Jim McFarland remembers an NFL labor fight that happened before most of the current players were born. McFarland was playing tight end for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1974 when the players went out on strike for the first time and didn’t have a chance. And he thinks one of the biggest differences between then and now is the fact that players like Drew Brees, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are not just committed to the helping but they are leading the charge.
“If you’d said back in ’74-’75 that we would get Roger Staubach and Joe Namath and guys like that to join our lawsuit, that would have been unheard of,” McFarland said. “This time, you’re dealing with a much stronger, much more loyal group of players. And with the big-name players stepping forward, I think it really unifies the players to think that, ‘Hey, everybody’s in.’”
McFarland (along with Cornelius Bennett) is one of two former players who were elected last year to the NFLPA’s executive committee and he was present at many of the negotiating sessions between the league and the players.
“We have a PR effort now, where in ’74 we had nothing at all,” McFarland said. “The NFL still has a big advantage because so many of the media outlets are tied to the league as far as being able to broadcast games. But I think we’ve done a much better job this time of getting our message out and I think people are listening.”
The most important difference, though, is that the players are listening. All of them. And that’s something of which McFarland and his peers could have dreamed when they went through all of this nearly four decades ago.
