NFL PLAYERS’ STRIKE: THE AFTERMATH : Commentary : The Membership, Not Leadership, Collapsed

Ed Garvey was their leader the last time the players, 1,500 of them, struck against the National Football League’s 28 ownerships. That was five years ago. And when that fuss was over, Garvey, who later resigned to enter politics in Wisconsin, was asked for his assessment.

“Never bet against the richest man in a fight,” he said.

In pro football again this week, with the apparent end of another strike, that is a representative aphorism.

So is another that has doubtless occurred to many player representatives--among them lineman Dave Puzzuoli of the Cleveland Browns.

“With friends like these, who needs enemies?” Puzzuoli asked.

He was talking of the union members who have crossed picket lines in recent days to play with non-union teams--respected members such as Howie Long of the Raiders, who mentioned a responsibility to his family.

“I guess this is an association of bachelors,” Garvey, a satirist, said a few years ago when another one-time striker entered the same plea. “Nobody else has a wife or family.”

The unwillingness of such influential players as Long and Dallas’ Danny White to hang tight was the undoing of the union.

The strike failed for two reasons primarily--the muscle and solidarity of the very rich owners against the lack of solidarity of the merely rich players.

Gene Upshaw, the head of the union, will take the heat for this one, but it was the membership, not the leadership, that collapsed. Repeatedly in recent months, 93% to 95% of the players had voted to authorize the strike.

And none reneged--until the strike began.

What happened is that many players then had second thoughts about walking out. With the strike already under way, many started worrying--for the first time--about the money it was costing them.

They still wanted guaranteed contracts and better pensions and a form of free agency. But they no longer wanted them enough to pay for the fight with their own paychecks.

More mature individuals would have taken all this into consideration when they were asked to authorize the action long ago--when, in several secret ballots, all 28 rosters voted overwhelmingly to strike.

Football players, however, have seldom been noted for their maturity.

And so, looking at it dispassionately, this was a foolish strike--one that makes the athletes and their leaders seem as juvenile as they must feel.

For, in heading for the picket lines, the players violated one of the most appropriate commandments of the labor movement: Don’t call a strike you can’t win.

Those who fail to understand this requirement are destined to regret it.

The players’ lack of solidarity in this action will be something that some of them will think about in the weeks and months ahead, when, for instance, they encounter such strikebreakers as White and Long and the San Francisco 49ers’ Joe Montana on the field of play.

The owners’ solidarity will also be remembered. This was a strike that most NFL ownerships could have financed for many years, and it was their money that gave these people their sense of fraternity and solidarity.

They are one of the wealthiest groups in the country. Seven NFL owners are on Forbes magazine’s 1987 list of America’s richest individuals, and the top three have a net worth averaging more than $1 billion each. They are Jack Kent Cooke of the Washington Redskins, W. C. Ford of the Detroit Lions and Edward J. DeBartolo, who has installed his son, E. J. Jr., as president of the San Francisco 49ers.

Other prominent NFL owners and their net worth as estimated by Forbes editors: Leon Hess, New York Jets, $625 million; H. R. (Bum) Bright, Dallas Cowboys, $600 million; Alex Spanos, San Diego Chargers, $500 million; Hugh Culverhouse, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, $250 million.

Several other pro football owners--the Kansas City Chiefs’ Lamar Hunt among them--were on the Forbes list last year and are believed to be in the $200 million category again, although Forbes imposed a limit this year of $230 million.

There must be a few NFL rookies who will eventually ask themselves: “You mean we were fighting that?”

It is the club owners who set the NFL’s goals, and their goal in this dispute was to cripple the union by breaking the strike.

They weren’t trying to break the union. For they must have the approval of the players to maintain their illegal devices--the NFL waiver system, for instance, and the annual draft, which various federal courts have held to be unconstitutional unless mandated by collective bargaining.

So how do you break a strike without breaking the union? The owners chose a simple means:

--Stonewall the issues. Don’t bargain on anything important.

--Divide and conquer. That is, play the regular-season schedule with strikebreakers--and count each game in the Super Bowl races--thereby pressuring the players to cross the picket lines one by one, two by two, four by four.

It was the most divisive policy the NFL has adopted in the 68-year history of the league--probably the most divisive ever initiated by any league. And with extraordinary consistency--with a sense of solidarity that was surprising even for this group--the owners stuck to their guns until the end.

During the final hours of the dispute, the winners were still stonewalling all critical matters. As Upshaw and the player representatives twisted and turned, trying to save something, anything, the 28 ownerships beat them down on every key issue.

In the language of football, they poured it on.