Lockout ends but other memories still haunting NFL

AFTER the NFL Players Association approved a 10-year deal to help end a four-and-a-half month lockout on Monday, there was a moment of silence.

For all its overwrought emotion, it was a moment dripping with symbolism.

This lengthy dispute had been pitched as a battle between billionaires and millionaires but an industry responsible for over 90,000 jobs across the USA had so much more at stake.

So it was a timely opportunity for those billionaire owners and millionaire players to stay a little longer behind the closed doors that hosted weeks of complex discussions to simply remember a trio of important people that had passed on since the Green Bay Packers gave football its last night of joy at the Super Bowl in Dallas.

It was timely because it happened before the players, owners and league officials were called upon to bathe in all the media fanfare outside the NFLPA’s Washington DC headquarters, before they were able to touch flesh with the fans that sat around awkwardly on the street waiting for a sign that everything would be just fine, before they were permitted to take the new collective bargaining agreement to the player reps of each of the 32 teams for a final vote via conference call.

It was timely because once the deal was done, five months of player trading would be crammed into two weeks. A frightening but unavoidable proposition which is comparable to soccer’s summer transfer window joining forces with January before being distilled down to two weeks of solid wheeling-and-dealing. Imagine it: Harry Redknapp’s face would melt while Cesc Fabregas and Carlos Tevez would mutate into one convenient dollop of transfer speculation. If it sounds like a logistical nightmare that the NFL is facing, it’s because it is.

No wonder they needed a few seconds of reflection. Before all that madness could begin, they took the chance to bow their heads and remember three embodiments of where the game has been, where it’s at and where it hopes to be.

Dave Duerson died back in February, back before the 32 owners locked the players out of any official activity and stopped their pay. The former Chicago Bears star had been suffering from a loss of memory, headaches and blurred vision. The joy had left his life. He shot himself in the chest rather than the head.

“Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL’s brain bank,” read his suicide note.

Boston University researchers subsequently announced that the 50-year-old had developed the same disease found in the battered heads of well over 20 other deceased players.

As the lockout continued and the stalemate deepened, John Mackey, one of the early heroes of the player union movement, passed away. He was just 69 but had suffered from dementia.

A Hall of Famer, he played 10 seasons for the then Baltimore Colts and the San Diego Chargers before he went on to become president of the NFL Players Association after the AFL-NFL merger in the late 1960s.

As if foreseeing how this reinvention of the league would one day fuel the cash machine that lights up US winters, he fought tirelessly to improve players’ pension benefits and access to free agency.

Myra Kraft, the wife of New England Patriots chairman and chief executive Robert, passed away a week ago. She left behind decades of philanthropy and oceans of affection around Boston. Her now widowed husband mourned the loss and then continued the negotiations with fellow owners.

In one of the enduring images from Monday’s press conference, the 21-stone Indianapolis Colts centre and player rep Jeff Saturday paid tribute to the billionaire who days previously had been his foe. He then held the pint-sized Kraft close to his chest and thanked him.

Peace in our time; football had survived.

Today, the players will start to return to their teams. And they will do so with mixed emotions. A 10-year agreement without any chance of an opt-out from either side means they will retire without having to go through this sort of uncertainty again. And in memory of Duerson and Mackey and others like them, the union fought for and won better standard of care for future retirees as well as resisting the owners’ desire for an 18-game regular season. Meanwhile, Kraft and his fellow owners succeeded in attaining a salary cap valued at just under €85m.

That will cause turmoil in the player market during the coming days as around 400 free agents become available Friday.

Sundays have been saved across America but there will always be underlying issues. Last week 75 retired players launched a court case against the league, alleging concealment of evidence of the long-term effects of head injury, leading to players’ brain damage.

And while none of this matters to fans whose real fear had been a below-par season, the memory of Dave Duerson will continue to haunt the NFL.

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