DeMaurice Smith Q&A: Outgoing NFLPA chief discusses labor battles, legacy and more

DeMaurice Smith is stepping down after more than 14 years as executive director of the NFL Players Association. His tenure included guiding players through an NFL lockout, two long-term collective bargaining agreements, the COVID-19 pandemic and an overhaul in how the league treats concussions as part of myriad health and safety measures. As he prepares the union for the transition to a new leader while teaching law as a visiting professor at Yale, Smith, 59, engaged in an extended interview with USA TODAY Sports – prior to the election of Lloyd Howell as his successor – that reflected on his impact and legacy.

Q: With labor peace attached to the NFL’s tremendous economic growth, why are you leaving now?

DeMaurice Smith: “I actually made a pledge to myself after the 2011 CBA, that I was going to do three things: I was going to look at the 2011 CBA as the ground floor, in order to spring forward to the 2020 CBA that would build on all the things that we fixed in 2011. I also swore that whenever we got the next CBA done and the organization was in the perfect place for transition, I would be there for the new executive director. Coming into this job (in 2009) without Gene Upshaw being there was the toughest single thing that I’ve ever had to do in my career. And the third pledge was, man, I’ve had three great careers. I’ve been a prosecutor, a partner with a major law firm. There are some things that I know I still enjoy doing. I think it’s time for me to manage my transition to the final chapter of my career.”

Q: Why did you want the job in the first place?

DS: “I was approached by the search committee for the job. I was headed back to the Department of Justice as a US Attorney when I got the call to see if I would be interested. After I met with the players, it was just the sheer inequity that the players were facing in 2009 – remember, the NFL told the players they wanted a 20% rollback in their salaries, they wanted the players to play two games for free, they wanted to take away our pensions – all of those things just struck me as just a really unfair, leveraged way to treat the people who work in the game. After talking to the players and realizing that they were serious about fighting these things…that’s when I became hooked in wanting this job.”

Q: What are you most proud of when considering your tenure with the NFLPA?

DS: “We ran this as a players union, where the players made the decisions. Having players in the negotiating room, leaving decisions to deal with their own destiny, I’m most proud of. I’m also proud that in the labor-management dynamic, a union has to be able to fight. There are always going to be the detractors out there, but I’m not sure that anybody would have a view that this isn’t a union that, when it came time to fight for our players, that’s what we did.

"And we achieved a lot of change out of it. When I came into the job, there were no concussion protocols. Just think about that. The league, at the time, had a group of people working on concussions and they called them the ‘Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee.’ Mild? The committee was run by a rheumatologist. We have moved from…over the last 15 years we have led the way on player health and safety, and now you see almost everything that this union proposed and accomplished, you see it all the way through sports now. Return-to-play guidelines. Pulling people off the field if it looks like they’ve been concussed. Credentialing doctors.

"I’m extremely proud of how we addressed the economics of football. When we came in in 2009, before the 2011 CBA, everybody used to talk about the salary cap. We never had a salary cash floor. Teams could always say that the cap was going up, but what we found in 2010 and 2011, many teams were spending below 80% of the salary cap. What good is a cap if people aren’t spending to it? And now most teams spend 99% of the salary cap. Those things become incredibly important to a group of players who, for the most part, only play three years. We were able to create a new business called OneTeam Partners, that for all of the unions that are a part of OneTeam Partners, that entity is now the largest asset on the books for any union in the world. So, I’m proud of a lot, but I’m mostly proud of the players and the staff at the NFLPA. No one works harder for the players than them."

Q: What was the toughest challenge?

DS: “All of it. I’m not sure I appreciated the personal toll that comes with a job like this.”

Q: How do you prepare for that?

DS: “I was a homicide prosecutor for a long time. I worked at a big firm and had big cases. The difference in this job is that we all know that football is America’s sport. This job requires you to be more of a fan of the players than the game. What that necessarily means is that – well, you’re always fighting with the owners, but sometimes you’re fighting with the players because you want the focus to be far more on their well-being and their long-term (health) than what they might think is important in the moment. That takes a toll. My kids were young when I took this job. They’re grown and they’re gone now. Trying to balance being a good father, being at home, against the demands of the job, it’s a toll. It’s an emotional toll, it’s a psychological toll and it’s a physical toll. It’s also been professionally and spiritually rewarding to me.”

Q: You were the ‘outsider’ when elected over Troy Vincent, Trace Armstrong and David Cornwell in 2009. How did ultimately help you succeed?

DS: “My career wasn’t tied to being executive director of the NFL Players Association. If we fight, I always tried to fight with an understanding that I don’t need anything from anyone in football. I had two great careers, and I’m teaching now. I never wanted to do this job, thinking, ‘Don’t ruffle feathers, don’t be too confrontational because you need to keep this job.’ And I’ve gone through, what, four elections, five elections, a lockout, COVID, two CBAs, Deflategate, all of it. And so, I’ve never approached any of those things from a perspective of, ‘Why don’t we just try to get along?’ The players had an interest, and that deserves to be protected. Even if it comes at my expense. I also wasn’t afraid of listening.”

Q: How you like to be remembered, as far as your NFLPA legacy?

DS: “Was not afraid to fight for what’s right. I don’t spend a whole heck of a lot of time trying to change people’s minds who think a certain way. Yet I had a couple mistakes. There’s always a few things that you’d like to do over. But when I look at the arc of the last 15 years, I’ve always tried to find out what the right answer was, and I’ve never been afraid to fight for what I felt was right.”

Q: What did you not accomplish?

DS: “I’ve always wanted our players to understand their power. And then to understand that because you have this power you have an obligation to use it. I’ve been a big critic of why our players go to OTAs for free. Or why players put team stuff on their social media accounts. Why they do anything that gives away their power. It may be that I wasn’t good enough in explaining that, or I wasn’t good enough in exhorting them to do that. I always wished that I could have done a better job of convincing players to use the power that they have, even if it resulted in some short-term consequence for them.

"You know the union made the decision to go on strike three times in (the years before Smith came aboard). And they weren’t successful because players crossed the picket line. But instead of looking at those strikes as failures, I’ve always appreciated the guts that it took for the players to go on strike in the first place. That was people deciding that they were going to use their power. One of the best photos on the eighth floor (at NFLPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.) is a photo of Franco Harris, on a picket line, holding a sign calling for fairness from the owners. And I’m not sure players today…let me put me put it this way: The owners know that players are willing to go to OTAs for free. The signal that that’s sending to owners is that players will never strike. And that means that they view that as a net advantage in their calculation of who has the most power.

"We have been very successful in the bargaining room, we’ve been very successful in litigation, because I made no secret of using litigation as an asymmetrical way of bargaining. But one of the reasons why we fought all of those cases so hard that I just mentioned, you can ask yourself on one hand, 'Will the players strike for a neutral arbitrator?’ Probably not. But because we fought those cases so hard, and literally to the death, we arrived at neutral arbitration in bargaining because the league just simply didn’t want to fight that way anymore. So, we’ve been extremely successful in the bargaining room, extremely successful in using litigation as a strategy, we’ve been very successful in growing the financial resources of the game. In 2030 (after the current CBA expires), I expect there will be a challenge to the players resolve to withhold their services. And I guess we’ll find out.”

Q: What advice would you give to your successor?

DS: “Know your history. Engage your strategy. Fight like hell.”

Q: How involved have you been in helping to choose your successor?

DS: “I made it clear when the executive committee started the process, that I did not want to be involved in the search because the players need to own this. The new executive director needs to know, just like I did, even though I went through a messy election in 2009, that he has the backing of the players. The players need to own it. But the most important thing is the owners have to know that this was the players decision, because that’s the only thing that gives you power when you are negotiating.”

Q: As the transition looms, how would you describe your mindset?

DS: “I’ll do whatever I can to help the next person, but I’m also happy. It’s time.”

Follow USA TODAY Sports' Jarrett Bell on Twitter @JarrettBell.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DeMaurice Smith opens up on NFLPA's labor battles, his legacy and more