Late June is a time for NFL players to get a little bit of rest between the end of off-season minicamps and the start of training camps. But Giants fullback Jim Finn can’t relax right now. He’s recuperating from shoulder surgery that ended his 2007 season three months before the first game.

Finn is one of many NFL players that endured a long, hard spring, engaging in tough practices run by coaches who ignore a simple off-season practice rule: No contact allowed. The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the players stipulates that off-season practices are supposed to be noncontact exercises that make player safety the highest priority. But judging from the way off-season practices actually run, NFL coaches have about as much respect for the rules of the league as the oft-arrested Tennessee Titans cornerback Pacman Jones has for the rules of society.

Ample evidence exists to show that players do engage in physical contact that the collective bargaining agreement bans. Giants coach Tom Coughlin is heading into his 12th season as an NFL head coach, and he knows he has to say publicly that his practices abide by league rules. But neither he nor anyone else associated with the Giants has explained why Finn was lost for the season with a shoulder injury suffered while blocking during an off-season practice.

Finn’s torn labrum was the most serious injury any Giants player has suffered during the off-season, but Finn’s blocking during a supposedly noncontact practice wasn’t an isolated incident. The Giants even have videos posted on their official Web site that show contact between linemen during off-season activities. Most of the videos show players participating in drills that are permitted during off-season practices: quarterbacks throwing, receivers catching passes, linebackers hitting tackling dummies, and offensive linemen pushing blocking sleds. But some videos show offensive linemen — wearing helmets but not shoulder pads or leg pads — blocking defensive linemen. That is strictly prohibited.

Coughlin is in charge of everything that goes on at the Giants’ practices, and the collective bargaining agreement states, “Any head coach who is responsible for conduct which violates the off-season workout rules will be subject to a fine by the commissioner.” But so far there’s no reason to believe that Coughlin will be fined, and that’s because the NFL players’ union has yet to make an issue of it.

The Giants are not alone in conducting practices with contact during the spring. There are reports throughout the league of linemen blocking, defensive backs shoving wide receivers, and linebackers hitting running backs. One team, the Oakland Raiders, was forced to cancel this week’s team activities after violating the off-season practice rules, but that punishment was just a slap on the wrist, as the Raiders’ only activities scheduled were weight lifting sessions that most players will do on their own.

The Raiders are far from the only team to break the rules, but they’re the only team to suffer any consequences. Perhaps the most blatant example of the way contact is accepted in the NFL comes from Joe Thomas, a rookie offensive lineman for the Cleveland Browns. Thomas told the Akron Beacon-Journal that even though his sole NFL experience consists of practices without pads, “We probably hit more than we did with pads at Wisconsin.” Coaches and veteran players are usually savvy enough to refrain from admitting publicly that they engage in contact practices during the off-season, but rookies like Thomas sometimes don’t know any better than to divulge the NFL’s dirty little open secret.

The no-contact rule was reached, like every clause of the collective bargaining agreement, after good-faith negotiations between the union and the owners. If members of a union representing mechanics or plumbers or truck drivers were being instructed by their bosses to engage in activities that were specifically outlawed in the union contract, the union leaders would raise hell. But the NFL players’ union has stayed quiet regarding teams’ practice violations.

The biggest reason for the lack of enforcement of the rules is that few players will complain. The majority of the players on off-season practice rosters have no assurance that they’ll make the team when the regular season starts, and the last thing they want to do is make waves by complaining about the intensity of practice. And coaches go easier on the star players, so the players who could raise the issue without risk of losing their jobs often don’t have any reason to complain.

But the entire point of having a players’ union — a union that each NFL player spends several thousand dollars a year to support — is to have someone who will go to bat for the players when they can’t or won’t speak up for themselves. And the primary responsibility of any labor union should be ensuring the physical safety of its members. The widespread acceptance throughout the league of coaches violating NFL rules is a sign that NFL Players Association executive director, Gene Upshaw, hasn’t done enough to ensure that the players are getting what they bargained for.

Upshaw should demand that the rules be enforced, which would mean fining Coughlin and the other NFL coaches who have allowed contact to take place under their watch. That he hasn’t made such demands means that contact at off-season practices hasn’t just injured Finn’s shoulder. It has also damaged Upshaw’s reputation.

Mr. Smith is a writer for Football-Outsiders.com