Attorney DeMaurice Smith Is a Long Shot Candidate for Executive Director of National Football League Players Association (NFLPA)

DeMaurice Smith, a Washington attorney and a Redskins fan, is the only football outsider among the three finalists to succeed the late Gene Upshaw as executive director of the NFLPA. The players union will make its choice next month. (By Jonathan Newton -- The Washington Post)
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Smith praised Upshaw, saying that the NFLPA had "extremely strong and vibrant leadership" under him and that the Upshaw-led union did "a tremendous job of growing with the sport of football" while helping mold the NFL into the country's most prosperous sports league. But he also said there are things the organization can do better, adding that current players have "a moral obligation" to provide properly for retired players.

Former Redskins defensive end Charles Mann, a friend of Smith's, said Smith would repair the relationship between the union and retired players if he is elected.

"We need leadership that goes beyond whether you played the game or not," Mann said. "Gene Upshaw was a great leader. But since his passing, do we want more of the same or do we want a dynamic, fresh, new visionary who can take us into the next age with the players' welfare and the retired players' welfare in mind?"

Smith, an unabashed Redskins fan, said that if he is elected, he wants to be judged on what NFL players accomplish five years after they retire from the sport. He wants to arrange for players to serve on corporate boards, he said.

But he also knows he first would be judged on what sort of labor deal he negotiates. So when he became a candidate, he said, he organized a team of approximately 15 advisers and wrote a business plan for the union entitled "Playbook: An Enterprise Philosophy to Maximize the Business and Political Interest of the NFLPA."

He said he actually might have an advantage in the NFL's labor negotiations entering the process as an outsider. What he sees clearly from the outside, he said, is that the NFL, while it has complicated labor issues between owners and players that must be addressed, remains an extremely strong business even in these trying economic times.

"An executive who has problems," Smith said, grabbing a nearby newspaper, "is the guy like in today's Wall Street Journal: 'Automaker Bankruptcy Looms.' The tough question for the person who's walking in to be the CEO of one of the automakers is, 'Am I gonna have an automaker tomorrow?'

"That's not a problem with the NFL. So I think that when you look at issues like this collective bargaining agreement, issues like a lockout -- are they significant? Absolutely. Is it going to have a major impact on the way in which this game is played from a business standpoint? Absolutely. But problems are just problems of degree."