NFLPA President Troy Vincent wants a 300% increase in benefits for Upshaw to $10 million and 4% per year for retired players

This is an open letter to NFLPA President Troy Vincent that I’d like for everyone on our email circuit to read.

All the NFL owners all white.

Today 75% of the current active players in the League are men of color.

Upshaw and Tagliabue are obviously in collusion and don’t even try to hide it.

The older retired players pre1982 are 75% white. That 75% is an assumption from the old “only 13 blacks per team rule” from Paul Brown’s era that followed the “only 6 blacks per team from George Halas hay-day. Of course the players of those eras had nothing to do with management’s racist policies or any of the NFL monopoly’s rules. Of color or not we signed and served under slave contracts or we didn’t play at all.

Under those conditions (1959 to 1962) we tore a pension plan out of the hides of the 100% white owners. Now you and Gene Upshaw feel you have the right to take the basics of that pension away from us. It isn’t going to happen we paid too much for it.

For those reading this who don’t know Troy Vincent he is the current, re-elected in Hawaii, President of the NFLPA being groomed by Upshaw to succeed him when he becomes NFL Commissioner or retires or... Vincent seems to be trying to give himself a raise before he ascends the throne calling for a increase in “benefits” to $10 million a year in Upshaw’s $3 million a year salary. It certainly serves Upshaw’s interests to have Troy Vincent, believing he is Upshaw’s hand picked successor. Vincent in his role as President of the NFLPA, sees unfairness in Upshaw being underpaid at $3 million a year and has never said anything, that I know of about the unfairness of the retired player’s sub-poverty level pension benefits.

Vincent relates Upshaw being underpaid in relation to NFL Commissioner Tagliabue’s $10 million a year to racism. I think this is this called “playing the race card?”

These are Vincent quotes from ESPN April 12, 2006 article. "You don't get much credit for being a man of color," said Troy Vincent, whose off season job is head of business development for Eltekon Securities in Trenton, N.J. "I can personally say that, because I'm a man of color. We always have to do an overabundance, say two or three times more than a non-color person. Gene and Paul are equals, but Tagliabue makes three times, almost four times what Gene does. Paul's salary isn't too high, Gene's [$2.85 million] is too low.”

Don Fehr Executive Director of the baseball players union makes $1,002,064 a year vs. Upshaw’s $3,000,000 and Fehr obviously does a lot better job for his players and retired players than Upshaw. I know Don Fehr from the days when he was Marvin Miller’s assistant. Never has he been arrogant or acted resentful toward retired or any other players.

I don’t see Upshaw’s performance as being worth 3 times Donald Fehr’s or 7.5 times more than the President’s job. In fact Fehr earns his money, Upshaw does not.

President George W. Bush makes about $397,000 a year.

Vincent raises the race issue. A big mistake in my opinion. He has opened the wrong door. It prompts thoughts such as: Upshaw’s employer who doesn’t pay him enough, is 75% of color so they are hardly underpaying Upshaw because he is a man of color. Troy you have a point and I am trying to figure out what it is?

Perhaps Vincent’s point is that the 100% white owners are underpaying Upshaw because he is a man of color. The 100% white owners are not supposed to be paying Upshaw at all, perhaps Vincent is implying they are?

Is the Retirement Plan’s unfair treatment of the older 75% white pre 1977/1982 retired players a racist retaliation by the majority black NFLPA leadership of today? On the surface it appears that statistically such a charge could be substantiated. Troy your comments are giving that argument legs.

I can not pass on this opportunity to tell you that, I am white and you can’t do anything two or three times better than me. Not play defensive back in the NFL, and I played corner not safety which is more difficult than safety and I still hold Brown’s interception records that are 40 years old and I’m in the top 5 in Brown’s history in almost every category, and I was one key to winning an NFL World Championship. With a degree in Building Construction, that I earned the hard way working my ass off, as CEO of my own construction company I built $100’s of millions of dollars of hotels, commercial, government, and institutional projects, wrote a best selling book, changed the NFLPA into a union from an owner controlled fraternity, got blacklisted out of the league for it and have done many other things you’ll never be able to even attempt to do, that have nothing to do with your color.

I do understand life is certainly more difficult for any man of color but I am not sure that holds true today or in the past decade in the NFL.

The fact is that your comments as NFLPA President increase the probabilities that there are racist resentments involved in NFLPA leadership of today and that those feelings affect decisions toward the retired players like how much the retired players pension benefits will be increased when there is more than enough money to correct past inequities.

I am not a racist and never even been accused of being a racist. I was raised being carried under one arm of Dora and Rosa, two large wonderful black mammies who holding me under one of those great black arms did the laundry and boiled peanuts in a large black iron pot in the back yard. I loved Dora and Rosa like my mother and still do. My hero’s include Rosa Parks, my teammates-all of them, John Wooten, Walter Beach, Mike Ditka, Chuck Bednarik, my mom, my big brother, my sisters, Harold J. Gibbons, and my courageous tough talented NFL opponents, and…

Your “man of color” comments make no rational sense. Your argument of financial inequities to Upshaw make no sense. Therefore they must be founded in something other than rational thought.

You and Upshaw want a fight, you’ve got it.