No link yet, but I just got this on my phone. The NFLPA has sued the NFL for over $1 billion in damages for collusion in the uncapped year. They claim the NFL owners colluded to institute a secret cap on spending as evidenced by them now penalizing teams that broke that cap in what was supposed to be an uncapped year.
The owners should have known this was coming. If you are trying to artificially create a cap how is that not collusion?
Serves the owners right. The second the turned on their own with the silly fines against Dallas and Washington any dimwit should have known what the players would do. Clear case of collusion. The players should win billions or at least much more favorable work rules to make the law suit go away. League arrogance will finally get the owners in trouble.
This seems about right. The whole idea of penalizing teams who violated non-existent rules was ridiculous to start with.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/7...tion-files-suit-vs-nfl-alleges-collusion-2010 So it looks like the league did something blatantly illegal, but the NFLPA kind of gave them carte blanche to do it...?
I guess I'm behind the times, but since when did it come to light that there was a secret cap during the uncapped rules? I thought the Dallas/Washington fines were for frontloading contracts during the uncapped year?
But at that point, there is no future cap plan in place - there was no CBA agreed to at that point that had a cap.
Didn't they send out a memo telling teams they couldn't try and do that? I don't think there would have been a limit to one year contracts.
Legally right or wrong the NFL was morally correct IMO. It wouldn't be far to let the Jets sign any player they wanted with no penalty. If that's what you want then go watch the MLB.
Yes - exactly. But if the league did that on its own, that's the collusion. The NFLPA hadn't agreed to any such thing, so if the league is unilaterally making cap decisions (and holding teams to it through those penalties), you've got a problem.
But that was the league's fault for agreeing to an uncapped year. That was a stupid decision on their part in their last collective bargaining negotiation. The deal was no cap. The league tried to get around what they agreed to by creating arbitrary new rules and restrictions. I think it was good for the game, but the players absolutely have a case that their interests were injured (the exception being what DonnyMost posted: if the NFLPA agreed to such, then the case seems to go away).
Oh please. You think this had anything to do with a "moral" decision? LOL This was entirely about a group of owners trying to break a union and they didn't want a few owners to take advantage of the situation while the majority of them towed the line. It had nothing to do with morality, it had to do with controlling the price of labor.
Yeah, agreed. Bad word choice - fair enough. Teams wanted to keep the big spenders in check. That favors the game of football. That's all I care about as a fan.
I don't know. League should have just changed the salary cap effects of those contracts (i.e. changing high base salaries that were de facto signing bonuses to being signing bonuses).
Teams structure contracts all the time to benefit their cap don't they? Teams float money onto certain years through bonuses and such to avoid cap penalties, to fit people under the cap, etc. Yet in a year that allegedly had NO cap, teams were penalized for doing that because the owners were trying to control the prices that offseason in their effort to battle the union. Sounds like collusion to me.
Cool that you admitted it was a bad word choice. I'll rep you if I can. As for it benefiting the game of football, the Redskins, Cowboys, etc. outspend the other teams significantly anyway and have for years. It hasn't hurt the game has it?
Agreed - but by telling teams that they were going to penalize them, they likely prevented some teams from signing players that otherwise would have gotten bigger contracts. So that's a harm that can't be undone - I think that's where the key player grievance comes from. That said, this is the key to me: "On multiple occasions, the players and their representatives specifically dismissed all claims, known or unknown, whether pending or not, regarding alleged violations of the 2006 CBA and the related settlement agreement. We continue to look forward to focusing on the future of the game rather than grievances of a prior era that have already been resolved." If that's really true, then the players may not have a case.
Teams to mess around to work within the cap, but not treating all signing bonuses as base salary. Do contracts require league approval? An independent arbitrator held up the decision, and agreed with the league that the NFLPA signed off on it in the new CBA.
