The Man Who (Relentlessly) Sued the NFL Has Receipts: A Sitdown with DeMaurice Smith
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
The story of sport is that management colludes.
Right after this ad.
Reading this again last night just reminded me of how much I hate the league.
Ha ha ha!
What are the hidden truths behind NFL salary caps?
I had forgotten how... What's the word? Clinical.
Yeah. You're mouthing the words, f*** them.
F*** them.
I just... Everybody has fallen into this trap, and I call it a death spiral. where you believe that in order to square your morality, you now talk like you are Johnny Private Equity.
How the billionaires who run sports, who run the NFL, talk about sports and the business is a big part of why I wanted to do this with you.
We're living in a country right now where it is undeniable that a large swath of people are broke. So I'm not asking people out there to feel sorry for NFL players. They have it almost better than anyone else in the country. And that's because they have a labor union, right? They have a labor union. So NFL players get about 50 cents on every dollar of revenue that they generate.
It is a delight to be across the desk finally from Damora Smith as he has his marker and is muttering under his breath while going through a ruling, going through a collusion arbitration ruling. You see how quickly I can go back to gladiator mode.
So it's important for me to point out up top here that I have been waiting to get DeMora Smith in studio with us for a really long time. In fact, I had never communicated with De Smith until after we released part one of our investigation into the NFL Players Association, which had started last June when we published what multiple union sources have since characterized as the holy grail of confidential NFL documents. 61-page arbitration ruling in a collusion lawsuit filed against the league by the union under the previous leadership of Damoris Smith. You were the executive director of the NFLPA for how many years?
Almost 15.
And so how many, if you were to just back of the envelope this, how many billions of dollars, how many collective bargaining agreements did
Roughly two collective bargaining agreements with over $100 billion of money going to NFL players. $100 billion. Now, the owners are also getting their $100 billion. Fine. But the way that I like to frame it for the crowd out there is players get 50% of every dollar that they generate. And that's because they have a labor union. And I'm not asking anybody to feel sorry for them because not only is the money great, but there's strict limitations on their work rules, strict limitations on how long they can be on the field. So nobody needs to shed a tear for NFL players. You should be angry at the fact that you don't get 50 cents for every dollar.
Dee Smith, notably, left his post as executive director in 2023, and he recently wrote a fascinating book about his tenure called Turf Wars, which basically serves as the prelude for what happened last summer. When the two top officers of the regime that succeeded him, Lloyd Howell and his chief strategy officer, J.C. Tretter, both resigned amid an ongoing corruption scandal, which involved an FBI investigation and strip club receipts, and also the union's insane decision to suppress that holy grail collusion ruling. which was itself about the suppression of guaranteed player contracts as part of a secret agreement with the NFL itself. In other words, the players' union attempted to collude with the league to keep the league's attempt at collusion against the players' union a secret.
And even if no damages were granted to the union, as we'll explain, what we got was 61 pages of explosive texts and emails and slide decks and testimony. And yet, just last month, that same chief strategy officer who resigned, J.C. Tretter, ran for D. Smith's old job, executive director. And he won. raising all sorts of new questions and new suspicions about not only the electoral process in which Tretter was the only former player deemed worthy of being one of three finalists, but also the plausibility of Tretter's claim that he had nothing to do with the collusion ruling's suppression in the first place.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:28
2
What are the hidden truths behind NFL salary caps?
0:28–9:54
3
How did DeMaurice Smith navigate collusion in the NFL?
9:54–19:09
4
What scandal led to the downfall of the NFL Players Association leadership?
19:09–23:45
5
What explosive documents were revealed in the collusion lawsuit?
23:45–30:04
6
How does collusion impact NFL players' contracts?
30:04–36:24
7
What evidence supports the claims of collusion in the NFL?
36:24–48:23
8
How did the NFLPA's decisions affect player negotiations?
48:23–58:23
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Pablo Torre Finds Out
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