he actually gets a paycut now that he got injured while working (although the Bills sensibly will pay up and avoid that PR catastrophe).
What the Hamlin situation makes clear is that there may be an opportunity for the player’s union, the NFLPA, to make a push for a more equitable system for spreading the risks so that teams take more of the loss when a player has a major injury or doesn’t live up to expectations for whatever reasons. All of which makes the timing of the publication of Never Ask Why quite fascinating.
Ed Garvey was the general counsel and executive director for the NFLPA during the 1970s and early 80s when the union was trying to assert itself and secure a much better deal for NFL players. This memoir, which it appears was written sometime in the 80s, is only now being published some 5 years after Garvey’s death. It’s a fascinating historical document showing Garvey’s side of some very tense times in professional football where the threat of strikes and of striking players being effectively blacklisted by owners was never far away. All of this also took place with the backdrop of litigation as the NFL sought to use its financial might to delay the inevitable finding that they acted illegally.
Garvey is incredibly dismissive of then Commissioner Pete Rozelle and many of the team owners, coaches and their advisers. Those players who side with management or the stars who were unconcerned with the plight of less celebrated players are also skewered by Garvey. However, those players who were willing to risk their careers to help establish the union and to create a better system for players that came after them are lauded (rightly). The book doesn’t pretend to be objective, it’s Garvey’s story and reflects his clear progressive and pro labour views.
The book is at times frantic and becomes slightly difficult to follow. But I think this probably mirrors the frenzy at the time as negotiations progressed and deals eventually reached on some issues. As a lawyer myself when not rambling on about sports books, I enjoyed the nitty gritty back and forth but I can see some readers losing patience especially towards the end of the book and finding it a bit needlessly detailed.
The book ends quite starkly in the mid-80s with Garvey floating his idea that players should get a share of the gross income earned by the league - this seems to be his greatest legacy as players wages have risen dramatically since then along with the profits of owners. I’d have loved to learn more about Garvey’s thoughts later in life about what the NFLPA had subsequently achieved, but also failed to achieve, in the last 30 years. One other thing that struck me in the book is that John Mackey definitely deserves to have a stronger legacy for his efforts both in building the union and in leading the litigation to have the reserve clause struck down.
Shortly before his death, Garvey expressed his views on a wide range of topics in a series of detailed, no-holds-barred interviews with journalist Rob Zaleski. This resulted in the book ‘Ed Garvey Unvarnished: Lessons from a Visionary Progressive’ by Rob Zaleski which is going on my ‘not necessarily sports related’ reading list.
Sports books out now or coming very soon:
⚽ So Much More Than That: A British Journey of Football, Industry, War and Migration by Hannah Grainger-Clemson.
🏃 The Race Against Time: Adventures in Late-Life Running by Richard Askwith. Any book by the author of the excellent Feet in the Clouds and Today We Die a Little is going to be worth reading.
🏃 Solo: A true story of spirit, adventure & the life-changing power of running alone by Jenny Tough.
⚽ Beloved & Betrayed: how nine miners a clerk and a bricklayer shocked the football world by John Stocks.
📺 Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes by Stephen A. Smith.
Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts, opinions, any improvements I can make etc. Catch me on Twitter. More books next week!