The Man Who (Relentlessly) Sued the NFL...

EPISODE 375: ...has receipts.

I have been waiting to get DeMaurice Smith in studio for a long time.

In fact, I’d never communicated with Smith until after we released Part I of our multipart investigation into the NFL Players Association — which started, last June, when we published what multiple union sources have since characterized as “the holy grail” of confidential NFL documents:

The 61-page arbitration ruling in a collusion lawsuit, filed against the league, by the union, under the previous leadership of DeMaurice Smith.

De Smith, notably, left his post as executive director in 2023. And he recently wrote a fascinating book about his tenure, called Turf Wars, which basically serves as the prelude to what happened last summer... when the two top officers of the regime that succeeded him — Lloyd Howell and his Chief Strategy Officer, J.C. Tretter — both resigned amid an ongoing corruption scandal. Which involved an FBI investigation, strip club receipts, and the union’s insane decision to suppress that “holy grail” collusion ruling — which was itself about the suppression of guaranteed player contracts — as part of a secret agreement with the NFL.

In other words: the NFLPA attempted to collude with the league in order to keep the league’s attempt at collusion against the union a secret.

And even if no damages were granted to the union, as we’ll explain, what we got was 61 pages of explosive texts, e-mails, slide decks, testimony.

And yet, just last month, that same Chief Strategy Officer who resigned, J.C. Tretter, ran for De Smith’s old job — executive director — and won. Raising all sorts of new questions and suspicions.

These questions and concerns are not only about the electoral process, in which Tretter was the only former player deemed worthy of being one of three finalists, but also the plausibility of Tretter’s claim that he had nothing to do with the collusion ruling’s suppression, in the first place. Despite being Lloyd Howell’s top lieutenant and “Chief Strategy Officer.”

All of which led me to the former prosecutor whose go-to strategy involved suing the NFL, for colluding against the players, in the first place.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)