Tribal Warfare
02-24-2011, 05:00 AM
Viewing the NFL labor situation through a 1987 lens (http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/23/2678001/viewing-the-nfl-labor-situation.html)
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star
Matt Stevens lived the NFL’s worst nightmare and is happy to talk to you about it. He watches this labor situation with an experienced eye, knows that if there is no new deal a week from today the richest league in American sports moves one step closer to possibly becoming a punchline.
Stevens was once part of the punchline.
Go back 24 years, to the strike in the middle of the 1987 season, when Stevens became something like the real-life Keanu Reeves from “The Replacements” — Kansas City’s quarterback during an ugly three-game stretch when the NFL made do with awkward fill-ins.
“I think my center was like 45 years old,” Stevens says.
Nobody can be sure how the NFL’s current situation will work out. The issues are complex, the emotions involved are layered, and it’s all being done with the backdrop of a $9 billion industry that leaves some of its employees with shortened lives and chronic health problems.
Early indications are that most fans have little patience for either side, unsympathetic in an argument between billionaires and millionaires, but the consequences are very real for all involved parties.
In this context, it’s easy to overlook that the fans hold the most power here, even if they sometimes feel helpless as the first real deadline tumbles closer.
“It’s funny how the current players and union president, I don’t know if they remember what it was like back then,” Stevens says. “How the fans, no matter what, just want football. It’s not so much who’s playing the game. The fans like the NFL, and that’s what it’s all about.
“Hopefully there’s an old timer that can tell them the story. Or someone needs to call me, and I’ll tell them what happened.”
• • •
Stevens remembers being chased by a few dozen professional football players waving shotguns and riding in pickup trucks. The story is a legend of sorts in Kansas City, about the day that Bill Maas and Paul Coffman and a handful of Chiefs teammates waited outside Arrowhead Stadium for the scabs to show up.
Stevens and his replacement teammates saw it on TV, at the hotel, before they got on the bus to practice. They had a police escort into the sports complex, but that didn’t stop the pickup trucks from tailing the bus, honking their horns, waving their guns, screaming their insults.
It turned into a chase of sorts, the bus probably going a little too fast and taking turns a little too sharp. The driver made for a side entrance, but when the bus came around the corner Stevens remembers seeing three more trucks coming from the other direction.
That set up a game of chicken, the bus against the trucks. The trucks flinched, and the bus slipped through a gate and dropped the new players off for practice.
“It was insane,” Stevens says.
The games were a blur. An earthquake hit the night before the first game against the Raiders. Ken Lacy fumbled twice at the goal line — “I couldn’t believe he was our tailback,” Stevens says — and the Chiefs lost.
The next week, the Chiefs played the Dolphins in the first-ever game at Joe Robbie Stadium. Stevens suffered a separated (non-throwing) shoulder in the first quarter and the Chiefs lost 42-0.
A few real NFL players showed up for the last game during the strike, most notably Joe Montana nationally and Kevin Ross locally with the Chiefs. Stevens played through the shoulder injury, and earned enough respect that he stayed on the developmental team for a while and mostly avoided any repercussions from crossing the picket line.
“I talked to some friends in the NFL before I made that decision,” Stevens says. “The consensus was the strike was stupid. They told me, ‘Hey, take the money. If they’re going to pay you, take it.’ Sometimes a man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity.”
After the strike, Chiefs quarterback Bill Kenney asked Stevens how much he made. Stevens told him about $25,000 so Kinney (half-)jokingly offered him $50,000 to sit out the next strike.
In all of this, there is a lesson, at the very least, about the history leaning against the players’ union.
• • •
Stevens is one of hundreds of replacement players whose life experience says the union will cave. This has been said so much it is taken as fact in some circles, almost like a character flaw of NFL players. The assumption of many is that if the players miss any games — or, more to the point, miss any money — they will come sprinting back to the sport and its paychecks.
Maybe this time will be different. Union leader DeMaurice Smith is talking that way, and for now the players behind him say the right things.
But they said the right things 24 years ago, too, and put up such a strong and dramatic front with the shotguns and pickup trucks and then just a few weeks later gave up the fight.
If you ever get the chance to talk to one of those old players about the strike, they will probably talk about the impossibly small feeling of watching games go on without them, of watching inferior players make money. The players lost about $80 million during the three replacement games, but the owners’ profits didn’t change much.
Many of the players felt they had no choice but to end the strike. This is the power of the fans. Whichever side you choose — if enough of you choose a side — will win.
Stevens has already made his decision. He’s a Chargers season-ticket holder.
“I want to make sure I didn’t waste my money,” he says. “I’m going to those games no matter what.”
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star
Matt Stevens lived the NFL’s worst nightmare and is happy to talk to you about it. He watches this labor situation with an experienced eye, knows that if there is no new deal a week from today the richest league in American sports moves one step closer to possibly becoming a punchline.
Stevens was once part of the punchline.
Go back 24 years, to the strike in the middle of the 1987 season, when Stevens became something like the real-life Keanu Reeves from “The Replacements” — Kansas City’s quarterback during an ugly three-game stretch when the NFL made do with awkward fill-ins.
“I think my center was like 45 years old,” Stevens says.
Nobody can be sure how the NFL’s current situation will work out. The issues are complex, the emotions involved are layered, and it’s all being done with the backdrop of a $9 billion industry that leaves some of its employees with shortened lives and chronic health problems.
Early indications are that most fans have little patience for either side, unsympathetic in an argument between billionaires and millionaires, but the consequences are very real for all involved parties.
In this context, it’s easy to overlook that the fans hold the most power here, even if they sometimes feel helpless as the first real deadline tumbles closer.
“It’s funny how the current players and union president, I don’t know if they remember what it was like back then,” Stevens says. “How the fans, no matter what, just want football. It’s not so much who’s playing the game. The fans like the NFL, and that’s what it’s all about.
“Hopefully there’s an old timer that can tell them the story. Or someone needs to call me, and I’ll tell them what happened.”
• • •
Stevens remembers being chased by a few dozen professional football players waving shotguns and riding in pickup trucks. The story is a legend of sorts in Kansas City, about the day that Bill Maas and Paul Coffman and a handful of Chiefs teammates waited outside Arrowhead Stadium for the scabs to show up.
Stevens and his replacement teammates saw it on TV, at the hotel, before they got on the bus to practice. They had a police escort into the sports complex, but that didn’t stop the pickup trucks from tailing the bus, honking their horns, waving their guns, screaming their insults.
It turned into a chase of sorts, the bus probably going a little too fast and taking turns a little too sharp. The driver made for a side entrance, but when the bus came around the corner Stevens remembers seeing three more trucks coming from the other direction.
That set up a game of chicken, the bus against the trucks. The trucks flinched, and the bus slipped through a gate and dropped the new players off for practice.
“It was insane,” Stevens says.
The games were a blur. An earthquake hit the night before the first game against the Raiders. Ken Lacy fumbled twice at the goal line — “I couldn’t believe he was our tailback,” Stevens says — and the Chiefs lost.
The next week, the Chiefs played the Dolphins in the first-ever game at Joe Robbie Stadium. Stevens suffered a separated (non-throwing) shoulder in the first quarter and the Chiefs lost 42-0.
A few real NFL players showed up for the last game during the strike, most notably Joe Montana nationally and Kevin Ross locally with the Chiefs. Stevens played through the shoulder injury, and earned enough respect that he stayed on the developmental team for a while and mostly avoided any repercussions from crossing the picket line.
“I talked to some friends in the NFL before I made that decision,” Stevens says. “The consensus was the strike was stupid. They told me, ‘Hey, take the money. If they’re going to pay you, take it.’ Sometimes a man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity.”
After the strike, Chiefs quarterback Bill Kenney asked Stevens how much he made. Stevens told him about $25,000 so Kinney (half-)jokingly offered him $50,000 to sit out the next strike.
In all of this, there is a lesson, at the very least, about the history leaning against the players’ union.
• • •
Stevens is one of hundreds of replacement players whose life experience says the union will cave. This has been said so much it is taken as fact in some circles, almost like a character flaw of NFL players. The assumption of many is that if the players miss any games — or, more to the point, miss any money — they will come sprinting back to the sport and its paychecks.
Maybe this time will be different. Union leader DeMaurice Smith is talking that way, and for now the players behind him say the right things.
But they said the right things 24 years ago, too, and put up such a strong and dramatic front with the shotguns and pickup trucks and then just a few weeks later gave up the fight.
If you ever get the chance to talk to one of those old players about the strike, they will probably talk about the impossibly small feeling of watching games go on without them, of watching inferior players make money. The players lost about $80 million during the three replacement games, but the owners’ profits didn’t change much.
Many of the players felt they had no choice but to end the strike. This is the power of the fans. Whichever side you choose — if enough of you choose a side — will win.
Stevens has already made his decision. He’s a Chargers season-ticket holder.
“I want to make sure I didn’t waste my money,” he says. “I’m going to those games no matter what.”