After months of public fighting, management of the NFL Players Association and the NFL Coaches Association quietly have settled the pending legal actions that indirectly pitted pro football players against the men who coached them.
According to Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal, the lawsuits were resolved earlier this month.
The NFLCA, which is not a union, was attempting to gain access to a bank account controlled by the NFLPA. The NFLPA was attempting to collect on a debt dating to the days that the NFLCA was run out of NFLPA offices in Washington. The players union also wanted to oust David Cornwell as executive director of the NFL Coaches Association.
Cornwell opted not to divulge any specifics regarding the settlement to Kaplan. “We are moving on,” Cornwell said.
Though some may interpret that as a loss by the NFLCA, the more likely reality is that the parties agreed to a confidentiality provision as part of the final agreement. Otherwise, one or both sides would be publicly boasting of a victory.
Cornwell and NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith have had a strained relationship, to say the least. Cornwell ran against Smith for the NFLPA gig in 2013, and Cornwell has periodically taken shots at Smith’s job performance in the four years since then, including but not limited to a scathing assessment in 2012 of the 2011 labor deal.
More recently, the two men traded barbs regarding the NFL’s 0-15 record in minority hiring for head coaching and G.M. jobs this year.