DeMaurice Smith wins re-election as NFLPA chief
DeMaurice Smith earned another three-year tenure as executive director of the NFL players union after winning an election on Sunday night in Hawaii, where player representatives from 32 teams voted to keep him as their NFLPA chief.
The incumbent defeated a field that included an unprecedented eight other candidates, including former NFL players Sean Gilbert, Robert Griffith and Jason Belser.
Smith was re-elected on the first ballot. In his first run for the post (2009), he was voted in unanimously, and ran unopposed in 2012.
The challengers largely attacked Smith based on the collective bargaining agreement the NFLPA struck with team owners after the lockout in 2011, viewing the deal as lopsided financially in the owners’ favor. Those misgivings weren’t enough to unseat Smith from a third term running the union.
