NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw made his case for the media on Wednesday regarding the looming negotiations on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Upshaw used “easy-to-digest charts, graphs and bold-faced type beamed on a large screen” to support his position, according to USA Today.

As one league insider observed in response, “If Gene Upshaw is showing media slapdicks slides, charts and graphs, why can’t the agents and the players see the same thing?  It baffles me that we can’t get any information out of the union and we have to read it all from news reports.  How hard would it be to send e-mails to players and agents and keep us up to date?” (Perhaps the multiple millions of dollars paid to Upshaw per week buys only a weekly “100 Words” from Gene.)

Regarding the merits, however, we agree with Upshaw’s contention that, if the owners are going to take the position that the 59-cent payout to the players from every dollar in revenue generated by the teams should decrease, then the union needs to have access to the teams’ financial information.

Upshaw reportedly has made such a request, but was rebuffed.  So how can the union fairly assess the issue that the NFL is presenting as the centerpiece of its attempt to shrink the 59-cents-on-the-dollar obligation? 

Based on the information that is available to the union, Upshaw believes that the league has operating income of $18 million per team per year.  If true, this undercuts the case for reducing the players’ share.

And maybe that’s why the league doesn’t want to give Upshaw a peek into the change purse.