If there were a Top 10 of the most fascinating figures in American sports history, Gene Upshaw would earn a spot high on the list.

 

He was a Hall of Fame, iron-man guard for the dynastic Raiders of the 1960s and 1970s, winning an AFL championship as a rookie in 1967 and Super Bowl titles in 1976 and 1980, while starting every game for a remarkable 14 consecutive seasons. He served as executive director of the NFL Players Association during its most successful and most tumultuous years, from 1983 until his sudden death on Wednesday.

 

He died as one of the most controversial figures in sports and one of the most compelling.

 

Who else succeeded so definitively on the field of play and then served his sport in a highly visible capacity after his playing days for so long, only to become one of the most vilified figures in his business?

 

Baseball’s Shoeless Joe Jackson? Well, he never served the game beyond his role as a player and, well, he suited up nearly 100 years ago. That’s a long time to go back to find a comparison. Plus, history has generally been kind to Jackson’s legacy, painting him as a relatively innocent victim who batted .375 and had five multi-hit games in the World Series he’s alleged to have thrown.

 

Maybe Pete Rose. The baseball star was clearly a Hall of Fame player who also managed in Major League Baseball for six years, then went on to infamy for his off-the-field habits. Rose, like Upshaw, was a great player later vilified. But Rose’s managerial career was uneventful. He did not have the same impact as Upshaw upon the sport after his playing days.

 

In any case, it’s a very short list and Upshaw is high upon it.

 

The portrait generally painted of him in the media shows a greedy, miserly stooge and tool of ownership who sold out his own noble people (NFL players) in a pact with the devil (NFL owners). It’s an image perpetuated so often in so many places that you’re likely to hear it from football fans and pigskin “pundits” in every corner of the country now that Upshaw has passed. 

 

But, as is so often the case with life, with history, and with the Cold, Hard Football Facts, the real story is far more complex than the one perpetuated by the pigskin “pundits” and by conventional wisdom.

 

Here are four reasons why Upshaw got a raw deal in the court of public perception.

 

The single greatest piece about Upshaw was written by Gary Smith in the Feb. 4, 2008 issue of Sports Illustrated. The article generated scant attention, coming as it did just days before the greatest upset and most widely watched game in NFL history, Super Bowl XLII.

 

But it was a brilliant article and should be required reading for anyone interested in the Upshaw issue.

It was brilliant for two reasons:

The article outlined all the charges levied against Upshaw by former NFL players. By now, every football fan knows the storyline: countless ex-players are crippled or die young or end up in poverty after their playing days, while Upshaw sits there fat and happy in his ivory tower, ignoring the plight of his former colleagues.

 

In fact, according to Smith’s article, 78 percent of NFL players end up “divorced, bankrupt or unemployed” within two years of leaving pro football. These once powerful players present a pathetic and sympathetic image compared with Upshaw's wealth ($6.7 million annual salary) and influence.

 

But Smith also highlights what essentially amounts to a hatchet job by ex-players aimed at a guy who spent his entire career fighting for their rights, leading union strikes and carrying the NFLPA into its greatest period of success.

 

Smith writes, for example, about former Jaguars offensive lineman Brian DeMarco, who suffered spinal degeneration associated with his days in the NFL. The public saw DeMarco rip Upshaw for “stepping away from the guys he sweat with and bled with.”

 

But the public didn’t see the personal check Upshaw wrote to DeMarco for $2,398 to help pay his rent, or another check for $535.55 “to pay for DeMarco’s moving company.” The public didn’t know that DeMarco never got his disability payments because, according to Upshaw, he had never filled out his disability papers.

 

The public also didn't know that Upshaw had "written scores of personal checks for players' coffins and funerals, widows and orphans."

 

Through it all, adds Smith, “Upshaw had resisted his lieutenants’ pleas to publicize the checks he had written to quietly help players in dire need.”

 

Yet players such as DeMarco repaid Upshaw’s personal kindness by ripping him in public.

 

Smith reports that many players had only themselves to blame for the poor state of their finances later in life. Packers Hall of Famer Herb Adderley, for example, was pulling in a pension of just $126.85 per month, becoming something of a poster boy for the meager rations tossed out to ex-players.

 

But according to Smith, Adderley’s pension was so small because he, like many other players, had taken early lump-sum payments, “wiping out 25 percent of their nest eggs, and begun drawing their pensions at age 45 instead of waiting until 62.” Divorces, meanwhile, in some cases multiple divorces, further wiped out those pensions and any savings the players might have accrued during their well-paid playing days.

 

In other words, a lot of guys mis-managed their post-playing-days finances. Upshaw was an easy target for their scorn.

 

Upshaw also insists that he routinely fought to increase the benefits to ex-players, and that he had to do it by taking the money out of the pockets of current players.

 

Smith quoted Upshaw:

“Look at it this way. If you put a pile of money in a room with 10 people in it and ask them to split it up, do you think someone outside that room is going to get any of it? But that’s what I do every new collective bargaining agreement. I’m the one who takes some of it from the 10 guys in the room and gives it to the guys that aren’t even in the room – the retired players. I have $147.5 million of the $571 million that went into benefits last year to retired players to increase their plan. That’s what I’ve done!”

 

It’s conventional wisdom in sports circles that baseball players have a much better deal with their league than football players.

 

They don’t.

 

That’s right. You heard it here first: baseball players do not have a better deal than football players. As is often the case with economic issues, the reality of the situation is far more complex than the emotional, knee-jerk reaction.

 

In baseball, only the chosen few benefit. The rest of the starving masses huddle around the meager porridge bowl of minor league baseball and suffer -- denied major-league opportunities by the very same system that alleges to be so good for the players.

 

Sure, major league baseball players have no-trade deals and guaranteed contracts and a host of other amenities that NFL players don’t have.

 

But those arrangements hardly benefit all baseball players. It only benefits those players already in the major leagues. It pretty much spits on the guys trying to fight their way into the bigs. When a team has devoted $10 million guaranteed each year to an aging veteran, for example, they’re simply not going to give a young, unproven player from the minor leagues a shot. After all, the team is out the $10 million either way. They might as well play the aging veteran and get some return on their investment.

 

It happens all the time baseball, but most people don't look at the whole picture. Here's the whole picture:

 

For every washed up 38-year-old baseball player drawing a hefty guaranteed paycheck that he doesn't deserve, there's some young guy playing for the Albuquerque Isotopes waiting for a shot at the big time that he'll never get.

 

But NFL teams don’t carry the dead weight of guaranteed contracts given to under-performing stars. Therefore a far greater number of guys get a shot at the big leagues than they do in baseball. NFL teams can cut older, highly paid guys fairly quickly.

 

Yeah, it sucks for the older guy who gets cut and then gets all the attention and the sympathy from out-of-touch fans. And then all the saps, like people who don’t read the Cold, Hard Football Facts, feel bad for the old veteran who was handed his pink slip.

 

But, again, the short-sighted, sympathy-powered storyline doesn't paint the whole picture. Here's the whole picture:

 

For every aging veteran unceremoniously dumped by an NFL team, there's a young free agent on the waiver wire or in the Arena League who now gets a shot to prove himself in the big time.

 

That young buck's equivalent in baseball, meanwhile, continues to tough it out with the Toledo Mud Hens, wishing baseball's so-called "player friendly" labor agreement lived up to the hype.

 

Football, in other words offers a much more egalitarian system in which many more players can participate, even if it’s only for a brief period.

 

MLB offers players the tired, unworkable and ironic system of socialism: in the name of equality, it entrenches the wealthy elite, at the expense of the working masses struggling to rise up and grab a piece of the big-league pie.

 

You look at the comparative successes of each league and tell us which system works better.

 

We're not pretending Upshaw worked the NFLPA's labor agreement for the noble cause of giving a greater number of players a shot at the NFL. He didn't. But the effect of his deal benefits a far greater number of players than it's given credit for.

 

Yet Upshaw was constantly painted as the bad guy. But perhaps the motives of his critics deserve the same kind of scrutiny.

 

For example, current NFL players, led by, of all people, kicker Matt Stover, launched a campaign to oust Upshaw last year. Was Stover the noble one in this battle, fighting for the rights of players? Or was the aging veteran just watching out for himself?

 

We don’t know. And we don’t pretend to know. But we do know this: the system Upshaw helped create made it more likely that Stover would be replaced by an upstart youngster and less likely that he would – like a baseball player – cling to a job long after he deserved it.

 

So Stover may very well have been the greedy one in the relationship. If the NFL ever adopted a deal like baseball’s labor agreement, aging old-timers like Stover would benefit at the expense of upstart youngsters fighting for a job. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Stover is 40 years old, a dinosaur by pro football standards.

 

Upshaw's labor agreement is a bad deal for players only if you believe that it’s a bad deal to open up opportunities to the greatest number of players.

 

We always laugh when sappy football fans side with players against ownership, as if the average sappy football fan making $50,000 per year and driving a mini-van to soccer practice each night has something in common with the football player who's making $1.4 million per year and dating a bagful of hotties each night.

 

Sure, it's easy for football fans to side with players against ownership and, of course, to side against Upshaw for his “pact with the devil” that essentially made him a partner with ownership. After all, it feels like rooting for the “little guy” against “the man.”

 

But football fans can only wish they had it as good as NFL players. And it’s a joke that any football fan would side with any dog in this fight for economic reasons.

 

Sure, football players have insanely short careers. But would you take a job making $1.4 million a year even if you knew it would last only three years? Of course you would. Then you'd go back out and make that $50,000 a year, just like players can do today.

 

And, sure, NFL players can get fired at any time. But you can get fired at any time, too. And the chance that your company will go belly up is probably far greater than the chance that your local NFL team will go belly up.

 

But … but … but … playing pro football is exceedingly dangerous and players can get hurt at any time! That's the usual response of the sappy football fan.

 

To which we say, "So what!?" Nobody’s forcing these guys to play pro football. They can pursue another career if they don't want to take the risk.

 

Plus, here's the kicker: there are a lot of guys out there with tougher jobs than football players, and they do it for a lot less money and a lot less fame. Those are the guys who deserve your sympathy.

 

If you sit at a computer in your underwear all day calculating football data then, yeah, playing football is more dangerous. 

 

But football players have it pretty easy compared with the real tough guys in the American work force.

 

Let’s look at those poor bastards working in some West Virginia coal mine for $70,000 a year: According to government statistics, 28 of every 100,000 miners were killed on the job in 2006. They didn't blow out a knee or suffer chronic athritis. They died on the job!

 

Football players enjoy a much safer career. According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, the death rate among football players at all levels in 2007 was just 0.22 of every 100,000 participants – a microscopic 1/100th of the number of miners killed in 2006.

 

So if you think you’re siding with the little guy through your emotional allegiances to NFL players under the Upshaw regime, well, you’re really out of touch ... primarily because ...

 

The giant elephant in the corner of the room of Upshaw's legacy is that players, and the league itself, never had it any better than they do today. Upshaw certainly deserves a chunk of credit for the omnipotent state of the modern NFL and for the creature comforts of its players: under his regime, the average guy can play two or three years in the league and be set financially for life if he plays his cards right. There are few better deals outside of owning an Indian casino.

 

Yet Upshaw is often seen as a pawn for ownership. But maybe he instinctively knew the basics of economics: if something’s good for the guys who write the checks, it’s probably going to be good for the guys who cash the checks. 

 

You can insist that he didn’t do enough to help former players. That’s fine. There’s a legitimate argument to be made there. He certainly angered a lot of ex-players.

 

But there’s no denying that players have never had it better than they do right now. 

 

For example, the NFLPA collects nearly 60 percent of total revenue these days – players take in more than the owners who take all the financial risk! What workers in any other industry have that kind of deal? And it’s 60 percent of the revenue in the most successful sports league in the world. Players should be building a statue in Upshaw's honor for working that kind of magic.

 

And, let's not forget free agency. Widely acclaimed as the biggest boon for players in pro football history, it was engineered by, you guessed it, Gene Upshaw.

 

According to Smith’s aforementioned Sports Illustrated article, NFL player salaries rose from an average of $120,000 per year when Upshaw took over in 1983, to a $1.4 million per year last season.

 

Have you received an 11-fold increase in salary over the last 25 years? Probably not.

 

Again, you can criticize Upshaw for not doing enough to help ex-players. But helping ex-players was not in his job description. As Smith wrote in that February Sports Illustrated article, labor law dictates that a union "can only bargain for currrent employees, not retired ones."

 

Don't forget that the players of today that Upshaw represented are the ex-players of tomorrow. By helping them grow richer over the past 25 year, he's helped them live more secure futures after their playing days.

 

In either case, current player today or ex-player tomorrow, they've never had it so good.