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Unfortunately, the "bad news" makes logical sense. The Supreme Court wouldn't give a rat's patootie about the harm to the Patriots as a team, only whether any harm to Brady could be recouped at a later date.I had a conversation with my lawprof friend (who has been a CA7 clerk for Easterbrook) about timelines re: going to SCOTUS.
Good news and bad news.
On the good side, he said that the party asking SCOTUS to hear the case has 90 days to submit their certiorari petition and that "extensions are common and readily available". And then if the other side wants to submit a brief saying why SCOTUS shouldn't hear the case even more time will go by before SCOTUS even begins to decide to hear it or not. And then once SCOTUS finally has the petition and opposition in hand it takes an average of 6 weeks to decide whether or not to hear it.
So what that means is if en banc happens and Brady loses and if Brady can get a stay out of CA2 or SCOTUS pending SCOTUS's decision on whether or not to hear the case then we might get through the entire 2016-2017 season before SCOTUS even decides whether or not to hear the case (say en banc loss at beginning of September, then 90 days takes you to beginning of December, then throw in an extension and the NFL's reply time, and you're past the Superbowl).
On the bad side, he thinks that if en banc review is not granted (and perhaps even if it is) that NFLPA/Brady will have a tough time getting a stay from anyone pending SCOTUS decision on hearing the case or not because SCOTUS won't view missing the games as enough "irreparable harm" to the NFLPA/Brady because he doubts "they give a **** enough about football" and because they'll view Brady as being able to "repair" the harm by getting his game checks back if he ultimately wins (i.e. that SCOTUS would view the lost paychecks as the thing that matters, not the act of missing the games, and lost paychecks can always be restored after the fact, hence no "irreparable harm").