DeMaurice Smith

Executive Director

NFL Players Association

DeMaurice Fitzgerald Smith is the Executive Director of the National Football League Players’ Association (NFLPA). Smith was appointed to his fourth three-year term by unanimous vote of the NFLPA’s Executive Committee in October 2017. He has been named one of the top ten most influential executives in sports. As Executive Director of the Player’s Union, he has negotiated two comprehensive collective bargaining agreements and is currently the longest serving Executive Director of a major sport union. As the Chief Executive Officer of the NFLPA’s for profit company Player’s Incorporated, he has guided annual revenues to over $200M and witnessed the largest growth in player’s marketing and licensing.

In March 2020, he successfully negotiated his second long-term Collective Bargaining Agreement with the National Football League. The eleven-year deal will provide players with their guaranteed highest share of NFL revenue in history. The agreement improved health care, pensions and benefits for all players, achieved a twenty percent increase in the salaries of the core players and reached back to players who had previously retired without full benefits and brought them to the current level of retirees. He also led the negotiations to create comprehensive Covid-19 protections and protocols for his membership, obtained comprehensive testing and opt out provisions for players and designed the return to play agreements that secured NFL Players being paid their full salary for the season despite a projected $3billion shortfall for 2020.

Prior to his election as the Executive Director, Mr. Smith was recognized as one of the best trial lawyers in the country. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He was an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia for nearly a decade and was formerly Counsel to then Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in the United States Department of Justice.

He is a 1989 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a 1985 graduate of Cedarville University.