ST. LOUIS — The men who run the NFL Players Association used to stand righteously shoulder to shoulder with blue-collar union grunts on picket lines. That was more than 25 years ago, when the idea of calling the NFLPA a union made sense because it was actually fighting for legitimate causes for a deprived rank-and-file.

We are a lifetime away from those days. Now those same "union men" sit in courtrooms surrounded by corporate attorneys. They used to protect the interest of players from ruthless owners who treated them like chattel. Now the only things they protect are their own greedy hides.

The pro football "union" seems to find itself on the wrong side of every public spat these days when it concerns its rank-and-file. Ex-players now sue the NFLPA for allowing corrupt money managers to fleece them out of millions. Retired players testify before Congress of shameful neglect from a union that is supposed to protect it, but instead shortchanges them on benefits and pensions.

The NFLPA's only defense has been arrogant denials and corporate mumbo jumbo. But Monday, its defiance fell on deaf ears when a federal jury in San Francisco ordered the NFLPA to pay $28.1 million to more than 2,000 retired players, ruling that it actively cut the retirees out of lucrative licensing deals to funnel larger royalty payments to active players.

The lawsuit was filed by 69-year-old Hall of Famer Herb Adderley, who played cornerback for the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys and appeared in four of the first six Super Bowls. When the verdict was read, a tearful Adderley said, "I won three Super Bowls and this feels better than all of them combined. I always felt I had one big play left."

The NFLPA used to be on the right side of fights like this. They used to battle pro football owners for every thin dime and make sure all the players got their fair share of the enormous multi-billion-dollar industry pie. Now this is all they do: alibi, mislead and wheel and deal.

Ronald Katz, a lawyer representing the retirees, told jurors that the late Gene Upshaw, the longtime union chief, and other union leaders "betrayed the trust of their members" by neglecting the retired players, who pay $50 a year to keep their union membership. Union attorney Jeffrey Kessler told USA Today something I thought I'd never hear come out of the mouth of someone who supposedly represents professional athletes. "The verdict is a complete miscarriage of justice," said Kessler.

No, here's the miscarriage. The court documents unveiled emails that told a shameful story of how the NFLPA systematically plotted to shortchange 2,056 retirees, many of them Hall of Fame legends, out of millions of dollars. The jury said the union owed the retirees $7.1 million in actual damages for failing to include them in lucrative marketing deals with Electronic Arts Inc., the maker of the popular "Madden NFL" video games, sporting card companies and other sponsorship agreements.

The players association had every opportunity to include the retired players in equal shares of the revenue from those group licensing deals but unilaterally decided to cut them out of the action and put the money in the hands of active players. The "smoking gun" was a 2001 letter from an NFLPA executive instructing EA Sports executives to scramble the images of retired players in the company's popular Madden video game, so that the company would not have to pay them. Anyone who is a devotee of the Madden game is familiar with the 143 "vintage" teams that are stocked with no-name players that closely resemble Adderley and other retirees.

For years, the NFLPA has tried to frame its retired players as bitter old men who frittered away their life savings and now are looking for welfare they don't deserve.

This court case blew holes in that dishonest defense. The jury ruled that the "fuzzy" imaging of ex-players allowed the NFLPA to funnel all the money away from the retired players and provide only active players with a cut of the EA Sports licensing deal, which was the union's largest, topping $35 million this year.

In court, while the lawyers for the retired players built a case for the $28.1 million settlement, the union attorney Kessler was claiming the union could suffer economic harm if it had to pay a large amount.

Thankfully, the jurors weren't buying what Kessler was selling. "We felt we had to send a message that the union needs to represent and protect all its members," said Susan Smith, one of the 10 jurors. "We felt the players' union didn't do that."

What a shame that this "union" needed such a harsh reminder to force it to do the sort of right thing that once came to it so naturally.