[Deathwatch] Gene Upshaw, athlete and Union Chief, 63

[Deathwatch Central]

August 22, 2008
Gene Upshaw, N.F.L. Union Chief, Dies at 63
By JUDY BATTISTA

They called Gene Upshaw the Governor because he carried himself like a
leader from the time he arrived in the N.F.L. from the tiny Texas
College of Arts and Industries.

For 15 years, he was such a bedrock of the Oakland Raiders’ offensive
line that he became the first player used exclusively at guard to be
voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And in an extraordinary
second act, for 25 sometimes contentious years, he led the players
union through the tumult of a strike, the gambit of decertification,
the victory of free agency, an explosion in player salaries and the
debate over provisions for retired players.

Late Wednesday night, with his union preparing for another contract
negotiation with owners, Upshaw died at age 63 of pancreatic cancer.
The union confirmed his death Thursday. His death stunned the N.F.L.
because almost nobody knew he had been ill. Upshaw had appeared so
gaunt at the recent Hall of Fame induction ceremony that some of those
who saw him worried about his health. Upshaw was found to have cancer
only last Sunday, when his wife took him to the hospital while the
family was on vacation.

His death was so unexpected that earlier this week, the union had
scheduled a news conference for him on Sept. 4 to discuss labor issues.
Upshaw died with his wife and three sons beside him at his home in the
Lake Tahoe region of California. At Giants practice Thursday, the team
had a moment of silence in his honor before practice began.

“It’s devastating,” said Jeffrey Kessler, the union’s outside counsel.

On Thursday, the union’s executive committee voted unanimously to
appoint Richard Berthelsen the interim executive director. Berthelsen
is the union’s longtime general counsel and was a member of the
negotiating committee for 37 years, during which he grew close to
Upshaw. He will probably remain in the position until the union’s
annual meeting in March and perhaps longer, until a new contract is
negotiated. Among the former players who could seek the job are Trace
Armstrong and Troy Vincent, both of whom have been active in union
issues.

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.

“Losing him is like losing a chunk of myself,” Berthelsen said by
telephone. “The game is better off for him having played it, and it’s
better off for him having led the union than it would have been with
any other single individual.”

Born in 1945 in Robstown, Tex., Upshaw picked cotton as a child, and he
played just a year of high school football. But he earned N.A.I.A.
All-American honors and was the Raiders’ first-round pick in the 1967
draft. He became a dominating guard when Oakland was at its zenith and
is the only player to appear in three Super Bowls in three different
decades for the same team. He played in 217 games and in many of them
he anchored the left side of the Raiders’ offensive line with the Hall
of Fame tackle Art Shell and the Hall of Fame tight end Dave Casper.

“They basically ran to the left, if they ran 30 running plays, 28 of
them were going to be that way,” said Indianapolis Colts Coach Tony
Dungy, who was a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers at the time. “I
don’t know if you can put three better players together, ever, than
those three guys.”

The former Raiders coach Tom Flores said the qualities Upshaw displayed
in the locker room — confidence, intelligence and an outgoing, upbeat
personality — made his ascension to union chief predictable. “He became
a politician in the classroom,” Flores said in a telephone interview.

In 1980, Upshaw was part of a core of veterans that Flores turned to in
order to bring the team together. After missing the playoffs a year
earlier in Flores’s first season as coach, the Raiders were 2-3 heading
into a game against the San Diego Chargers, whom they trailed by two
games.

“I said, ‘You have to take care of the locker room for me,’ ” Flores
said. “ ‘I need your help.’ ”

The Raiders won that game, 38-24, and went on to win that season’s
Super Bowl.

But Upshaw’s power as the first African-American head of a major
players union ultimately eclipsed his playing career. Drawn to politics
early in his career, he became the head of the players association in
1983 at a time when the union was in dire financial straits.

“He built that organization from the ground up, and he fought fights
all the way,” Armstrong said.

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.”

Tagliabue said in a statement: “In both careers, if you hit him in the
head, he could hit you back twice as hard — but he didn’t always do so.
He was very tough but also a good listener. He never lost sight of the
interests of the game and the big picture.”

In recent years, Upshaw came under withering criticism from a vocal
band of retired players who believed he had not done enough to protect
their interests, particularly those of players with health problems.
Berthelsen said he believed Upshaw was hurt by the criticism, and
Upshaw sometimes seemed frustrated as he tried to make the case that he
had secured more assistance and benefits for retirees than anyone else
had.

Upshaw’s public responses were often impolitic: he sometimes told
reporters that he did not work for the retired players, and he once
famously said of the Hall of Fame guard Joe DeLamielleure, one of
Upshaw’s most consistent critics, “I’d like to break his neck.”

“Upshaw carried that Oakland Raider intimidation all the way to being
the union leader he became,” said Sam Huff, a Hall of Fame linebacker.
“That’s unfortunate, because he left a lot of guys out. He didn’t take
care of the old guys. You want to feel sorrier than you do. It’s a
mixed feeling that I have today.”

In April, Baltimore Ravens kicker Matt Stover e-mailed a plan to other
union members to identify a successor to Upshaw and to potentially
force Upshaw out by next spring, a year before his contract was to
expire. Stover later said he was trying to get the union to prepare for
the future, and other active players criticized Stover.

Upshaw’s response was typical for him: proud, stubborn and unmistakably
blunt. He vowed that he would never leave his post until the next labor
deal was done. It was months before Upshaw would learn he was dying.
And as union leaders struggled with their grief Thursday, they began to
prepare for the first round of talks without him.

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary