In the opinion of NFLPA* lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, it can take as long as two weeks to reconstitute the union. In the opinion of NFL lawyer Bob Batterman, it can take as few as two hours.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, much closer to two hours than 312.
But someone out there is trying to take matters into their own hands, setting up a website aimed at harvesting signatures for the reconstitution of a union. And the NFLPA* is scrambling to keep players from using it.
The NFLPA* has sent the following e-mail to all agents: “We have received information from players indicating that they are being referred to a website – nflvr.com. The website is asking players to vote to reconstitute as a union and that the players can use the site to facilitate that action. Please be advised that this site is not affiliated with either the NFL or the NFLPA. You should ignore this site and advise your players to do so as well.”
Based on available online information, the site was created on Thursday by Austin Jordan of Roanoke, Virginia.
The fact that the NFLPA* felt compelled to point out the existence of the site — and to encourage players not to use it — suggests that the NFLPA* had reason to believe that players were thinking about using it. (Or maybe were actually using it.)
The truth is that, if 50 percent of the players plus one vote to create a union, they’ll be a union. It doesn’t matter whether the NFLPA* organizes it; anyone can. (Indeed, there was talk back in April and May of a group of free agents trying to unionize separate and apart from the NFL.)
It’ll be interesting to see whether there are any players out there who want to push this thing along — and who perhaps feel that the NFLPA* Executive Committee and board of player representatives are keeping them from voting on the final proposal — will register.
UPDATE: Last night, Steelers linebacker James Harrison re-tweeted the link to the site.
Channel Finder
would think the possibility of identity theft would crop up with a random site like that appearing.
-QG
De Smith doesn’t approve this because he didn’t think of it…. Why does the NFLPA* keep dragging its feet?
That site looks ridiculously unofficial.
Then again, I bet we could find some players who think it looks legitimate…
That’s awesome! Good for Austin.
I hope the NFL falls apart. Go NHL!
Do a WhoIs search: the owner is Austin Jordan of Jordan Ventures, Inc… I’m serious. From Roanoke, VA.
Duh, you guys already saw this… (smacks forehead)
LOL What a bunch of drama queens. Who knew, right?
who’s austin jordan??
I plan on voting this afternoon
- Vonnie Holliday
That’s odd, you can de-certify and file an anti-trust lawsuit in about one minute, but re-certify? Oh, well that would take two weeks.
what would happen if 50% + 1 all voted yes on this site? that would be a head-scratcher, wouldn’t it.
I’d love it. It’d be the perfect ending to the perfect storm and it’d be proof positive that more than half of the NFL players weren’t behind this whole series of shananigans to begin with.
“would think the possibility of identity theft would crop up with a random site like that appearing.”
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Huh? Who’s ID did he steal? It is some guy starting a voting board to have players vote to re-form the union. Nothing against the law here at all. Anyone can do that. He would need half the players to sign it but it would work I believe…
It says all you need is your name and e-mail address — Vincent Jackson at vincent.jackson@chargers.com is now a registered member of the new union and happy to sign on to the deal approved by the owners!!
Someone is going to blame the owners for hiring Austin to start this website in 3….2….1….
This is on the players now. They have to get the deal done and get the season going.
Haha, your linking made their site crash.
Ha the site crashed from everyone trying to access it.
LOL…I hope they all flock to it! Austin might be the next NFLPA executive director if he can pull this off! Too funny!
Nevermind my last post, it seems to be working again.
They are going to have to re-certify at some point… Why wait? Oh, becasue you want us to think the player are in control… We don’t give an F!!!
Jon Beason from the Panthers tweeted about this site yeasterday. It makes all the sense in the world- why can’t the players have a private site set up to vote quickly? The cards can be filled out and returned later, we just need the lockout to be lifted NOW! Even an email or text should be enough to constitute a vote in the technological world we live in. The players better stop stalling, or the owners will pull the deal off the table and we’ll have to start all over again!
Oh man, this is getting comical. If there’s more of this wackiness, I might actually miss the lockout once it’s over.
I had a “kidding” tag at the end that didn’t show up, but felt compelled to clarify that my post was 100% a joke, given how Vicent Jackson currently feels about lawsuits. Paraphrasing my Cardinals soon to be ex-player, he takes this $#!^ serious!
I know why the player reps are dragging this out.
Of the 1900 players that have to vote for a union my guess is that they are afraid that their is already 951 players that will vote yes to ratification and yes to reform the union.
LET THE 1900 PLAYERS DECIDE WHAT THEY WANT TO DO.
The last time the players decertified they took 30 days to become a union again and they forced changes on the owners during the 30 days. That is what they are trying to do again.
Kessler (THE NFL/NBA HATING LAWYER) is still trying to push his personal agenda and if 951 players say yes then there is more litigation MONEY and he can’t kill the NFL.
Pure genious…I would bet money that at least 10 players have already “voted.”
I’m thinking of burning all my Football Jersey’s and never watching football again. Football has always been my favorite sport but this is just plain out of control. I will not go to anymore football games and pay my hard earned money so greedy azz players can make more money. I’m done, I can’t handle it anymore.
I’ll just watch Baseball and Hockey.
The site has crashed from the increased traffic, so it appears.
All-right Austin! A fan (one of us that pays all their salaries) is doing more than they anyone else to fix this thing NOW.
Hey Austin, keep track of your billable hours (that formula would be hours worked/squared x 1,ooo per hour/ squared).
Here we go; Kessler will file a lawsuit against this person.
At least two players-Donte Stallworth and Braylon Edwards-made a toast to the new union!
What a surprise!
If D. Smith and the team reps actually had other players’ interests at heart they would put this thing to a vote and if it failed they’d start up negotiations again. If it passed, obviously it represents the will of the players.
Good for this guy. He is just doing what he feels he should do. Just show these absent minded ass-wranglers how easy it could be. The NFLPA never thought anyone would call them on their BS. Hah! Way to go dude. HE is a fan…
I just signed all the anti-trust players up.
Email harvesting website…I love it.
Some of you are really dumb though or hopefully you are just grasping at straws.
LOL @ James Harrison re-tweeting the link.
There is nothing about that page that would make me think that it is possibly real.
Hell, it has an advertisement (for me anyways) for a website called JV Coeds.
I’d say this Austin Jordan is about to have a ton of hits and is going to make some good cash…
Let’s all go to the site and sign the players up.
Cool! I just tweeted to players they should go to NFL Virtual Reality! Vincent Jackson agrees, we only need 50 percent so screw you Ma-Whine FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL
This Austin Jordan guy is pretty clever. When you go to the website, he says “(please note: we will add more content to this site in the very near future, we just wanted to help in any way we could by providing this easy to use site for voting purposes)” So he didn’t have time to add “content”, but he had time to add his JV Coeds banner, that is some ripoff of Facebook. I think he’s trying to pimp that site. He knows that right now, all eyes are on the NFL. He knew some large news website (cough PFT cough) would post his site for millions of people to see.
Looks like some kid in VA is more skilled then the NFLPA, shocker
How doe he verify the identity of the person signing up ? For example, how does he know that it is in fact Tom Brady and not ………say me
Not as dumb as James Harrison, apparently. I hope they sue the sh@t of this out-of-the-box, junior developer. His other sites are garbage too. At least spend the time to make it look believable.
Funny thing is, I bet he has already harvested over 100 player email addresses. Got to love the internet!
Austin Jordan will be an important figure to those of us aspiring to be NFL historians. What an ingenious idea!
@johnnycamparm
Yeah, it is an awesome SEO play! I still think he needs to get run through by lawyers on both sides for wasting out time.
If 50% plus one player vote on this site, Guess what they are unionized.
Kessler is trying to stop that from happening, but that is the truth. Heck a Facbook page that allowed 50% + 1 VERFIFIED players to vote and zing you have reformed the Union.
The only challange would be showing that the people that set up accounts and voted were actually NOT current players.
I have to admit, the lockout has been more entertaining than the usual NFL off-season…..
What is with the censors on this site? All I did was suggest that the picture should have been the Staples “That was easy” button instead of a panic button, and they deleted my post. I was giving props to Austin for easily putting his site up.
94% yes, 18 total votes.
LOL.
USE THE LINK!!!!
“Let’s all go to the site and sign the players up.”
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ROFL Brilliant!
We can fix this ourselves! Let’s reform the NFLPA tonight!!
Hilarious. Something tells me Austin might be the most popular kid at his high school this fall if he managed to dupe a bunch of NFL players into sending him their e-mail addresses and maybe their cell phone numbers, too.
This smells of identity theft. When a worker wants to vote to begin a Union or even re-certify as a Union, there are two ways to go about this. One is a secret ballot in which voters drop off their ballots to a disclosed location once they have physically proven their identity. The other is via a mail ballot. The address and name on the mailer is of the worker, but the actual ballot itself and the return mailer is anonymous.
Both processes are the approved methods of the NRLB (that governs all unions in the country).
The person(s) who created this “virtual” website, if not authorized by the NRLB, can be in fact fined by the Federal Government and could even see jail time. This will be interesting to see how this develops. Maybe it’s the owners’ minions who put up the site in order to see who in fact is voting to belong to the union. If so, that is illegal.
So, if I register, does that make me part of the NFLPA? Will DeMo have to represent my interests in negotiations? LOL
I would not sign anything that Jerome Harrison re-tweets, except an order for his immediate dismissal.
Chris Harris just Tweeted at me, the NFL has nothing to do with that site so I guess he’s not taking the bait, oh well only 50 percent…
Very cogent, correct and timely post. All Kessler wants is for everything to blow up so he can hopefully collect a huge fee in the Antitrust case.
He is a walking bomb.
The identity of 95% of the pro-owner posters on this site is FINALLY revealed! You are all different handles for Austin Jordan of Roanoke, VA.
“”Technically*”" they are not a union. So why can’t football players independently start another players union. Maybe B Marshall and a whole lot of other players got together and said join our union. Why not?
Roddy White tweeted the link out last night too, but has since deleted it from his Twitter feed.
Antonio Cromartie re-tweeted it too, FYI
Bill’s Player Rep george Wilson just said the major problem is the demand to recertify by Tuesday and that was too soon. Because they spent so long deciding and educating on decertifying that they should have the opportunity to take time to recertify.
Let me ask them this, When they spent “so long” “educating” players on on decertifying, they didn’t spend any time going over how to recertify? No one thought to aks then, “Ok if we decertify, how do we recertify?”
It’s obvious, that if I’m going to convince you to decertify, I’ll explain how easy it will be to recertify. If a union is really needed, then obviously you want to reassure them that putting the union back in place will be quick and painless.
I know they did that. You know they did that. Quit calling the fans a bunch of idiots!
Please be advised that this site is not affiliated with either the NFL or the NFLPA. You should ignore this site and advise your players to do so as well.”
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You mean the NFLPA that decertified and no longer exists, that NFLPA????
frostbelt says:
I hope the NFL falls apart. Go NHL!
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You mean the NHL that “fell apart” and missed an entire season a few years back, that NHL????
obvious?
Why would that be obvious? I don’t care what you’re talking about, it always take longer to put something together than it does to blow it up!
Arrelious Benn re-tweeted it too..
Two weeks = 336 hours. You’re welcome.
Looks like D-Smith got his coatholder to make a few threats.
(From the site in question):
Welcome to NFL Virtual Reality.Due to recent conversation in between us and George Atallah of the NFLPA via Twitter, we have removed some content of our site. We learned that the NFLPA is not interested in doing voting on our site in order to recertify the NFL Player’s Union once an agreement has been made.
We thank George Atallah and the NFLPA for the consideration of using our site and services.
LOL @ the people who think that “signatures” submitted to the website would re-unionize the players.
Someone call up Leaning and see if he still QB’s.
Someone call up Keanu and see if he still QB’s on the weekends.
I love how the guy who has “Low man on the totem pole at Crown Roofing” listed as his occupation on facebook thought that he needed to take the initiative to get something like this done.
Good morning all. I would like to say thank you to all of the supporters of NFLVR.com. To the people that are upset, a lot of the facts have gotten lost somehow. The site has always had a disclaimer in the middle of the front page stating we are NOT an affiliate nor associated with the NFL or NFLPA. Our mission was to have created a place where NFL Players COULD vote for recertification IF the Players, NFLPA, and NFL liked the idea and site. Upon learning from Georger Atallah via Twitter that the NFLPA wasn’t interested, I stopped advertising, removed the voting content from the site, Twitter, and Facebook. As for the email sent to players and agents from the NFLPA, some of the things it states are not true at all and don’t understand why the NFLPA would not have learned the facts before emailing everyone false information? Regardless, the point was to help, the NFLPA didn’t want the help, so I stopped trying. As for NFLVR.com I’ve decided to turn it into a social network/blog site for NFL Players and Fans. I sincerely apologize for my idea becoming such a distraction and wish that the site would have been allowed to help the process. Sincerely, Austin D. Jordan, NFLVR.com
Thank for nice information.