
On Monday, we reported that the NFL Players Association had filed the long-awaited collusion case against the league, focusing primarily on the lack of activity in the restricted free agency market in 2010.
Mark Maske of the Washington Post has confirmed the report, properly giving us credit. (Thanks, Mark. Tell Mike we said hello.) Everyone else has to date failed to mention the collusion case, possibly so that they won’t have to give us credit thanks to those pesky new AP guidelines regarding credit and attribution.
More importantly, the NFLPA isn’t talking about the collusion case. At all.
There’s nothing on the NFLPA website, and union spokesman George Atallah hasn’t responded to requests for official confirmation and comment. (Other than to say the union has no response.)
Given the recent rancor that the union has displayed and the calculated P.R. ploys aimed at pressuring the owners to do a deal without imposing a lockout, the union’s failure to confirm that, indeed, the collusion case has been filed is curious, to say the least.
Our guess is that the union wanted to apply pressure without reinforcing the league’s claim that the NFLPA is more interested in litigating than negotiating. Even though it’s litigation that could persuade the owners to engage in more serious negotiation.