How the 1987 Strike Made the NFL What It Is Today

The Domonique Foxworth Show

ESPN

Sports, Football

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Howard Bryant joins Domonique to go back in time and talk about the 1987 NFL strike that led to replacement players playing in the NFL. They go through the details of what happened and make the case for why the current state of the NFL and the NFLPA was directly shaped by the 1987 strike. 0:00 Welcome back to The Domonique Foxworth Show 0:34 Revisiting the 1987 NFL strike 11:56 How the 1987 strike was a turning point for the NFL 42:10 The future of the NFLPA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:29.8	Off top in the 1987 NFL player strike two of the most famous scabs, Sean Payton and Shug Knight. Play music. This is the Dominique
0:40.3	Foxworth Show. All right, welcome to the Dominique Foxworth Show. I'm so happy to be
0:51.3	joined by Howard Bryant, author, historian, producer, and author of upcoming book, Kings and Ponds, which I'm looking forward to checking out and add to my collection of Howard Brian Books.
1:01.9	Welcome to the show, sir.
1:02.9	Appreciate you having me, Donnie.
1:04.1	I really wanted to have you on, especially because we're doing this 1987 strike as far as football's concerned.
1:09.7	So this offseason has been, for me at least,
1:12.0	an offseason of conversations around sports labor. We have an impending, which seems to be an
1:17.0	impending WNBA strike. We have all the turmoil that's going on in an NFLPA, which I guess
1:23.3	turmoil is a nice phrase for what's actually happening over there. The Bryce Harper fighting with Rob Manfred.
1:29.7	It just feels like Michael Parsons and Trey Hendrickson demanding trades and kind of petitioning
1:35.2	in a way for a little bit more NBA-style player empowerment.
1:38.8	And most recently, Roger Goodell made the point that they are no longer in competition with sports leagues.
1:45.4	The NFL is in competition with Apple and Google.
1:48.4	And it may not feel like it, but that takes me back to the 1987 strike.
1:52.8	What do you think, Howard?
1:54.1	No, I think it's true.
	...

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