Op-ed: NFLPA responds to columns about Dallas Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy

George Atallah | NFLPA Assistant Executive Director of External Affairs

At a minimum, we expect our sports columnists to provide opinions rooted in fact and reality. The truly gifted opinion leaders use their access to write things that force us to think about complicated issues in a dynamic and multi-dimensional way, tying in what happens in sports to broader social dynamics. It is disappointing when one of the trailblazing sports columnists of our time fails to achieve either.

Christine Brennan's two recent columns on Greg Hardy can be summed up in a few unimaginative simple phrases: "Greg Hardy, bad; Union, bad; Dallas Cowboys, bad." What I find to be even more intellectually dishonest is the expression of such opinions with a lack of fundamental understanding of the role of a union in these situations. I will explain it in simple terms: The NFL Players Association is a labor union. We have a Federal Law fair duty of representation to our members. Unions protect rights, not conduct. Collective Bargaining Agreements have to be enforced. We do not condone misconduct.

Does Brennan think that we are enabling concussions when we represent a player appealing a fine levied for an on-field hit? Does she really believe filing a grievance to enforce a contract clause on behalf of Aaron Hernandez means we condone murder? These actions do not mean we “enable” behavior that violates the playing rules or the law, but they are the union’s obligation and grounded in principles of collective bargaining and workers' rights that have served both labor and management well both in our business and in countless others.

When Brennan asks, "Why the league didn't kick Hardy out for life?" she not only ignores certain facts about the relationship between labor and management but eschews the complicated issues related to violent conduct, prevention, due process, discipline, counseling and rehabilitation that our union considers. When she writes, "Something is very wrong when sports officials such as the leaders of the NFL players' union look at pictures of a battered and bruised woman and think it's a good idea to lessen the perpetrator's punishment," it is without understanding that yes, we can simultaneously be horrified by the images while also defend what our CBA dictates about precedent, due process and discipline.

Finally, this: "Perhaps someday, the union will have the fortitude to tell a monster like Hardy that he’s on his own." Every NFL player, past, present and future, should be glad that their union has the fortitude and resources to defend their rights and that not one of our members is on his own. We have too many recent examples of what happens to a worker’s rights when management, in our case the NFL, thinks it has the ability to arbitrarily apply standards or discipline that violates the CBA.

It is easy to take the position that what Greg Hardy did was wrong, but unlike Brennan, we have a responsibility to consider things beyond the moral outrage.