Take your personal political obsessions out of this because they make you sound foolish. Read the post from the attorney that appears just after yours. The writing has been on the wall in Big BOLD Letters for a long time. The owners simply ignored it.

The NFL is a gold-producing goose paying billions of dollars of which the owners reap the lions share no matter how much they choose to poor-mouth and how much gullible people choose to believe them. But after generations of exploiting talent, they didn’t like the simple idea of players having some of the eggs. So like the king, they’re now standing on the brink of strangling the goose.

We are at this point because the owners opted out of a sound CBA and tried to get more. They rejected a player offer that would have given them more but not enough. They played fast and loose with the law in planning their lockout strategy and got shut down. They didn’t stop. The players caught them off-guard with a quick end-around. They didn’t stop. Instead they gambled everything on a flawed legal stragegy. It’s time to stop and sign an agreement before they lose everything. But some men simply can’t take No for an answer.

The owners need to union bust….sorry if that inconvenient truth hurts your feelings.
if I am the owners, I dont do a deal, I Set a cap at 50 million dollars and its a free for all after that.
that would get the players attention almost immediately.
almost immediately half the leagues players are out of jobs.
And dont let the players re-constitute their union.
You wanna sue? we can play hard ball to.

The only problem with your argument is that is EXACTLY what you can’t do! What you are proposing only works if every team has to decide on it’s own rules for doing business…the LEAGUE no longer exists, all anti-trust exemptions no longer apply and you are now 32 separate businesses. When have you ever seen 2 businesses agree on anything? the hardball you propose playing means there will be NO NFL FOOTBALL. I don’t understand why so many people don’t understand that THE OWNERS don’t exist without a UNION – anti trust 101, high school level civics class.

the law and facts here are very very clear, which is why the NFL keeps losing in front of both Republican and Democratic-appointed judges. The fact that you’d call this political bias, without any evidence backing up your claim, without any apparent understanding of the legal issues or facts under consideration, clearly paints YOU as the political hack. Get a clue, stop listening to talk radio, and start actually researching things before you spout off on them.

I love and have fought for my country. I would fight again if called. Since you hate her so, enjoy Europe? South America? Canada?

The owners may have had poor legal strategy knowing the odds they are facing in that COURT, but they are right that they should not be forced to share any revenue or open there books or anything else these criminals are demanding!

Option 12: if the players win, all high $$ veterans are cut immediately, and sign a 53 man roster of undrafted rookies for $30 and hour with a minimum obamacare and no pension of anykind!

What a pitiful place this country has turned into!
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What you are proposing is far more un-American. What you fail to understand is that the owners have the benefit of not having to compete against each other. This is what is an antitrust violation. Businesses cannot work together to set prices or artficially impact the market. So, owners can now compete against each other for players with no draft or free agency rules. If one team doesn’t want to sign high priced veterans, I am sure another team will. If this means that smaller market teams cannot compete, well then that’s too bad for them. That is just the way capitalism works.

The US Supreme Court is a conservative court. And it ruled 9-0 against the NFL in the Needle case. 9-0!!!! The league couldnt get one conservative on the Supreme Court to agree with them?

Something is very, very wrong with the NFL’s legal strategy. And they will continue to get destroyed in front of every court until they fix it.

The owners have the enviable position of being a very poorly regulated monopoly. Since when does middle America shill for that?

Glad you’re all still out there. Let’s put this nastiness behind us and play some football!

The majority of the owners have very successful business enterprises outside of football. So it must be dumb luck that the owners have been successful outside of football however when matters pertain to football they are just simply devoid of common business sense and practices.

The owners all have separate business interests outside of football so they have been successful in various other industries.

So when it comes to the common business interest which is the NFL the common failure point has been the Minnesota court system.

Not labor disputes as a number of owners have other business interests which either employ union members or have business dealings with unions

The common failure point has been the Minnesota court system!

This is what is wrong with America, the law should be interpreted based on jurisprudence as opposed to partisan leanings which some on this board would prefer to support their political bias.

The Jerry Jones et al essentially operate a monopoly, have the best system in sports and are willing to kill the golden goose because they want to skim another billion off the top, not reveal their books……because they feel like.

The small market teams will make more money by spending less. The big market teams will make more money by not having to share as much with small market teams. This solves the biggest obstacle that the owners faced in the last CBA negotiation.

Best of all, when the competitive ballance of the league is destroyed, the owners can point to the players and say, “It’s all their fault!”

Yeah, screw the law.

The owners need to get to the 8th Circuit to level the playing field.

Having a blind following of either the owners or the players reminds me so much of politics where a percentage of our population simply vote along party lines.

The reality is both sides have valid points, which need to be collectively bargain by business people and not the lawyers looking for wins through litigation.

It just seems that reasonable people on both sides could agree to a rookie wage system that protects owners from the future Jamarcus Russells and Vernon Gholstons getting mega-rich for doing nothing.

Then, play some damn football.

The whole anti-trust issue in sport has been brewing for decades and probably ought to get finally settled like this is heading (needle).

And yes, I know the players are no chior boys themselves.

They need to get their cases out of liberal courts. Its that simple.
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In the name of all that’s holy, please move on from that ridiculous argument. The NFL isn’t just losing anti-trust cases in “liberal” courts. They’re losing them everywhere, including the currently conservative-leaning Supreme Court. You’re making the same mistake the owners are making. You’re blaming everyone else because you don’t like the outcome.

I have to say, while I’m a democrat, most of my friends are either Republicans or conservative leaning independents. We get along just fine, and we have some interesting debates from time to time. It’s you die-hard right wingers that are so frustrating. You’re so blinded by your ideology that you refuse to recognize any facts that don’t agree with that ideology. The NFL doesn’t keep losing anti-trust cases because everyone who rules against them is some raging liberal out to get every rich guy they can get their hands on. They keep losing because there arguments aren’t in line with anti-trust law. When it came to labor negotiations, they used to be protected by anti-trust exemptions that arose from the fact that the players were unionized and there was a negotiated cba in effect. That’s no longer the case, and so now those exemptions are gone. It’s as simple as that. The only way to rule against the players in this case is to rule that the decertification never happened. Since the players have the right to dissolve the union, and since they followed the appropriate process to do so, that’s hard to prove in court.

I don’t think it is likely their attorneys led them down this road with bad advice. I am sure they were advised that losing on lockout was a possibility or even a likelihood. Certainly attorneys can drink their own kool-ade but I cannot believe they would have told the owners the lock out was a guaranteed winning strategy. I am sure their are many memos on this point.

The owners may have had poor legal strategy knowing the odds they are facing in that COURT, but they are right that they should not be forced to share any revenue or open there books or anything else these criminals are demanding!

Option 12: if the players win, all high $$ veterans are cut immediately, and sign a 53 man roster of undrafted rookies for $30 and hour with a minimum obamacare and no pension of anykind!

What a pitiful place this country has turned into!