OPINION

By Jim Litke

updated 9:22 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2008

Jim Litke

Gene Upshaw was common sense writ extra large.

Most men that big usually roll over people to get what they want. What made Upshaw an All-Pro guard in his playing days, and then the right man for the union job for the past quarter-century, is that he understood it was better sometimes to go around them.

Not because he was nimble — though Upshaw was that, and plenty more — but because he was smart.

More than a few of his contemporaries offered testimonials Thursday to Upshaw’s toughness after hearing about his death from pancreatic cancer, even while still seething over his repeated failure to get them anything close to the medical coverage and pension benefits that current players enjoy. And more than a few current players struggled to put their differences aside, even for a moment, before praising Upshaw’s long service — if not always the results.

Not to be outdone, management types from commissioner Roger Goodell on down joined the chorus. Yet they, too, had plenty of unfinished business with Upshaw, most notably the last labor deal he cut with former commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Enough owners were upset by the players’ share of NFL revenues in 2010 — a 60 percent piece of what is projected to be a $10 billion pie — that they voted to opt out of the deal and risk a confrontation with the players. Some lap dog Upshaw turned out to be.

So the most fitting tribute to the man isn’t just free agency, or the phenomenal growth of the league, or even the players’ share of the take. It’s that he accomplished all those things while making people on both sides of the labor divide unhappy to his dying day. Because that’s what makes compromise possible.

Matt Millen wound up bumping heads with Upshaw in practice nearly 30 years ago as a rookie linebacker with the Oakland Raiders, but only indirectly in recent years as president of the Detroit Lions’ and a member of the NFL’s management-union council. What impressed him was how much of what Upshaw accomplished as a player still informed how he conducted himself as a boss.

Special feature Gene Upshaw: Player and Director A look at an NFL legend both on and off the playing field.

“We called him the governor when he was a player. That’s what he was. He was one of those guys who conducted himself that way. ... He was physically gifted and talented, but mentally he was a notch above because Gene would always use you against you,” Millen said.

“That was the same way he operated as an executive. I’ve always said this, we used to joke all the time about how Gene was ’dumb like a fox.’ You could say whatever you wanted to say and in the end, it ended up going his way. And you’d go, ’How did he do that?”’

Plenty of his union members looked only at the concessions Upshaw made through the years and found themselves asking “Why did he do that?” instead. The short answer is that Upshaw decided early on that becoming a partner in growing the game was a better long-term strategy than fighting over every dollar in fits and starts.

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