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Emmitt Smith could see himself running the NFL Players Association if he were asked to.
The NFL’s all-time leading rusher told Front Office Sports Today that the union has been at its best when a former player was in charge.
The NFLPA has been in disarray since at least July, when several damning reports came out about then-executive director Lloyd Howell Jr.
Howell resigned in July and was quickly followed by chief strategy officer and former player J.C. Tretter, who stepped down shortly after.
In August, the NFLPA named veteran labor executive David White as interim director. White previously served as the head of the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA.
Smith said if he were approached as a candidate for the full-time job, it wouldn’t be an immediate no.
Smith said that “I would definitely take that under consideration” when asked by FOST if he’d be open to running the NFLPA.
“There’s a number of things that I think that the players should do to protect themselves and agents should do as well. But see, oftentimes, it’s like anything else that you see in the U.S. You divide and conquer. You keep people divided, then you can always manipulate one of the sides. And the one to the sides that’s always getting manipulated is the talent side, not the ownership side.”
Since Howell’s resignation, several players have said the union would be best served by being led by one of their own, which Smith agreed with. During his playing career, the NFLPA was run by Gene Upshaw, who played for the Raiders for 14 years and later served as the NFLPA executive director from 1983 until his death in 2008 at the age of 63.
Since Howell’s resignation, former players including Matt Schaub and Darrelle Revis have been floated as candidates to replace him. Howell resigned amid several scandals, including a potential conflict of interest with the private equity firm Carlyle Group and an ESPN report that he expensed the union for a trip to a Miami strip club.
“You need to have a player that understands not only the history of the game and the history of the PA and how they got to this place,” Smith told FOST. “The problem with lost history is you don’t understand how you got to this place and what steps were taken prior to and how the benefits were for the players versus how they’re not for the players right now and what’s missing. I think when you have a player that has been in the game for a number of years, that has been around licensing agreements, been around all kinds of different types of agreements, they understand the benefits that the players today should be currently getting and how to protect the players’ rights.”
Smith has his own history of a difficult negotiation with an NFL owner. In 1993 he missed all of training camp and the first two games of the season over a contract dispute with Jerry Jones.
“Back in the day you only had 30 days to negotiate with all 30-something teams for a restricted free agent contract and Jerry Jones had the right to match it,” Smith says. “And so in those 30 days went by and I didn’t get an offer from anybody in the National Football League. Some people call that collusion.”
The Cowboys started 0–2 and eventually made Smith the highest-paid running back in NFL history, though he had sought to be paid like a quarterback. Smith’s situation drew comparison to Micah Parsons, who held in during training camp over a new deal before being traded to the Packers.
