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DeMaurice Smith - Now It's Legal with Jim Cavale - 2026 E1
107 Plays20 days ago
In the 2026 season premiere of Now It’s Legal, host Jim Cavale and Athletes.org co-founder Brandon Copeland sit down with former NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice “De” Smith, who led the NFLPA from 2009–2023. The conversation traces Smith’s unexpected path to union leadership, the motivations behind his book Turf Wars and the existential battle between NFL players and league ownership that culminated in the landmark 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement.
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Transcript
Introduction to Season Three
00:00:00
Speaker
Manziel had the high selling jersey, Braun moved back to Cleveland. Drake made a song about a man he ain't even working.
00:00:10
Speaker
is up Welcome to season three of Now It's Legal, the podcast where we talk about everything past, present, and future in the ever-changing industry of college athletics.
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm your host, Jim Cavall, and listen, this season is going to be jam-packed with some amazing
Interview with DeMaurice Smith
00:00:26
Speaker
interviews. The first episode and the second episode are going to feature DeMaurice Smith. Now, DeSmith led the NFLPA tournament.
00:00:35
Speaker
for 14 years from 2009 to 2023. And I had my co-founder from athletes.org, Brandon Copeland team up with me for this interview because D is going to talk about all the stories of battling the owners and commissioner Goodell on behalf of the players, which during some of D's 14 years leading the NFLPA, Brandon Copeland was a player and even a player rep. that worked with D on some of the collective bargaining agreements that he was able to achieve during his time leading the NFL Players Association, including that big 2011 CBA, which he's going to talk all about that. All the stuff he talks about in this interview, you can find in his book that he just released. It's called Turf Wars. Highly recommend it. I've read it more than once, and it is good. So we're going to go into this interview. It's a two-part interview, part one.
00:01:26
Speaker
It's D talking about his story and becoming the leader of the NFLPA and his years leading the NFLPA. Part two will be more about college athletics and where we go as we look for the NFL analog of collective bargaining to apply in some way to what collective bargaining could look like in college athletics.
Discussing 'Turf Wars'
00:01:44
Speaker
So here it is, our interview with D Smith.
00:01:49
Speaker
All right, Dee, so first of all, like surreal having you in my hometown, Birmingham. Yeah. um Glad you're here. This is a ah really fun two days we've had planned, and in those two days, being able to have this conversation is something that Cope and I are are real excited about because You know, your book, Turf Wars, really does a great job of documenting ah what you experienced going up against the NFL and its owners on behalf of the players. yep um And so really want to start with just the book itself. Like what made you decide, I'm going to write this book. um You know, what did you really want players and fans to understand and maybe understand that they still don't get right when it comes to the NFL? Well, first of all, thanks for thanks for having me. It's a great town. Love this town. um Being here with Cope, you know, somebody I used to work for and somebody who was a great leader um in a locker room and and for the union. um You know, this town is so special because, you know, and it did to get to like why I wrote Turf Wars.
00:02:47
Speaker
I never thought that, you know, a football union is separated from other unions, is separated from civil rights movement. I see a seamless thread that runs through all of it. And, you know, when you're in the job that I had for nearly 15 years, you do get a little bit of tunnel vision. and every now and then i would literally try to force myself out of like, where does this all fit?
NFL's Cultural Role and Player Realities
00:03:13
Speaker
And Understanding that there is this connection um between a group of people who come together, who make a decision, that they can accomplish more together than they can accomplish alone. That's every protest movement that's ever, you know, existed. And to get in and into the nitty gritty of why turf wars, it was in the middle of Anthem and representing Colin Kaepernick and that weekend where every player knelt, you know, after after the president you know said what he said about every NFL player. um i realized then that if somebody if somebody's gonna write a story about how this all makes sense and what people know, what they think they know, what they should know,
00:04:00
Speaker
the only person who could write this book is me. um And i wanted to write a book that was from the perspective of the players, because every other aspect of sport that we see is really curated from from the owner side. It's curated from the league side.
00:04:17
Speaker
And you know that the locker room is much different than what people see on on Monday night, that everything that goes into a game sometimes is more beautiful and more meaningful than than what unfolds at the game itself. And the dirty nitty gritty behind the scenes of um this job as the assistant, as the executive director of the NFL Players Association, you know i know everybody sees the, you know, almost the caricature of Dee Smith on ESPN. And usually, you know for 15 years, it was some angry dude showing up on TV yelling about something. But you know, you know the the step away from that is 70% of our guys are on minimum salaries. um The average career 3.3 years.
00:05:03
Speaker
The injury rate is 100%. You leave football not because you want to retire. You leave football because your body can't play anymore. And that's a story that very few people on the league side want told. They would rather have a sanitized version of these are just a bunch of guys who love playing football, man. And, you know, they would play in the dark. You know, they would drive to ah a field and
Economic Realities of the NFL
00:05:27
Speaker
turn their car lights on and play and play. And and my perspective was always, OK, there's a part of it that's true. They love to play the game.
00:05:35
Speaker
But this is, know, in the 2025, this is going to be $24 billion revenue year. Yeah.
00:05:41
Speaker
um These are guys, the only people who get their heads concussed, their fingers broken, their backs broken, their knees twisted, um are the 2,500 guys who put their hands in the dirt.
00:05:52
Speaker
and very few people want to tell that story in an authentic way. And so that was really the beginning of Turf Wars. And and then finding myself um in the middle of this culture war. So, you know, the first level of Turf Wars is just the the dirt, the hard, scrabble world of of being an athlete in the in the NFL. um Yeah, you should tell the John Harbaugh story because that's that's what it is. The second level of Turf Wars is...
00:06:20
Speaker
um You go from, you know, you go from that war of putting your hand in the dirt to the war um of the simple fact that I believe the NFL has become the cultural epicenter of America.
00:06:32
Speaker
And so all of the fights that we have always fought in America, all of the issues that have roiled through America over the last, you know, nearly 250 years, you know, gender, race, power, class, economics, know,
00:06:50
Speaker
It all plays out in football, right? And so i wanted to to then take that war that's happening on the field, the war that's happening in the back rooms and frame it against the culture wars that that we find ourselves in. and And, you know, again, more often than not, players are dragged into that war unwillingly.
00:07:12
Speaker
you know I know we're going to talk about college athletes and and we're going to talk about you know the great work that you're doing on the college side.
College Athletes vs. Employees
00:07:18
Speaker
But again, that frame that starts the the need for athletes.org starts with a class.
00:07:27
Speaker
of athletes who are treated in a way that's worse than an employee. Right. And so, you know, nobody, you know, nobody went to college, you know, on ah on a scholarship thinking that they're fighting a culture war.
00:07:42
Speaker
Right. But the reality is you are. And you now find yourself in this this construct where, you know, you're not only are you not getting paid, I mean, into a certain extent, that's the least of it. But, you know, I signed my son up, you know, he signed that um a national letter of intent.
00:08:00
Speaker
I read it. I realized that it was an adhesion contract. I realized that he was signing away all of his rights. And, you know, when he went off to play, I was like, man, if this is what you want to do, you have to sign the letter. Well, you know, on one end, you could just be simplistic and you think, OK, well, it's just, you know, it's a letter because I want to play. The reality is, man, you're making a decision that you're giving the NCAA complete control, complete autonomy on everything.
00:08:27
Speaker
And so I wanted to write a book. that framed all of that you know beyond the world of entertainment. um And I think very few books in history have approached the business of football from the player's perspective.
00:08:47
Speaker
Go ahead, go. why Why, for somebody watching, right, who clearly doesn't understand the intricacies of the game and of the sport and of the business, right, for somebody watching, they say, well, you look at the NFL, you look at the sport, you look at um how the game is growing, how fast it is, DraftKings. That's great. I love it, right? So, like, to them, they're seeing – um Nothing but beauty is something that's bringing them joy on the weekends, getting them to take a step out of their lives, not only in the NFL, but also at the college level.
00:09:21
Speaker
But like you said, athletes um are signing over even at the college level, signing over their autonomy. Right. Even at the pro level.
00:09:33
Speaker
Explain what the problem right with that is. Yeah, I would, i would you so when I teach my classes and and I get that, right? Because you know when you get young students in and they come in and they take my class, and and my class is you know mostly a sports philosophy class.
00:09:49
Speaker
I get a fair number of, let's just say, sports bros who come in and like, oh man, going to talk about the cap and we're going to talk about the matchups and what is it like working with Tom Brady. And after week five, they realize it's none of that. And honestly, being dead honest, they usually drop the class.
00:10:06
Speaker
And I have a full drop. thing where, look, if it's not working for you, it's not working for me. No need for you to be miserable. No need for me to be miserable. But they dropped the class because I usually start off framing it this way. And I teach law school or I teach at you know business schools like like Wharton and Darden.
00:10:24
Speaker
And I tell everybody, hey, look, I want you to just imagine a different scenario. You've ah gone through college, you've done extremely well. You are now in grad school, in business school to get your MBA, or you're in law school to get your law degree, and you've done extremely well.
00:10:37
Speaker
And you get done with both of those graduate schools, and you wanna get into the the world of big law, you know come to a big firm like Latham and Watkins, where where I was a partner, or you wanna go to Goldman Sachs, where my son works. And you've decided that, man, that's your dream. You go to one of those things. Except, you know, once you graduate and you've done extremely well, right?
00:11:01
Speaker
Goldman and all of the other financial institutions and Latham and all of the other law firms decide, well, wait a minute, we're going to have a um ah investment bank combine.
00:11:14
Speaker
And we're going to have a law firm combine. And the reason we're gonna do that is, hey, the law firms have all come together and we've decided that we're not gonna hire anybody unless they go through this law school combine. And Goldman and JP Morgan, we're not gonna hire anybody unless they go through the investment bank combine.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I know you've done well in school, but we're going to, everybody's going to somewhere in the Midwest and we're going to go there for five or six days. And you're going to do a whole new group of like puzzles and things. and you're going to write tests and you're going do all sorts of other things. And then after you get done with the test, um we're going ask you to waive all of your medical rights.
00:11:52
Speaker
So that, you know, during the combine for the law firms and for the combine for the investment bankers, look, I mean, I was a partner at a big firm. And the reason why we want you to waive your medical rights is we want to take your blood and we want to do some genetic analysis because look, here's here's the reality.
00:12:07
Speaker
The healthcare cost for a financial institution and the healthcare cost for a big law firm cuts against our profit margin. So we only want to hire healthy people.
00:12:19
Speaker
I don't want to hire anybody who's got a genetic predisposition for cancer, or I don't want to hire anybody who might have um a genetic predisposition for some ailment. You know, look, I mean, things like hypertension and heart disease. I mean, we can track, you know, whether you've got a pre you know a precursor for that. And so, yeah, going to do all these tests.
00:12:45
Speaker
But then we're gonna take your blood and do all these other things because we only wanna hire healthy people because if we hire healthy people, they can work longer and we don't have to pay healthcare costs. That's the way I describe the NFL.
00:13:00
Speaker
Who, who's graduated from law school or graduated from Wharton would sign up for the law school financial institution combine? You would think that was crazy.
00:13:13
Speaker
so Why wouldn't you think that that's what the combine is? Because everybody thinks the combine and the medical test for the combine are designed to to figure out how well you perform um as ah as an NFL athlete. That's not the case. You've gone through a pro day.
00:13:33
Speaker
Everybody knows how high you can jump. Everybody knows how fast you can run. Once you get drafted, you have to go through a medical exam at the team in order to tono to demonstrate that you're physically capable of joining the of doing the job duties.
00:13:48
Speaker
So if you have to do that at the team, when you get signed, why do you have to do it at the combine? And they do it at the combine because all of that information helps teams rank you in the draft to establish how much they're going to pay you.
00:14:06
Speaker
So again, going back to the law school combine and the financial institution combine, you know you you go through Wharton and you've done extremely well. Jim goes through Wharton, has done extremely well. But we find out that you know Cope is a little bit more healthy than Jim.
00:14:23
Speaker
So then what do we do with Jim? Hey, man, you're both good. You've both done the same thing. You both scored the best on the same test. If you want to come to my financial institution, you have to take 20% less than him
00:14:37
Speaker
And you would say that's absurd. And they would say, yeah, it might be, but where else are you going to go? The the top eight financial institutions are all part of the combine. So you either take 20% with us or you don't work here.
00:14:50
Speaker
And what do you do? Take the 20%. 20% cut. So in order to like transfer what I talk about, about the business of football into the reality of of every day, I'm not sure there is a person, right-minded person, who wouldn't look at the law school financial institution combine and go, well, that's a violation of our rights. That's against the law. And it is.
00:15:12
Speaker
You're not allowed to take genetic tests and and hold that against to make employment decisions. Why are we allowed to do it in the NFL? Because there's no accountability. Right. I mean, would you, and again, you just go down the line of that line of thought, right? You, you're in a world where 70% of the the athletes are, are people of color. You look at coaching and front office jobs and it nowhere mirrors that at all.
00:15:41
Speaker
Have any of us ever heard of a NFL team brought under investigation for the state violation of their equal opportunity rights? No. I mean, I took a survey of coaches of color um in 2022, I think. I wrote an article for Yale about the Rooney Rule.
00:16:02
Speaker
um And we took a survey of coaches of color, both current and former, um And, you know, I know the league has done their best to suppress that. That's probably the least read Yale Law Review article of all time. But the overwhelming majority of those coaches in the surveys reported that they believed race was a factor in hiring.
00:16:25
Speaker
Like 85%. Okay. Under what scenario can 85% of the people who are in the job say that race plays a factor and not one state investigate the Chiefs or the Giants or the Panthers.
00:16:43
Speaker
Over 70%, nearly all of them said that they had never, never been advised of their rights as employees. I mean, I'm pretty sure I could walk out of this building, go into the break room and look on a wall and there's going to be something that says these are your rights as an employee.
00:17:03
Speaker
So, you know, the the way that I've always tried to think about the National Football League, and it was easier for me because I came from the outside, right? And I just didn't grow up with it, you know, is when I came in, I thought, well, I mean, yeah, this is a company. It'll run just like Boeing or IBM or Google or Apple.
00:17:21
Speaker
And then you get on the inside and you realize, man, this thing doesn't run like any business in the world.
Smith's Background and NFLPA Leadership
00:17:28
Speaker
um And primarily because what? There is a never-ending, fungible replacement group of athletes that are always going to come into the National Football League. And the the way the owners think about the process is we don't have to listen to these rules.
00:17:45
Speaker
So the only thing that makes them listen to the rules is a union. Yeah, I think in what's interesting is you did come from the outside. And your story, your origin story,
00:17:57
Speaker
of becoming the executive director of the NFL Players Association in 2009 is different than anything ah leadership-wise at the NFLPA before you. yeah um Talk about that because for you, it was odd as well when it first came to you. like You heard about the opportunity and you were like, no, I think you deleted the first email. I deleted the first voicemail. I deleted the first two voicemails. um like I was on a different journey. I was on the transition team for the Department of Justice after ah ah Barack Obama had been elected president ah in in two thousand you know November of
00:18:34
Speaker
And my, you know, the only thing I wanted to do was go back to the Justice Department to be the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. And that that was my dream job. Eric Holder, the awardee tonight, was going to be the Attorney General in all likelihood. So the idea of, you know, working with my friend, working in the city that I grew up was really the only thing.
00:18:51
Speaker
um The call came out of the blue. And, and you know, to this day, and i'll I'll tell Eric tonight, I've always believed that the search firm was looking for, like, an Eric Holder type guy. Eric had represented the league a couple of times, so he couldn't be a candidate for the NFLPA. And I always think in the back of my mind, man, they were looking for like an Eric Holder guy, and they ended up calling me because it wasn't Eric Holder.
00:19:14
Speaker
It was like Eric Holder light, you know? So um we want an ish guy. And and so, um you know, I came into this, you know, into the frame of talking to the players more out of curiosity.
00:19:28
Speaker
than anything else because I, i you know, on paper, um i clearly wasn't the the traditional candidate, you know, not an agent, not a lawyer who's represented the league, certainly not a player, um not somebody who who grew up in ah in a sports, you know, a sports business or a sports ecosystem. Yeah.
00:19:47
Speaker
And honestly, when I sat down with the players, and again, you know we talked about those guys um last night, you know Kevin Mawai, Brian Dawkins, you know Drew Brees, Foxworth, Mike Vrabel, Jeff Saturday, Mark Bruner, Kevin Carter, um you know Keenan, all those guys. you know I was struck when I first met them.
00:20:09
Speaker
you know, I thought I was meeting with a group of old men. um You know, I look back now and realize that everybody was probably, probably the average age was probably 26, 27. twenty seven But just the, just the, I was just struck by um the stark maturity.
00:20:27
Speaker
You know, I mean, look, as a fan coming from the outside, I mean, yeah you walk into a room and there's Brian Dawkins, man, you're like, whoo, mercy oh man you know, it's just, it's just off-putting. Yeah. um But they were so serious. And, um and so after that first meeting, you know, the, you know, your, your brain starts working and then you kind of reframe everything. All of these guys woke up one day and and Gene Upshaw, my president, my predecessor, um who had run the union for you know, almost as long as some of them had been alive, was dead.
00:21:00
Speaker
um The league had already said that they were going to lock the players out. i mean, you were there. They you know they wanted 20% of the player's salary back. They wanted the players to play two extra games for free, and they wanted to eliminate the players' pensions.
00:21:12
Speaker
And I think those guys woke up one morning with, okay, our leader's gone. The lockout is two years away.
00:21:21
Speaker
Right? and and again, i wouldn't ah would never want to have been in their position But sometimes, um you know things like that you know make you incredibly sober ah but and and cohesive about the moment. And look, i was as we talk about the book, I mean, they had their issues, but I think that i think all of that made them rise above themselves and and what their individual issues were to protect the union. And I think they saw that moment as existential,
00:21:56
Speaker
for the union and they felt that that was the moment where they needed somebody from the outside. you know And I ran against two former NFLPA presidents, Trace Armstrong um and um and Troy Vincent.
00:22:08
Speaker
And they made the decision to go for the guy from the outside. And I always took that as an incredible mark of courage. ah because you know and nobody would have blamed them for picking a former and NFLPA president.
00:22:22
Speaker
But the level of courage that I think it it took for all 120 of those guys who ended up voting um to make a decision to kind of take the untested guy from the outside, i mean, I just think that that was a really brave thing to do. And I always always accepted and took the job as, um mean, I'm a steward, and and they've entrusted me with this thing. and um And, you know, that that caused a tremendous amount of stress on me. But I always thought that I was just a steward and i was brought in at a moment of an existential crisis, not so much to get the deal done, but to save the union.
00:23:00
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, as you think about that, you know, in the book, you write about the moment you got that call and they said, you know you're our guy. They take your phone Right? You were in Hawaii, I believe. And they take your phone and and it was- Still somehow married. It was, ah you know, everybody, whenever you take a job, you know, there's a life changing moment. it's ah It's a renewal of something new. This is completely different. I mean, you're you're joining a historic moment in a historic industry that has no accountability, which we'll get into a little bit later. um And, you know, it's like on one side, I'm sure you felt a little bit of, oh, I got it. But on the other side, like they take your phone And there's a whole process. And now you've gotta be the game theorist that you are, which is is is how you now play the game for the two years you have to figure out the whole lockout. But like, talk about that whole process and how quick your life flipped. It was, it's still surreal.
00:23:58
Speaker
um You know, you you get to, you know, um so I'm, you know, on the transition team, I've already started to go through the background checks. Transition team for President Obama. Right, right. And started already to go through the background background checks of meeting with congressmen, their staffers, because I need to be confirmed by the the Senate. So that process is going forward when this thing happens. And and so my one my one conversation with the search firm after the second meeting with the players, when when I started to think about, man, I just feel like this calling, that this thing is leading me this way and not that way.
00:24:32
Speaker
We just had to keep it confidential that, you know, that because i didn't want I didn't want to put, you know, Eleanor Holmes Norton, I didn't want to put the president at ah at a disadvantage of having selected a person that that, you know, we're going through this background stuff. So I become public um as a candidate on Inauguration Day.
00:24:55
Speaker
Which is January 09 January of 09 and um I know that there's going to be one more meeting with the players before they winnow it down from whatever 50 to three, you know, we're gonna run and I told them that the only day that I couldn't meet with the players was on inauguration day because you know, come on yeah and they set the meeting for inauguration day in Dallas, Texas.
00:25:20
Speaker
And um I remember losing my mind. And again, you know, it's what our wives do for us. I was like, okay, I'm done. I'm not doing this. am'm not doing these guys. And my wife says, well, did you ever think that there might be some people involved in this process who think you might get the job?
00:25:37
Speaker
And when you told them that you wouldn't go on January, that's what they said it on that day. And I don't know whether that's true or not, but it was enough to get me on the plane. And then so the process literally from from that moment where I got announced as one of the three final candidates until the day that um the election came through down in Hawaii, all I can describe it as surreal. um you know yeah ESPN, i remember the story came out that there was two candidates, you know Troy and Trace, and ah they said, oh, and then there's a lawyer from DC, but nobody needs to worry about him. He's not going to get the job.
00:26:13
Speaker
And then you get to Hawaii and again, i you know again i keep looking at Cope because you know you you get to understand this better than anybody else. You watch these guys on TV, you know and I had met the 11 people on the executive committee.
00:26:30
Speaker
When you walk into a room and there's 120 players, i mean if you have the slightest moment of awareness, like self-awareness.
00:26:45
Speaker
It's terrifying. I mean, for people who watch guys on TV, man, it's one thing to see the guys that, that they're doing things on the field that you, you know, only dream that you could do.
00:27:00
Speaker
When you see a collection of 120 these guys in a room, um, the feel of it, the only thing that has felt somewhat close is I remember briefing,
00:27:12
Speaker
ah MPD and an FBI SWAT team who was about to go arrest a ah a defendant in one of my criminal cases, murder cases, um who had killed three people um and shot his girlfriend and set her body on fire.
00:27:30
Speaker
And he had made a vow that he wasn't going to be taken alive. And i prepped the the, the, yeah, the Marshalls, the FBI and the DC SWAT teams on, know, just who this guy was. The only thing in my life that has ever felt similar to walking into that room for 120 guys was that. That's amazing.
00:27:51
Speaker
You know, everybody has just a certain mindset and it's not, and it's not, it's it's not everybody's angry. It's just that everybody is, I'm not talking about the book, everybody's a killer, yeah you know? and if you have a ounce of self-awareness, you know, two people show up in that room who aren't players.
00:28:15
Speaker
The first dude who shows up in that room who isn't a player is a guy who is scared to death and ah overcompensates. And they smell that in a nanosecond, you know, because it's a person who's just trying to pretend like he's not nervous. The only other person that can walk into that room is a person who um is also a killer.
00:28:37
Speaker
think So, you know, when I walked into that room, I felt extremely comfortable, you know, and and it scared me that I felt it was comfortable, you know, I mean, literally. Oh, wait, that's a gear I didn't know about. back, you know, and, you know, the private practice is a lot different, but I've been out of the government for 10 years. So when I get back to that room in Hawaii, man, I walk that room and and I can feel the energy and I was like, man I am back, man. These are my, this is, I'm good. And, um but you know, and and then also there's that part of you, the fanboy part of you is like, you know, you're looking it room, you're like, man, that's Derek Brooks.
00:29:13
Speaker
My goodness. Okay. Yeah. I think that's Jason Witten. You know what I I'm whoa, wait a minute, that's DeMarcus Ware. And anyway, and then you go through the process. And, you know, that process was grueling. Three-day process, um two days of um two days of going through, you know, the the rooms, you know, and and for the way, you know, he's been to rep meeting. So the way rep meeting, we have breakout rooms. So you you're meeting with the big group at the beginning, and it was kind of an opening statement of who you are, and yada, yada, yada, yada. yada And then it's three days of going through five breakout rooms where, you know, there's 30, you know, 25, 30 guys in each room. And you just are going around room to room to room to room all day.
00:29:57
Speaker
um And just it's it's like getting waterboarded. And, you know, again, i was really comfortable because I'm a trial lawyer. And it was like hearing from a jury talking back at you, ah but a jury that just wasn't happy. And I will never forget, i was stunned at how well prepared everybody was.
00:30:17
Speaker
um But also, I'm just a nerd, so I was grotesquely overprepared. So um I loved it because I got to walk in and teach, you know, and guys had a lot of great questions. But, you know, I remember, hey, look, there's two things that are are going to be hard hurdles for us. I mean, this antitrust exemption, which, you know, we are all familiar with and comfortable with, and we understand that that's the that's literally the engine that that runs the National Football League. And you know I remember going into the first breakout room and and saying to them, you know once we get to this lockout, you know ah I think I've got the right strategy.
00:30:54
Speaker
But remember, when we go through this lockout, they're going to lock us out. They're goingnna cut everything off. So literally, the only way that we can try to save ourselves is to try to destroy the antitrust exemption that the league is built on.
00:31:06
Speaker
know So for a group of guys hearing for the first time that the only way that we may be able to save ourselves is to kill this thing, You know, and I remember how silent it got in the room, you know, and people are like, well, wait, yeah i mean we we but wait, we love the league. I mean, this is our league. And I'm like, no, you love playing football.
00:31:24
Speaker
In order for us to survive, I've got to try to kill this thing and hurt it so badly that the other side decides to put it back together and stop declaring war on us.
00:31:36
Speaker
And what I loved about that process was, um you know, when players... appreciate a good game plan. Dig it, man, right? I mean, everybody has got that look. They're like, yeah all right, champion. you know And um so then you go back and then it gets crazy. You know, we're at a hotel.
00:31:56
Speaker
um i get done with my presentation and I get ready to go meet my wife and the security guy comes and says, oh, hey, by the way, you can't leave. I'm taking your phone.
00:32:07
Speaker
You have to stay in this room and you'll stay in this room until the vote's done. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Y'all, no, here's how this is going to work. I'm going to go out with my wife, who's hot as fish grease right now. And um yeah, because I mean, we're in Hawaii. I haven't seen her for three days. Yeah.
00:32:26
Speaker
And no, and they're like, no, no, we're gonna keep your So I literally have to pick up the phone, call my wife and like, hey, um I know we were gonna go to this luau, but ah they're taking my phone.
00:32:38
Speaker
And well, when are you gonna be done? I don't know. How long is it gonna take? I don't know. When you can you meet us? I don't know. And you know, Nope, nope, literally hung up the phone just click.
00:32:52
Speaker
And then you sit there, you know, and I was in that room for four and a half hours and couldn't contact anybody, couldn't call anybody. And I fell asleep. I mean, i literally did. and And then I'll never forget that knock on the door, um and it's Kevin Mowai. And, you know, kevin is Kevin's ginormous. I mean, you know, also, I like to kid him. He was the president of the union at the time. And also ranked number eight as one of the dirtiest players of all time. I mean, literally, he was like right either above or behind Heinz Ward. I mean, it was neck and neck. And Kevin's a great dude. Yeah, yeah. But.
00:33:27
Speaker
He turned it on. Yeah, man, yeah. He was not a great dude on the field. And um he opens the door and and he takes up the entire door frame. And he said, you're our leader.
00:33:39
Speaker
And then bursting into tears. Just bursting into tears. And then that's when it hit me that, you know, because I didn't know a lot of the stuff at that time. ah Wow.
00:33:51
Speaker
I mean, here. I'm here. Captain now. Yeah. Yeah. and And I remember walking through the back of the hotel. It was like one of those Goodfellas moments, you know, where you you know you go downstairs, upstairs, back. You go this. Back of the restaurant. Through the kitchen. Through through the kitchen. Through the kitchen. yeah get through the back. And somebody had a...
00:34:08
Speaker
TV on in in the back room and our and it was on the ESPN. And as I walked by the TV, there was a ticker and it said, unknown D Smith, DeMarie Smith elected NFLPA president. It's like, you know, the ticker at the bottom. And I was like,
00:34:25
Speaker
Wow. I mean, i and and and the frame on the picture, i don't know if you remember, but ah there was a player, I think it was Dante Stallworth, had been in a car wreck and unfortunately killed someone.
00:34:38
Speaker
And that was on the TV, and my name was under the ticker on the bottom, and I just went going, right. Oh, this is the job. yeah This is the job. and And, you know, you walk out there, and it's great. And you walk out there, and and what I love about, again, working with players...
00:34:55
Speaker
You know once the game plan's a game plan, everybody can have maybe some disagreements about, you know, what it is. But, like, once the play's called, Ben, everybody's – that's the play. yeah And so you walk into that room and everybody's on their feet and everybody's cheering and let's go.
00:35:08
Speaker
So the lockout 2011. Yeah, easy thing to go through. It was a fun thing. Yeah, I there's a lot to it. I think it'd be great to take us through the game theory, but also there were some tough moments, moments where – You know, players might have hated um the moment, but ultimately it needed to happen. There was moments where you thought maybe we can't win this. um You're a very objective guy.
00:35:35
Speaker
It's not like you do game theory off of emotion. No. And so take us through what you had to do to get to where you ended up, which was ultimately a victory that was existential and still lives on today.
Strategic Challenges During NFL Lockout
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah. Look, I handicapped.
00:35:51
Speaker
our ability to get out of this you know without emulation at like 30%, maybe 35 tops. You look on the other side, they had a $4 billion dollar war chest. um you know To this day, i think the greatest gift that the owners and Roger gave me during that time was that they actually boasted about having a $4 billion dollar war chest.
00:36:13
Speaker
So you know on their side, they've got $4 billion. dollars On our side, I think we had $200 million dollars in the bank. um you know Gene Upshaw's gone. there's you know There's a certain amount of, there's great institutional knowledge, so I wasn't really concerned about that.
00:36:27
Speaker
But look, I mean, just being dead honest, it's ah it's a union that had had three failed strikes in the past. um There is a tremendous level of of disproportion between the money on one side and the money on the other side.
00:36:41
Speaker
um And it's ah it's a group of players who want to play football and need to play football because the reality is this is a group of people who probably cannot go a year without without game checks.
00:36:53
Speaker
And then the last piece of the you know the the the frame, um the NHL had locked out the the hockey players two years before. the same lawyer that was representing the the and NHL was now representing the NFL.
00:37:08
Speaker
And you know coming from a big firm, i mean, I get it. he had sold He had sold what he had done to the NHL players and he had sold it to the NFL and they had crushed the NHL players. and But his play was out there. It's the same play, and the but the play was out there.
00:37:25
Speaker
right And so the beauty of it was... When I was standing up in front of players and you know, you you get elected in Hawaii by 120 players and then you get back to the office, you know, the NFLPA office for the first time. didn't know anybody in the office. I mean, there's 100 people there that I've never met. I've got, and now I've got a staff of 100 no idea who i am.
00:37:45
Speaker
And, you know, the way we're trained, you know, as as business people, you know, our brain is the first thing is, okay, I got to get the leadership team in a place. I got to get the office in place. I need to secure this thing, you know, it's corpus. yeah And then going go out and then I'm going to evangelize and I'm going to do it that way. And ah the best piece of advice that I got from the players at the time. And was again, it was this the like the sobriety, the maturity of that that at EC.
00:38:15
Speaker
they're Like, D, hey, look, man, you're our guy. But everybody out there thought it was either going to be Trace Armstrong or Troy Vincent, you know, a former NFLPA president. Nobody knows who you are. The office is going to be fine.
00:38:29
Speaker
Hit the road. And so i hit the road. I mean, i um I got elected in March. I wrapped up my law practice by the second week in April, which, you know, was yeah anyway, never want to do that again. And then from April until September, I had hit every team twice. hmm.
00:38:51
Speaker
Just this is who I am, this is what we're going through. But also kind of laying out this dark world of, you know, and you remember it was brutal.
00:39:02
Speaker
And you know, those locker rooms were tough, you know, and and because guys, you know, guys in their mind, you know, they're thinking about, okay, how do we win? and in my mind, I'm thinking about how do we not lose?
00:39:14
Speaker
And, and i you know, I just, the only way I knew how to deal with the players at that point was, you know, I don't have any credibility as a former player. There's there's nothing in the sports ecosystem that I'm goingnna tell somebody that's gonna get them to my side. The only thing I had was, I am only going to tell you the truth and it's going to be blunt. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. It's not great.
00:39:33
Speaker
It's bad. and and here are the three things that they want, and we have to make a decision. Either we're going to give it to them or we're going fight. And if we're going to fight, this is what we need to do. And so from you know from there, that's the game strategy, right? The the first piece is um do you have a ah membership that that that may not trust you because they may not know you, but they don't distrust you?
00:39:56
Speaker
and And literally the best thing I had going for me, and again, and you know i know we're going to talk about the PA where it is now, You know, I am sure i'm sure that there were probably some players, you know, in the in the last election with with the executive rector who thought that it was easier to have a fewer number of players involved in the process.
00:40:21
Speaker
And I always took it as a strength that I had so many players and involved in the process. So by the time that I hit the road, I've got 120 disciples who are out there. And they're in all 32 locker rooms. They're in all 32. And so I'm ending up with like four five guys from every team.
00:40:39
Speaker
um and And when you have that, those guys are walking back into the locker room saying, hey, man, I know everybody thought that there was going to be this NFLPA guy who's going to do this job, you know whether it was going be Trace or or or Troy. But let me tell you, we were down there for four or five days grilling this dude, and we all came to a conclusion that this is the right dude.
00:40:58
Speaker
So having having a larger number of people in in perhaps a more unwieldy process was actually better because you know chaos is okay. You know, it's just coming out of chaos that you have to manage. But if you try to reverse engineer it to decrease the amount of chaos, I think you lose buy-in. I think you lose innovation. i think you lose credibility. And and I think that's tough.
00:41:26
Speaker
um So, you know, the game strategy became kind of really simple. They have $4 billion. dollars We don't. And how do we figure out how to fight this economically and how we how do we fight it as a group of people and as a group of men?
00:41:39
Speaker
You referenced the strong leadership at the EC level at that time. You know, I'll never forget in 2020 doing the, working on the last CBA.
00:41:51
Speaker
Jason McCourty mentioned, you know, for a lot of guys, you grow up dreaming of being in the NFL. You don't grow up d dreaming of being in the And so you're coming into the league, you're finally getting a chance to live out your dream, and then you're starting to learn the whys, the importance of the Players Association.
00:42:16
Speaker
How did you, leading into that lockout, having two years to – to get guys to understand the importance of that moment, right? You got some great leaders. Yep. You got some champions. Yep. Went out and got in front of them. Yep. But like in layman's terms to the,
00:42:33
Speaker
the young athlete who, hey, I finally made it to the right Tennessee Titans, the Texans, et cetera, right? How are you educating them on what's at stake yep if they do not pay attention in this moment? Yeah. um You know, two things.
00:42:50
Speaker
um I know everybody sort of publicly looks at my job as sort of this warrior job. You know, you're you're the guy that's like, you know, storming the Bastille all all day.
00:43:01
Speaker
i thought that 90% of the job of of being the executive director was being a teacher. And and again, we you know, we looked at the John Mackey jersey. You know, I'm positive that the first time anybody heard about who John Mackey was and what he meant to us was from me.
00:43:16
Speaker
um You know, when you teach about the quarterbacks club, you you heard it from me. and again, going back to the disciple model, that's what I talked about in Hawaii during the election. i mean, yes, you know, there was a lot about the strategy and this and that, but um I probably spent 85% of my time talking about the history of the NFLPA.
00:43:38
Speaker
And so, you know, a bunch of guys and and certainly a number of guys who were kind of long in the tooth, you know, who had been in that job for a long time. You know, they had never heard that, you know, this merger between the AFL and the NFL, that John Mackey was the first um NFLPA president, that he's the first person that sues the NFL ah for free agency. Yeah. that he is a Hall of Famer, a future Hall of Famer. He sues in 1971. The players don't get free agency until 1993. And it's not because the owners gave it to them.
00:44:10
Speaker
It's 20 years of litigation, 20 years of war. And then you go from that and you got to deal with the quarterbacks club and players who are trying to separate from the union and hurt the union. And then you've got to get those guys back in the fold. And then there's these three strikes. And so i think that that the that that you know getting to a younger player was hard, educating a group of older players to talk to the younger players was easy. you know And then, um and yes, you know there's the game strategy about the secret insurance policy, and and that was a winner for us. It was huge.
00:44:50
Speaker
But um I remember you know we had a special meeting at the Breakers after I got elected, and and I kind of laid out you know the the issues with the 2006 CBA. and what the owners wanted from us. And I just kind of laid out there's two problems we have to deal with. you know Clearly, we have to deal with what they want, which is but is bad for us. It's just not good. you know Giving up our pensions. I mean, we are not going to give up something that took us 50 years to get.
00:45:19
Speaker
Because if you do that, you are doing a disservice to all of those men who went on strike and lost their jobs. man it and And I'll tell you right now, I'm not gonna be a part of that. And guys, guys get that. um But the the other set of problems was there's a certain set of problems with this deal, the 2006 deal. And you know the first thing is, I know everybody is hearing that you're getting 50% of all revenue, we're not.
00:45:44
Speaker
Because we have this definition called total revenue and it's not all revenue. We have to fix that. because it was $500 million dollars off the top in 2009. By the time we get to 2011, it's gonna be $1.1 billion dollars off the top, and it's gonna be growing, and we can't we can't control that. So we have to fix that. But the second thing we have to fix is we can't control our work.
00:46:08
Speaker
The league has the unilateral right to add games, And if they keep adding games, that just means you're working more for less. Which is what they had done historically. 100%. I mean, they were at 12. Went to 14, went to 16.
00:46:22
Speaker
and without the players agreeing, I need those. Right. yeah And so, you know, you think about it and and I would talk to guys and kind of make it easy. You know, you're working, you know, your mom and dad are working a five hour work day. And then the guy comes in and says, oh, by the way, I'm adding Saturday and Sunday to the to the work schedule. And and you would say, well, wait a minute. Don't I get overtime?
00:46:41
Speaker
No, you're going to get the same salary. I mean, we're all going to make more money, but nobody nobody's signing up for that deal. That's the deal we have. And so, you know, when when even the, you know, the hardest thing to to deal with that with the players were fine.
00:46:58
Speaker
The reporters and the people who covered our business didn't understand our business. So, you know and and you know, and then I know that our players are listening to what they're hearing on ESPN. So...
00:47:10
Speaker
You know, the the hardest lift was was getting the reporters to realize that, man, if they can add more games, we've lost the war. So, you know, the game strategy literally became how do I neutralize their their their four billion and how do I make it so bad for everybody that they come back to the table and actually have fair negotiations, you know? And and I teach a class, used to teach a class on negotiation strategy and And I've read all the books and I've certainly, trust me, every person who had ever written or taught about negotiation contacted me during the between 2009 to to tell me how bad of a job i was doing. I mean, all of them.
00:47:54
Speaker
And you know with all due respect, you know I would have these guys come in and they would talk and they were talking about, okay, you have to find win-wins, you have to find some sort of common dominator between the two of you. you know Everybody wants the deal to go forward. And that's where I would stop everybody and say unlike any other negotiation that you've done, um there's no place for the NFL players to go.
Negotiation Realities with NFL Owners
00:48:16
Speaker
So if the other side doesn't want to do a deal, they win. I've never been in a deal where somebody else didn't want to do a deal on the other side. I mean, that's that's every deal you've ever done is two people in a room. They want to get the deal done. The terms you'll fight over. But you start with somebody wants to do the deal. The league had no interest in doing a deal.
00:48:41
Speaker
They wanted to actually get to a point where we missed games, knowing that once we missed games, that's when you sink the knife. So the way that I would tell the negotiators who who came in to advise us, I was like, no, you don't understand. This negotiation is walking down a dark alley. At the end of the alley, there's a guy with a gun and you have a toothpick.
00:49:03
Speaker
That's our negotiation. I mean, that's a negotiation. It's a terrible negotiation, but that's a negotiation. The only way that you win that negotiation is how do you take the gun out of the other guy's hand or how do you get a gun?
00:49:18
Speaker
And for us, once we were able to get the secret insurance policy, yes, we fought them tooth and nail. But the big wins that we had in court was a judge froze their $4 billion. dollars you know and And we argued that we were third-party beneficiaries of those TV contracts, that the league gave up money to get the money in advance. That hurt us and a judge froze it.
00:49:39
Speaker
And then on the other side, once you freeze their ability to pay off their debts, we had a way to pay the players. So you get to that day where you're in the alley and you say to the person you know who's got the gun, well, I've got one too.
00:49:57
Speaker
And we might just stand here in this alley for couple days. Well, that forces the other side to want to negotiate. And that's how we got the deal done. And, you know, there's a lot of stories you tell in the book about working with Roger, yeah working with different owners, because really two of them control. Yeah, Kraft and Jones. The other 29.
00:50:21
Speaker
And so I think, you know, we we could do a whole podcast yeah about that. But those dynamics played a part in you putting this insurance policy in front of them as leverage, and you held it until the end, but talk about the meetings leading up to um the moment where you decide to show them, hey, we can we can miss games. right Our players are still get paid. We've got an insurance policy because there's a lot of one-off meetings with those folks. Well, you know, you you you for a group of people who the game strategy, right, was hockey.
00:50:56
Speaker
Right? And so a lawyer has sold them that if we do this, you do this, we're going to win. Because we did the NHL. We did it in the NHL. So in a way, I'm never really negotiating with that lawyer.
00:51:07
Speaker
I'm negotiating with that lawyer's plan. So the first thing you've got to get to is, you know, they've hired this guy to employ the plan. I've got to get to a point where they start to distrust the whether this is the right And those, you know, and again, I know people think these no get negotiations play out around big tables, and to a certain extent they do, but for anybody who's ever negotiated a deal, it never plays out that way. It's a side conversation with a group of people of...
00:51:36
Speaker
Hey, man, look, I know you guys are running the NHL game plan, but I'm just telling you right now, man, I've i've studied that. I understand that. I'm a lawyer. There's going to be a day where you're going to rue that deal, right? And then you just start planting that seed. And they don't know how. And they and yes, there's a certain amount of bluster. on my part, but um no one expected um us to win the the TV contracts deal.
00:52:03
Speaker
you know And I will tell you, even my internal lawyers, to a certain extent, um there were some lawyers who weren't weren't cool with us filing that case. um I was, and and you know I think the only nice thing about being a The executive director is you know, once you figure out the game plan, you do the game plan. Because, but you know, me. But, you know, when they lost that TV rights case, right?
00:52:26
Speaker
So two things happen. You know, one, they're thinking, okay, not great. Our $4 billion has been frozen. And they're, i mean, that's legal. My job was to emotionally convince them that everything that you have thought wrong.
00:52:42
Speaker
Right? and and And that's not a linear negotiation. That's a, I'm gonna assault your EQ. I'm gonna assault your comfort level with this plan. and so if you remember going back to that, I mean, I went into overdrive on TV and on the networks about how doomed this whole thing was. And and again, I have no idea which way it's gonna come out, you know, legally.
00:53:08
Speaker
But I have to now assault their comfort with this plan. And knowing that I've got this thing burning in my back pocket, you know, this this insurance agreement. So that, you know, the strategy for me became really simple. um We're not going to tell anybody about the insurance policy.
00:53:25
Speaker
You know, the the executive committee knew, but nobody else did. And even that was a hard call, right? But I knew that our job then, once their their TV money was frozen, there's got to be some guys, some guys smart enough on that side of the table who were like, okay, that that was a big lick to our plan.
00:53:44
Speaker
So maybe we try to get something done. So then we just started pushing harder and harder negotiations, trying to get the things that we needed. and And literally they they took the pension, ah the the pension problem, you know they put they took that off the table. um you know I arranged or we arranged for there to be congressional hearings on concussions.
00:54:05
Speaker
And look, it was the right thing to do because the game at the time, especially the leadership on the league side, the way they were treating concussions was abhorrent. um you know I told everybody last night, the head of the concussion committee was a rheumatologist when I took over. I mean, literally, just think about that for a second. It sounds like a punchline. to Somebody who treats aches some pain right and Arthritis. But tactically, tactically,
00:54:31
Speaker
um I knew that if we created enough of an issue around concussions, it makes the league's request that we play two extra games hard. yeah And I needed them to take the two game proposal off the table without me trading anything forward.
00:54:50
Speaker
Right. So now the pension thing is gone. Now the two extra game thing is gone. Now I'm just fighting over economics. Right. Yep. It just changes the landscape of the fight. And now I've got this thing in my back pocket. So that kind of became the the play. Negotiate as hard as we can to get the things that we want before you throw the ace card on the table. And, you know, and also even that um what was the, you know, there's just no...
00:55:20
Speaker
you know for For all of us who've who've you know either been to business school or or or done business deals, you know everybody, I think, wants to pretend there's some formula you know that leads you to this is what you do in this moment. And the reality is 95% of the things that matter, there is no formula. They're just... It's nonlinear. It's just nonlinear. It's asymmetrical. um And, you know, by the way, the other side's doing exactly the same thing to you. yeah And you're, you know, you're just you're just in like in the ether, man, just trying to figure the thing out.
00:55:55
Speaker
um What worried me the most about the insurance policy play was. um You know, when you explain it to the guys, it's like, look, we're going hold it until the end. They're going to think that that that we're up against the wall.
00:56:07
Speaker
And then we're going to come out with this thing to throw it on the table that we might be sitting in the alley now for months. And that's bad for you because you can't pay your debts. It's bad for us. But at least we got a few ducats, right? Our guys can put food on the table. Yeah.
Role of Allies in NFL Deal
00:56:23
Speaker
problem with that whole theory, looking at it from a linear standpoint is that's assuming that everybody's a rational actor.
00:56:34
Speaker
Yeah. Right? I mean, the guy in the alley, you're great. you pull out your gun, the guy in the alley may act irrationally and just decide that he can pull the trigger faster than you.
00:56:46
Speaker
Well then, it's a mess, right? And so really the hard part was then thinking, okay, how do I manage an irrational reaction to this thing? Because you're dealing with 31 billionaires who signed onto this plan,
00:57:02
Speaker
That's the plan. And now some dude is gonna come in and say, gonna save it for the for the you know for the audience at church, but there's gonna be an F and there's gonna be a U. yeah right and And that's not an unreasonable expectation. And so we decided, I decided we're gonna hedge our bets a little bit.
00:57:26
Speaker
by trying to find a rational actor to respond to this. And that's where Kraft came in. And that's where Tom Brady came in. And, you know, i won't spoil it for the book, but I needed, um I needed somebody in that room who understood the gravamen of this insurance policy play, who wasn't going to react in an, a, you know, in a completely unreasonable, emotional way. Roger's off the table for that because,
00:57:56
Speaker
My interactions with him over the period of time came, you know, I came to two conclusions. Really smart guy, know, Roger's a tough nut. i mean I mean, we get along now but because, you know, we've nicked each other up. I'm sure he would say the same thing about me if he writes a book. I'm sure i would come off, you know, just as crazy as he comes off in my book because I was that dude for a little while.
00:58:18
Speaker
So he's off the table as that guy. um The only other person, the only other two people who possibly could have been in that boat is Jerry Richardson. And Jerry Richardson at the time, he he wasn't the guy um for all sorts of reasons.
00:58:34
Speaker
um Jerry Jones, not the guy. ah the The owner I knew the least, he was the owner I knew the least who talked the most. Right, not the guy.
00:58:45
Speaker
Not the guy. Yeah. The only other person who possibly was a guy was Robert Kraft, who I knew a little bit. I'd met through Drew Bledsoe. But I also knew that the person who was closest to him from the player side was John Brady. and And by the way, we don't get the 11 deal done.
00:59:04
Speaker
ah without Tom and and Robert. Wow. Yeah. It just doesn't happen, you know, because you could i could have thrown that card on the table, and again, I told the players it could go one of two ways.
00:59:14
Speaker
We could put that insurance thing on the table, and the other side says... Let's go. Yeah. When you when you you know, one, I just want publicly applaud you because I know that being in those seats, I mean, one, you just we're getting a glimpse of it. Right. And we're getting a glimpse of all the different things you're managing in terms of insurance policies, neutralizing their money. um managing the new role, trying to build rapport with your members yeah so that they trust you, um trying to create this um super checkmate, trust chess move with the insurance policy, figure out who to let know about it, who not to let know about it, um Trying to win over the fans with concussions, yeah right? Yeah. To prevent yeah a game because, you know, one of the things as an athlete, you end up getting a lot of pressure from the fans because they don't understand that this is a business and you are trying to change your life forever as well, too. But...
01:00:14
Speaker
To the outside perspective, you should be happy and thankful and grateful for playing a sport and getting paid to do it. But, yeah, i I will also pay for it for the rest of my life as well, too. Right. But then on the other side, walking into a negotiation room and managing the the egos of...
01:00:33
Speaker
billionaires who have won, right? Like this is ah for most billionaires. They've already won. Yeah, that this is a team is their side hustle. 100%. like, hey, with the side hustle, I can let that i can let that struggle a little bit because i'm doing other things. And it's going to come back tomorrow.
01:00:49
Speaker
Right. Right. And so I want to want to publicly applaud you for that because, you know, everything in life is is not black and white. You nobody will understand everything. No one will. And I know that you being in this role have taken a lot of criticism um and and it comes with the
Conclusion and Subscription Encouragement
01:01:08
Speaker
job. Comes with the president Right. um And so and I want to publicly applaud you for that because I know that's not easy.
01:01:17
Speaker
Such great stuff from D. And once again, you can find even more information, stories, anecdotes about the stories you heard just now by buying his book, Turf Wars. Highly recommend that that book. It's a great read. We'll have him in episode two as well, as we'll have more of a part two of our interview talking about college athletics and collective bargaining. But if you haven't done it yet, please subscribe to Now It's Legal, whether it's through YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and follow Now It's Legal pod on Instagram to get clips of upcoming episodes. For everybody here, I'm Jim Cavall.
01:01:53
Speaker
Thank you so much for checking out episode one of season three Now It's Legal.