No, I don't think the NFL is dead (as the title of this post might suggest), but it will never be the same after today. When it returns, we will see a completely different pro football landscape than we have been used to.
Today, the NFL Players Association declared their dissolution as a labor union and reorganization as a "professional trade association." This move essentially serves one purpose. As a union, the NFLPA cannot bring legal action against their employers (the NFL). By reforming as a "trade association," individual players can now bring legal suit against the league using antitrust law. Their hope is to regain potential wages lost by the owners locking them out.
A lockout cannot happen until the CBA officially expires, and that will happen at 11:59 tonight. A vote to start a lockout is surely to follow.
The more immediate concern for the owners is the players seeking an injunction in the court of David Doty in Minnesota. This is the same judge who ruled last week that the owners did not negotiate in "good faith" when they signed TV contracts guaranteeing payouts to the league amounting to $4 billion in the event of a lockout. An injunction would immediately stop any lockout proceedings. So, you would think the pendulum is in favor of the players, but not so fast. Injunctions are very hard to get. Essentially, in order to get an injunction to stop a lockout, the players have to prove to Doty that their entire livelihood will be negatively affected by being locked out. Since most of these guys are millionaires, I doubt they'll have an easy time proving that. We shall see.
In my next post, I will be posting an A-Z guide to help you navigate through the stormy waters that is the NFL collective bargaining mess.
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