Today’s guest columnist is George Atallah, founder of Somebody Advisors.
Throughout my career in professional sports, I learned to value intangible skills of purpose, trust, character and authenticity. Sports captivates communities because achievement in sports—especially team sports—requires more than just talent, effort and skill. Hard skills—throwing a perfect spiral, pitch or bounce pass—may bring you to the big time, but the intangibles like passion, heart and soul differentiate successful athletes and teams from champions.
Parallels exist in the business of sports, particularly within unions. Leaders can manage budgets, drive revenues, litigate effectively and hit the bottom line, but without intangibles, institutions become transactional and rudderless.
During my tenure at the NFL Players Association, we relentlessly advocated for non-economic gains and benefits for players. We bristled at the way some NFL teams would do anything, often at the expense of players, to generate an extra dollar. Striving for those quality of life improvements did not always show up on financials, but they were critical to our ethos. Even NFL fans, coming back year after year, know exactly which clubs view them as an important part of the community, or simply as transactional consumers they can extract more money from.
Since the beginning of unions, labor leaders have spoken of “solidarity,” but in practice, most found it exceptionally difficult to implement. I love the NFL Players Association and players past, present and future. But recently, the challenges faced by the NFLPA expose just how elusive “solidarity” can be, and highlights the importance of intangible skills. Unsurprisingly, the recent project that generated the most solidarity among NFL players was the NFLPA Report Card—something that was relatively low-cost, but laser-focused almost exclusively on non-economic player concerns.
Right now, NFL player leaders are tasked with filling a leadership vacuum at the top of the NFLPA, and solidarity is being tested.
In contrast, WNBA players expressed a strong statement of solidarity two weeks ago during their All Star weekend. The T-shirts they wore—“Pay Us What You Owe Us”—expressed unity around a few beliefs: They are undervalued, disrespected and underestimated.
Whether or not fans, media or opinion makers around the W agree with the message, the power of being unified in sentiment and action creates leverage in their upcoming negotiations. Wearing T-shirts together was less about the slogan and more about conveying common purpose, trust in each other and selfless character—in short, solidarity, expressed using intangible skills. Many marketing gurus can come up with creative slogans, but the real transformational power of an organization motivates action to achieve something bigger.
NFL players need to rediscover these intangibles, and player leadership has a big task ahead. As the self-proclaimed ultimate team sport, the moment calls for solidarity now more than ever. The NFLPA’s strength comes not from a single executive but from strong alignment between player leaders, their locker rooms and the association’s staff. When those links are tested or broken in any organization, rebuilding takes more than just expertise.
Scars from the 2020 collective bargaining agreement lingered into the leadership change of 2023 from DeMaurice Smith to Lloyd Howell Jr. Many players believed that taking the union to the “next level” required a business person. But what next level and at what cost?
By any objective measure and standard, NFL players in 2023 were better off than in 2020 and absolutely more prosperous than in 2011. Placing their hopes in an executive director to solely negotiate the next big wins contradicted the whole premise of solidarity. When that executive director stumbled, the union was left in a lurch.
I fear the reckoning is not over yet, but now is not the time to engage in more character attacks, or even “I-told-you-so’s.” That includes attacks from anyone in management, fans who aren’t fans of unions and even current and former players who especially have every right to be critical and concerned about the state of the NFLPA today. A strong players association should matter to anyone who cares about athletes or the business of sports, and the time to support the players is now.
Sponsors, partners, athletes in other sports and yes, the NFL front offices, will be affected by what comes next. Beyond the obvious billions of dollars on the line, important and historic strategic partnerships that support players are impacted. Players must diagnose what went wrong, accept mistakes and find people who can support them to seek alignment in principles and values. Only then can they begin the process of rebuilding.
To paraphrase from the NFLPA’s Constitution, there are many gains that are not yet attained. But the union must also preserve what has been hard won, and remember how those victories came about. It’s not possible without solidarity. As a reminder, the NFLPA would do well to look at what’s happening in women’s sports, where teamwork, shared purpose and values bring those athletes together.
WNBA players also seek big gains not yet attained, but individual WNBA players approach this negotiation with strong intangibles and the good of the collective at heart. Will the boldness of their strategy be effective? WNBA players have lower salaries, less history and fewer tangible resources at their disposal. Yet leading with intangible skills gives them a fighting chance.
NFL players drew similar strength when they applied the same principles in 2011 in the face of a lockout, conjuring an “us against the world” mentality that frankly, most pro athletes are predisposed to anyway. Tapping into that has been a real source of strength for unions throughout history.
Current NFL players may believe that bold, collective action risks individual prosperity, or that pursuing more money is the new north star. But the wisdom drawn from effective organizations has proved time after time that teamwork drives change, and that priorities can and should extend beyond a dollar figure.
The NFLPA prioritizes much more than just money, with benefits, health and safety, post-career protections and countless services on the agenda, but make no mistake, without togetherness, management will try to pounce on all of it. Athletes striving to maximize their economic value is a worthy endeavor that requires strong skills, but transformative change calls for pairing those skills with unity and collective purpose. My hope is that this difficult moment in the history of the NFLPA will spark players to turn toward their union as opposed to away from it.
It is their union after all.
George Atallah is the founder and CEO of Somebody Advisors, a strategic consulting practice at the intersection of business, sports and entertainment. Prior to founding Somebody, Atallah served as the assistant executive director of external affairs for the NFL Players Association from 2009-2025.
