NFLPA's latest fight consistent with new reputation

When the NFL had its unprecedented 18 years of labor peace with the players during the late 1990s and early millennium era, there was the perception it included, well, an unfair advantage.

The NFL Players Association was viewed as being too soft, too cushy in its relationship with the league. Nearly a half-dozen years ago, Bryant Gumbel went so far as to characterize late union chief Gene Upshaw as a "lap dog" for ex-commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

Gumbel was off-base. Under Upshaw, the NFLPA waged the legal war that finally won liberalized free agency, and salaries exploded as the sides kept extending collective bargaining agreements. And Upshaw won the last CBA he negotiated, to the point that owners opted out.

MORE: Union files complaint vs. NFL

Still, there was that perception. The NFLPA — key partner in the USA's most popular sport — was nothing like the all-powerful baseball players union.

My, how perceptions have changed. The NFLPA has recast itself in the image of its leader, DeMaurice Smith, a former federal prosecutor. It is ready to scrap at the drop of a hat, no issue too large or small.

After decertifying last year and suing over the lockout, the union has kept up the pace since striking a 10-year labor deal. Even when it looks silly or frivolous.

The union has stalled the testing for HGH that it agreed to (in principle). Citing lack of evidence, it has vehemently fought on behalf of players accused as lead perpetrators in the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal rather than leading the chorus that decries any system in which players are out to hurt their union brothers.

The NFLPA looked rather silly this week in protesting the manner in which the NFL will institute a new rule requiring players to wear knee and thigh pads.

Even so, of all the skirmishes, the NFLPA's most compelling case since the lockout might come in the collusion claim filed against the NFL on Wednesday.

While it appears on one level that the NFLPA approved of whatever the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys were declared guilty of in 2010, as the union signed off on the penalty earlier this year, its fundamental argument has merit.

How can the Redskins and Cowboys gain an unfair advantage, as the league alleged, if they were in an uncapped year?

The union is calling it a "secret" salary cap of $123 million for 2010 — the season that by design was supposed to have no limit and no floor. The idea of the uncapped year goes back to the first CBA of the salary-cap era, installed for the final year before each CBA expired as a motivator for the two sides to extend the deal.

Instructing teams to operate under rules that weren't written into the CBA, the union argues, violates the spirit of that uncapped year. The NFLPA insists it didn't know the instructions that teams operated under in 2010 until the penalties came down in March and New York Giants owner John Mara and others from the league chided Washington and Dallas for messing up the plan.

"Players were shocked that owners were so brazen," Jeffrey Kessler, outside counsel for the NFLPA, said Wednesday.

Kessler also maintained that the union was forced — "held hostage," as he put it — to accept the NFL's penalty for the Redskins and Cowboys, with the $46 million in combined salary-cap hits over two years diverted from those teams to 28 other teams, because it was tied to this year's $120.6 million cap.

"That was the price of getting other cap benefits for the players," Kessler said. "So basically we were forced into it."

The NFL and NFLPA might have agreed to a labor deal in August, but that is not to be confused with labor peace. The landscape over the next decade figures to be fertile for so many battles.

"The reality is that it is part of operating in a pretty complex world," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. "You don't expect all parties to agree at any point in time, but you have to drive towards solutions."

This article was written by Jarrett Bell and appeared in USA Today.