Gene Upshaw was a giant, not only in physical stature but in intelligence and integrity.

Gene and I started together in pro football in 1967, he as the first-round choice of the Oakland Raiders, me as the Raiders beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. We share one other distinction: We both had sons born during training camp in 1970. Gene’s son was a whopping 13 pounds at birth, mine about half that, reflecting the difference in our sizes.

Al Davis, then and now managing general partner of the Raiders, drafted Upshaw to block Buck Buchanan, the huge defensive tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Gene Upshaw

By 1969, Upshaw was playing between C Jim Otto and OT Art Shell; all three of them are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Upshaw and Shell also had adjoining lockers in the Raiders’ dressing room. Though Shell is quite intelligent, few writers ever discovered that because he was so quiet. Upshaw was not. Almost from the beginning, he was an articulate, voluble speaker. Writers and broadcasters gravitate naturally to players like that because they provide the needed quotes and sound bites, so the crowd around Upshaw’s locker was as big as the one around QBs Daryle Lamonica, Ken Stabler or George Blanda, all of whom started at some point of Upshaw’s Raider career.

At the time, many of the Raiders’ black players had come out of all-black schools, and they were obviously uncomfortable talking to what was an all-white writing contingent in Oakland. Upshaw, though, had graduated from Texas A&I (now Texas A&M-Kingsville), which had a racially mixed student body, so he was quite comfortable with the writers.

Upshaw was also representative of a nucleus of star players on the Raiders who, though the colorful characters like Stabler and John Matuszak got more public notice, were the basis for the team’s success. The offensive linemen, for instance, were all in that mode, as were Tom Keating and Ben Davidson on the defensive line, and Hall of Famers Fred Biletnikoff and Willie Brown.

In my five years on the Raiders beat, I talked frequently with Upshaw, both during the week and after the games. Our conversations were mostly pleasant because I often complimented him on his play and was usually writing about a Raiders win; the Raiders lost only four regular-season games in my first three seasons on the beat and four in each of my last two seasons.

There was one episode, though, during the 1971 season. Writing about a loss to Kansas City, I had put much of the blame on ineffective pass blocking, especially by Upshaw and Shell. After a practice the next week, Upshaw and Shell marched me to a bench on the sideline and sat me down between them.

As usual, Upshaw did the talking, telling me that I didn’t know the blocking assignments (which was true) and that they weren’t the only ones to blame for the poor pass protection.

I told him, “I can understand Art being upset at my criticism because I’ve hardly written anything about him before this. But I’ve written a ton of complimentary articles about you.”

“This one article wipes out all the good ones,” said Upshaw, in a perfect example of the Athlete’s Creed.

Given his ability to articulate issues, it was no surprise that Upshaw became executive director for the Players Association after his retirement from playing.

The NFL was torn by a bitter labor dispute in the ’80s. There was a hard-line element in the league, headed by Dallas general manager Tex Schramm (a longtime friend of commissioner Pete Rozelle’s) and Tampa Bay owner Hugh Culverhouse, which totally opposed free agency for the players.

Meanwhile, Ed Garvey, head of the Players Association, proposed a wage scale for players, depending on positions. In retrospect, that would have been better for the owners than what they eventually got, but owners condemned it as a “communistic” plan.

Garvey was a confrontational leader, in the mold of the union heads of the 1930s. But the owners seemed to hold all the cards.

When Upshaw became head of the Players Association, he decertified the union, which allowed individual players to successfully sue the league.

Then, Upshaw negotiated with owners, working out a compromise that has stablized the NFL while enabling the star players to negotiate as free agents and get contracts they could only dream of before. He also insisted on a minimum salary cap that forced teams like Tampa Bay and Cincinnati to greatly upgrade their team payrolls.

His success didn’t surprise me. From the start of his career, I could see he was destined for success even beyond the playing field. He was a true giant.

Glenn Dickey has been covering pro football since 1967 and now has his own Web site, www.GlennDickey.com. E-mail him at glenndickey@hotmail.com.