Note: Today we have a guest entry from reader Ken Guckenberger, who has a good story about some classic NFL merchandise. Enjoy! — Paul
By Ken Guckenberger
In 1970, NFL players held their first-ever work stoppage — a two-day strike. The following year, the NFL Players Association was officially certified as a union by the National Labor Relations Board.
The fledgling union, eager to solidify its status amongst the players as it was challenging the “Rozelle Rule” (which effectively prevented free agency by requiring teams to surrender players or draft picks after signing a free agent), decided to directly market its players’ names, images, and likenesses with an unusual merchandise line: NFLPA team trash cans, with a different can for each franchise, like the ones shown above.
With my family moving from Long Island to Miami in June of 1972, the Guckenberger boys were in need of some sports indoctrination for our new home city. Our mother took us to Zayre’s (a South Florida version of K-Mart) and got us the Dolphins’ trash can. We quizzed each other on it every night.
Although the Dolphins went on to have a perfect 17-0 season that year, our Dolphins trash can had a major imperfection: safety Dick Anderson and cornerback Lloyd Mumphord had their photos transposed — a particularly surprising error considering that the two players had different racial identities. It was very confusing to us as boys.
Our Dolphins can didn’t make the move when we left South Florida a few years later. As time went on, I wondered if I had misremembered the errors on our can. A few of the other 1972 team cans show up occasionally on eBay, but I could never find a Dolphins can. (I guess 1972 Dolphins merch is highly prized, even trash cans.) I finally found one last year and bought it. Sure enough, it has the same Anderson/Mumphord photo glitch.
On the plus side, they did get the proper spelling for Nick Buoniconti’s notoriously tricky last name, which was always the hardest name for us to spell correctly in creative writing assignments on the Dolphins.
To my knowledge, the NFLPA cans were a one-off project. I think the union might also have done football cards or other merch ventures at some point, but it all looks off-brand and kind of fake without the team logos and other trade dress. It turns out true “NIL” isn’t worth very much for 99% of football players. But I can still recite the starting 22 of that 1972 Dolphins team more than 50 years later, so those beautiful trash cans were worth something to me.
As it happens, Dick Anderson is a neighbor of a former law school classmate of mine, so I had a plan to visit my friend/classmate, have him introduce me to Anderson, and then I’d ask Anderson about the trash can. But apparently Anderson wasn’t doing too well health-wise when I was down to visit my friend, so I didn’t want to bother him. I’m told he did have a laugh about the transposed pictures last year when my friend told him about it.
Paul here. Love this story! Were these trash cans the first instance of a product line produced by a sports labor union? What other union merch has come out over the years?
Also: It’s interesting to see how the position abbreviations differ from what we’d see today. For example, you never see a cornerback identified as “RCB” or “LCB” — they’re all just “CB.” Similarly, I’ve never seen a safety designated as “LS”; maybe “FS” (free safety) and “SS” (strong safety), but usually just “S.”
Similarly, Nick Buoniconti’s “MLB” designation (for middle linebacker) really threw me for a moment, because these days we identify that abbreviation with Major League Baseball.
Please join me in thanking Ken for sharing this fun story with us!