- As the first high-profile free agent, White signs to play in the league’s smallest market, Green Bay, quieting owners’ concerns that players would flock to bigger markets.
NFL Players finally won true free agency after more than twenty years with the White v. NFL settlement. The NFLPA was reconstituted as a union and the first modern Collective Bargaining Agreement was enacted. In 1994, the NFLPA Board of Player Representatives voted to create NFL Players, Inc. as a wholly owned marketing and licensing arm to generate more revenue for players.
Spring 1990: With the NFLPA (temporarily) re-formed as a professional association, it first sets out to protect the individual contracting rights of NFL players. The result is McNeil vs. NFL, filed on behalf of eight players to end the restrictive Plan B system.
Shortly after this filing, the NFLPA founded a non-profit organization, the Professional Athletes Foundation (PAF). No stranger to the game, former player turned Executive Director Gene Upshaw recognized the many challenges players faced after their playing careers concluded. After learning what these former players needed to succeed, through his namesake, the PAF’s Gene Upshaw Player Assistance Trust (PAT) grant awarded its first $1,000 grant to a former NFL player.
1990-1992: NFL Properties spends $30 million to lure more than 700 players to its “Quarterback Club” and shift their licensing rights to the league. By attempting to take control of licensing income, owners hope to hurt the NFLPA’s ability to fund its legal cases.
September 11, 1992: The jury in McNeil v. NFL strikes down the Plan B system, ruling that it was more restrictive than necessary to achieve competitive balance.
October 1992: Reggie White agrees to file a lawsuit in his name (White v. NFL) that would strike down all other current restrictive forms of free agency.
1993: Following multiple legal victories in favor of the players, the NFLPA re-certifies as a union. A settlement of the legal cases as well as a new CBA – the first since 1987 -- leads to these gains: