On the contrary, of course- equitable relief is, by definition, only for cases where money damages CAN’T rectify the harm.

The stay has zilch to do with whether or not the players, under current antitrust law, have a good case in their lawsuit. Every problem here can be fixed by writing a check.

“It’s really sad that political bias affects our judicial system from either side of the aisle.”

So, had things gone “your way”, it would have been because the judge, who was wise and knowledgeable, applied the law in a fair and just manner.

But since it didn’t, it just HAS to be because of political bias.

Go away clown, you circus act is getting stale.

Just to be clear, in the sense that you are making a statement with confidence that is obviously false, that is a very stupid comment. I’m sure even the NFLPA’s lawyers would agree on that point. Not only is the constitution silent on these issues, anti-trust law didn’t even exist for most of this country’s history.

Vincent Jackson and among other free agents had chances to sign with other teams and make more money. Most of these teams DENIED them that chance….To make those players suffer? Jackson could have made 8 million with the Vikings…Instead the Chargers denied Jackson of that right….Bad move. All of those owners were prepared for the lockout and wanted it, which was proven in court.

I don’t care if I get a 1000 “thumbs downs” hardly anyone here on these forums knows what they were talking about. The NFL isn’t a private business, private businesses employees are not funded by the public. The lockout is lifted and I was right.

Just another reason to be disgusted with politics!

The writing with Nelson was on the wall when she chose mediation to be handled by one of her cronies as oppose to the Federal mediator.

there is no political bias here, other than what you’re expressing, which is why 2 Republicans and a Democrat have consistently found in favor of the players.

1) As to the “decertification is a sham” argument, here’s a short version as to why this is BS. The actual argument being made by the NFL is that the NFLPA’s decertification is pretextual and being done to get out from bargaining with the NFL in good faith. The first problem with this argument is that the NFL waived it (they agreed to not raise this claim in future proceedings) as part of their 1992 CBA, which was extended as part of the 2006 CBA. Which the owners, in their legal briefs, didn’t really have a good response to. So if you want to explain to the judges why honoring contracts is “political” or “partisan”, good luck, but more likely you guys are just listening to too much right wing talk radio. The second problem with this argument is that the owners made very clear that they were going to extract significant concessions from the players or lock them out. You have numerous quotes from Jerry Richardson and others (someone needs to put a muzzle on that fool) saying they were going to crush the union, you have TV contracts that explicitly benefited the owners in the event of a lockout, you have the owners themselves opting out of the 2008 agreement, and there’s evidently a powerpoint presentation floating around explaining how the owners can be making more money, even if they lose a season’s worth of revenues in the event of a lockout. All of that makes it pretty hard for the owners to argue that the players were not negotiating in good faith, or that decertification was a sham to get them out of negotiating in good faith, when it’s pretty clear that the owners were looking for fairly major revisions to the deal already in place (relevant here is the fact that they never opened up their books to verify their claim that the existing CBA was uneconomical for them), and were prepared for a lockout if they didn’t get those concessions.

Moreover, deepthreat, organizing all 32 teams into one company wouldn’t really matter, if that one company had an effective monopoly on most or all of the professional football industry (which the NFL does). This is something that the most right wing conservatives and most left wing liberals have all agreed on, because it’s pretty clearly established under antitrust law (the economic basis for this is also pretty well agreed upon, which is that you can’t have efficient or “free” markets if there’s one party dominating the market, or multiple parties colluding to dominate the market, and collecting “monopoly rents”).

There’s politics and there’s law. I know a lot of right wing folks are pissed off because labor is winning this fight, and their instincts are to be on the side of the owners, but the law here is very very clear. As such, it’s pretty perplexing as to why the NFL has pursued this very disastrous strategy. People will get fired, and I’d guess that Roger Goodell and Jeff Pash (NFL general counsel) are the first to go. I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more hardline owners are forced out (Jerry Richardson in particular). It cannot be overstated how perilous the owners’ position is right now. They could lose everything if the players want to proceed. All because they got greedy and wanted a few more dollars out of an economic model that was working for them.

This may be the best situation for fans. Football continues and in the end the competitive balance is preserved.

*zing!*

(disclaimer: I’m a huge fan of Darrow)

I really don’t care about how this thing is resolved but this ruling seems more likely to lead to escalation on both sides than resolution. I’m not so sure this is in the game’s or fans’ best interest.

I don’t see how “show up and force them to pay workout bonuses” and “lock the weight room and don’t talk to them” can be seen as a move in the right direction.

But hey, welcome to the NEW NFL–because the players have won this battle, they’ll no doubt win their antitrust case where there will be no draft, no FA limits, and no salary cap. Every player will get to shop their services–but of the college players coming out, only about the top 20 will get the big money–the rest will have to take what they’re offered–or they don’t play. Cause there won’t be any ceiling or any floor either when it comes to pay. So if the judge thought the players were irreparably harmed now, wait till the new rules kick in.

If I ran that league, I would look at what lost that Needle case and reorganize the league into a form that would win it.

They need to be organized into a single business entity.