no i know, you’re right and i’m actually in total agreement with you about these matters of the court. i just despise de smith beyond all comprehension.

Amen!

Leave it to a woman to ruin football.
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Really? CKL and I are both rational, well-informed businesswomen and football fans. She generally leans toward the owners, and I lean toward the players, but we both see areas for compromise. If they’d put us in a conference room in March and given us a few hours, they’d have had a new workable CBA, we’d all have enjoyed our free-agent period, and this drama would have been avoided.

Women didn’t blow the negotiations, lock out, decertify, or sue. But a woman has now put the NFL back to work. If they’ll stop bickering, they can reach a new agreement and the antitrust suits will be dropped. The NFL will go back to business as usual and nothing will be ruined. Please stop whining.

The players have agreed that there should be a rookie cap. That would limit the amount of money wasted on prospects that don’t pan out. Not as much as the league hiring guys that actually know what they’re doing, but hey. The truth is that complete free-agency is the players nuke. Just like a lockout was the owners nuke. The owners used theirs. The players are now using theirs. Unfortunately for the owners, with no CBA, the owners nuke is a dud while the players nuke is a 100 megaton bomb.

Once again, it is illegal for a group of companies to get together and set salaries, prices or employee movement. If you are a doctor, the hospital you work for can’t stop you from working for the hospital across the street. You can quit if you don’t have a contract. Unless you are a part of a union. Being a part of a union means that they bargain your rights. With no NFLPA, the players are like you and me. They can go to any business and get a job. In this case a football job. If the owners collectively deny them that right after a judge made a ruling, they should be thrown in jail.

The owners should stop being greedy. They already get a free billion. Asking for another free billion for stadiums that they don’t even pay for is ridiculous. Look at Minnesota. Even in this economy, with the unemployment rate where it is. A guy with a half a billion is asking the people to pay for his new office. Or else. Using politicians to get around the will of the people. It’s a joke. Plus they know revenue will almost double with the new network deals. No owner will make less than 50 million a year in profits. And since most, if not all, are getting a huge salary for themselves and family members as part of running the company they were all making money anyway.

If they don’t want communism, give real capitalism. Complete free-agency. Not the fake capitalism we actually have. And the league will fail. Or they can go back to the table and hammer out an honest deal. I love my Broncos and was glad to see Pat Bowlen’s willingness to open his books. Most people don’t realize how much money corporations hide from taxes and how much money is made by individuals before revenue and profit is divided.

Rich conservatives do, but they don’t want you to. Look up Buchwald v Paramount. Art Buchwald proved in court that the movie Coming to America was stolen from him. The film grossed over 200 million and was made for less than 40 million. Somehow Paramount was able to say they never made a profit on the movie and Buchwald got nothing. That is the same thing NFL owners do in their accounting. Just like the execs at Paramount, NFL owners are getting rich while pretending to be struggling. That’s why the players want to see the books.

And Vomit, I love you conservative jokes always hollering about freedom and Communism. Here’s a few facts for you. Rich NFL owners want tax payers to buy them new stadiums or else they will leave and go somewhere else. All but two teams made a profit. If they had gotten the best deal from the networks, they all would have made a profit. According to you jokes, when the rich have more money they create jobs. Last year the Forbes 400 made an additional 1.3 billion. We are somehow still in the worse recession since the depression. Sales at Saks are going through the roof though. And since you think a fixed set of judges will give you what you want. Look up American Needle point. It clearly stated that the NFL wasn’t one company. It was a group of companies with common interest. That was the Supreme Court that made that decision, by the way. Mostly conservatives.

So what you’re really saying is what most conservatives really want. You want to have all corporations get together and fix prices. You want to limit employee mobility so that you ca pay as little as possible. You want the public to come together and pay for your office. You want your company to have the same rights as a person, without the same tax obligation. You don’t want the people to be able to strike, but you can look them out.

So let’s see. You guys want all pay equal, everyone will be assigned a place to work, the people pay for your house. But you want to pay less taxes, you want people to be stuck at the job you assigned and if you don’t get your way you will take your ball and go home.

You guys sound like the communist. Spoiled 3 year old communist.

PURE FACT Well said

LABOR UNIONS DON’T CREATE JOBS, BUSINESSES DO. Time to export the league to China and Malaysia. We’ll get a better product for less money.

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Thats funny

So, the NFL now should be open for business. And it should be careful to not violate antitrust rules. Fine.

32 different teams with 32 different sets of rules. One team has 53 players, another one has 40. One team offers benefits, another one doesn’t. One team requires 12 weeks of training camp, another one requires 6. One team has mandatory drug testing and rules enforcing very strict personnel conduct policies resulting in 4 game suspensions for minor offenses, another has an anything goes type of attitude. One team has a veteran minimum of $100,000 per year, while another one offers 400,000.

Cancel the NFL draft. Let players negotiate with any team. The top players get much lower salaries than they do now, while the other picks also get much lower salaries. There is no salary floor. One team pays all of it’s players a total of $40 million, while another one pays it’s players $200 million.

All teams show exorbitant profits, except for a couple owned by multibillionaires who see this as a hobby.

The NFL moves to a 20 game season. The games become meaningless, as only four or five of the richest teams have a realistic chance of winning it all. The bottom tier playoff teams lose opening rounds by 50 or more points because they can’t compete against the better teams.

Fans stay away in groves. TV money declines. Players begin seeing huge salary decreases. Most fans don’t even care anymore. The rich bastards have ruined a once great game.

This is what the NFLPA is asking for, but do they REALLY want this?

Judge Nelson was appointed by Obama to push away from Constitutional law and begin the transformation of our system into one that is obsessed with “social justice” as socialists & commies often call it, and promoting the union vampires who destroy every business in their path. The NFLPA is still a union to anyone with a brain. Decertification changes only the legal status of these moochers, but Judge Nelson still recognizes the political spirit of their arguments and she was hired to favor them, so she did.

When this case arrives in the constitutionally sound hands of a court that understands that the federal government has no business telling private companies that they must remain open against their will, the NFL will prevail. Anyone favoring Judge Nelson and DeMo are “useful idiots” of a tyrannical socialist machine called the federal government under Obama, and you will deserve the inevitable destruction of the league you claim to love.

Screw the billionaire owners. let their league go up in smoke.

After which time the owners will either receive their stay or put in-place rules governing free agency and etc. The risk being run is roughly 5-8 business days. A hearing (if heard) with respects to contempt of court would run parallel to appeal with the 8th Circuit.

I find it amazing that people do not see the significant impact to the NFL GAME and the other major sports with the biased pro-union rulings being handed down by Doty and his toady Nelson. Wake up folks……the GAME we knew will be no longer with this the likes of De Smith and Kessler given such favorable rulings as being handed down by Judge Nelson.

I would love someone who supports the owner, and has some experience with the law, to explain where the owners were cheated. When the owners opted out, the union disbanded and the CBA expired, AT law came into play. At that point they can no longer shut the players out. The only thing the league can do is do no business at all, including the draft. Or go back to business with complete free-agency until they get another CBA. One or the other.

If they don’t get a stay from the 8th and still refuse to start business, the judge should throw every owner in jail.

Go back to the negotiation table and stop being mutts. And if you believe the 8th should overturn Nelson just because they were nominated by Republicans, then we should just tear up the Constitution and give everything back to the Native Americans. Talk about someone that should be suing.

Why doesn’t the league just get back to the table without the Jerriodiots….Jones and Richardson. Their attitude is that of rich jackasses that are surrounded by yes-men, and never hear the word NO.

Get Rooney, Kraft & Mara in a room with the players’ reps and let’s get a deal done. They should, but can’t. More and more it looks like the owners’ whole not makin enough money argument was a money-grubbing smokescreen.

And the real idiots in all of this are Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Drew Brees by lending their names to this travesty. They obviously haven’t a clue about the ramifications of where this is going.

The owners are now in contempt of court. If the 8th circuit doesn’t issue a stay, then the owners face legal consequences for their stubborn obstinance.

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 against the NFL in the American Needle Case.

Judge Doty and Nelson have now followed.

Welcome to America Jerry Jones! Money can buy you lots but not a court case!

The teams are 32 separate businesses. Absent some exemption from the anti-trust laws, they can’t act collectively. If they do, they are liable for triple damages under the anti-trust laws. Triple damages would be devastating.

Goodell’s a lawyer, and a damned good one. I’ll be very surprised if he risks contempt of court by ignoring the court’s clear order to end the lockout.

What the league will do is file some sort of expedited or emergency appeal with the 8th Circuit, and pray as hard as it can that the 8th Circuit issues the stay that the judge refused to issue. But, in the meantime, the lockout is over. And the league acts in concert at its own peril.

isn’t there a way for the league to use the NFLPA*’s self righteous crusade against them?

clearly the courts are in the pockets of the wrong people so maybe the league should move forward with a set of non anti-trust rules that De Smith and the rest of his little gremlins have so egregiously lobbied for. Just make sure other rules that previously protected players so well, such as the salary floor and extensive benefits, are glaringly omitted.
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The courts are in the pocket of the law, not either side in this case. It’s just that the law is not in favor of the owners. There is quite simply only one way that the owners can win, and that is if the courts rule that the players lacked the right to dissolve their union. The owners are counting on the conservative appeals court to save them, but that means that this conservative court will have to rule that once a worker joins a union, they must remain unionized. How many conservatives will feel comfortable arguing that workers must be unionized? Unless that happens on the appeals level, the owners are utterly screwed.

The 32 teams can’t pull crap like collectively suppressing salaries to absurdly low levels, institute across the board labor rules designed to make the players regret pursuing this suit, fire all players. Well, they could, but then they unquestionably behave in an illegal anticompetitive manner.

Look, the league is faced with an anti-trust class action be the players – as a class not a union. Of course the players have benefited from the anticompetitive practices.

The players have simply made a calculated decision to say to the owners that they are willing to blow this whole thing up if the owners won’t play “fair” (as the players define it). In essence, that means that the players and owners are playing a game of chicken even now recognizing that the end game here is bad for both parties.

If the owners engage in the practices some of you knuckleheads are asking for, the owners will a) be on the hook with the DOJ, not just the players; but more importantly b) give the players even more of an incentive to blow the whole thing up. For this to end, the owners have to make the players an offer the players deem worthy of not risking everything for. That, ostensibly means offering more than the players have been offered so far. How much more? well much more with each loss by the NFL in court.