tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340267694136039744.post8780419007658012949..comments2023-02-27T00:29:24.632-06:00Comments on HR Law Guy: NFL Rulings make Strange BedfellowsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340267694136039744.post-70903666523597561282012-03-18T15:50:58.040-05:002012-03-18T15:50:58.040-05:00Great comment, thanks for the time and effort. I ...Great comment, thanks for the time and effort. I suspect that the reason this isn't getting more play in the media is that the League would likely play hardball with any sportswriter or organization that kept the focus on this thing, faster than you can say "ESPN". The collusion regulations for the NFL owners are more limited than you might think--as far as I can tell from reading the open sources, the only relief for either club is to file an anti-trust action against the League and the other clubs. That's not likely to happen, and it's clear that the other clubs and the union are perfectly happy to let the 'Skins and Cowboys take the fall. It's not like the two clubs' owners are the most popular people in the room, anyway.Lou Mhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15095164582132820416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7340267694136039744.post-72504023758771633342012-03-17T09:54:27.554-05:002012-03-17T09:54:27.554-05:00I don't know why this story is going away so q...I don't know why this story is going away so quietly. Even if Dallas and Washington are choosing not to fight this, the reasons why they'd make such a choice would surely be fascinating to learn.<br /><br />Even if the NFLPA isn't inclined to fight this, isn't each team a party to the CBA? If so, doesn't that mean that each team has the right to claim CBA benefits and enforce its terms? That means that Dallas and Washington, in the old CBA, had a contractual agreement that said that in 2010, they could spend whatever they wanted. If they wanted to buy every free agent in the league with a contract for a hundred million in 2010 and a dollar a year for ten years after, that was their contractual right, wasn't it?<br /><br />If they have that contractual right, then league "warnings" not to exercise that right should be legally meaningless, right? "I told you not to do what your contract gives you the explicit right to do" generally doesn't stand up in court, I wouldn't think.<br /><br />Which the league seems to understand, because its statements seem to be carefully couched to avoid saying that the two teams are being penalized for any legal breach or rule violation. Instead, they seem to just say that adjustments are being made to ensure competitive balance.<br /><br />I gather that this is an attempt to keep the penalties within the framework of the stuff that everybody agrees that the commissioner can do -- managing the competitive aspects of the game for the overall good of the league. But I would also think that there's some sort of general provision that prevents this commissioner exercise of discretion from singling out franchises for disparate treatment. The league, in the interest of "competitive balance," couldn't just decide that the Patriots needed to go a few years with 45 man rosters and no first round draft choices, right? There has to be something in the league charter that says that the other teams can't just vote to make the Pats play offense with three downs instead of four. So I've got to think that there's no catchall authority to allow the league to vote to penalize franchises without there having been some violation of the rules. Which all parties say did not happen in this situation.<br /><br />Is there something in the new CBA that permitted this? Was it explicit enough that the Cowboys and Redskins knew they were subjecting themselves to this when they signed on? Was it implicit, and did their lawyers just not realize the impact of something that they agreed to but didn't see the endgame for?<br /><br />It seems to me that there are only a few possiblities here. Maybe the penalized teams signed on to this. But if they didn't, and the new CBA didn't authoirize this, they have a breach of contract claim. If they didn't agree to this and the new CBA did allow this to happen, then the agreement of the other owners to do this to them surely looks like a combination in restraint of trade.<br /><br />Maybe it's only a small cross-section of folks who are such legal nerds and football geeks who would care about this. But as somebody in that little cross section, it's killing me that this story is apparently just going to go away without anybody paying it any more attention.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com