Brady's odds of success

Deus Irae said:

The CBA is slanted heavily in the league's favor. The judge needs to find that the NFL's actions were either clear and significant violations of that CBA, or are clear violations of minimal due process. Outside of that, the courts don't tend to get involved just bcause one side was stupid enough to agree to a lopsided CBA.

It's why you're hearing a lot of "I think Brady would win on the merits, but...". Those people are focusing on the process, and opinion that the NFL will be found to have followed the CBA closely enough, with the CBA due process being at least minimally acceptable.

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That seems to make sense, but why then does the NFL have something like 1-30 record when going to court.

Besides that, although I agree that in the area of punishment, the CBA IS heavily slanted in favor of the League and the Commissioner. That being said, the NFL DOES have to prove that the process was fair, or at least had the appearance of being fair, AND coincided with the CBA and rules of the league.

Now I'm not a legal scholar, but the punishment doesn't come close to the rules of the game in the CBA, since "ball tampering" has previously carried the penalty of a fin of less than $10k. That's a far cry from the millions it would cost Brady in salary alone. Also as far as "fairness" goes, the NFL emails make it VERY difficult to prove they were being anything close to being "fair" in this process.

This is the bias of a homer Pats fan. These are the facts before us on these narrow issues that have NOTHING to do with whether balls were deflated or not, which I agree have no place in the hearing.

I think its pretty clear though that goodell didng follow due process of the cba. Brady was never told what his punishment would be, was never told he would be punished for not turning over his phone and goodell was a biased arbitrator.

The CBA gives him alot of power. But not to do whatever he wants.

The NFL has lost in court every time. I think most of these articles are looking at it from a "most times courts hold them up" when most of the time they hold them up because the employer was within their rights of the cba.

Goodell frequently throws the cba aside and does whatever he wants which is why he loses in court so often

patfanken said:

That seems to make sense, but why then does the NFL have something like 1-30 record when going to court.

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Because Goodell's screwing up even with everything stacked in his favor. Think about this: The owners/Goodell demanded this, yet they're still getting killed in court. Why? Because Goodell's a crusading true believer who thinks the rules apply to everyone buy himself. In the real world, Goodell would probably already be unemployed, and the business he was running would probably be facing about 20-30 lawsuits. In the NFL, Goodell's gotten away with the Rice/Peterson/Hardy screw ups because he kicked the NFLPA's ass in the CBA negotiations, and he's helped bring in huge TV deals.

patfanken said:

Besides that, although I agree that in the area of punishment, the CBA IS heavily slanted in favor of the League and the Commissioner. That being said, the NFL DOES have to prove that the process was fair, or at least had the appearance of being fair, AND coincided with the CBA and rules of the league.

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The sense of that really hinges upon the judge, as the NFL just needs to exercise a minimum level of 'due process'. That evaluation of the standard can change from court to court, and judge to judge.

patfanken said:

Now I'm not a legal scholar, but the punishment doesn't come close to the rules of the game in the CBA, since "ball tampering" has previously carried the penalty of a fin of less than $10k. That's a far cry from the millions it would cost Brady in salary alone. Also as far as "fairness" goes, the NFL emails make it VERY difficult to prove they were being anything close to being "fair" in this process.

This is the bias of a homer Pats fan. These are the facts before us on these narrow issues that have NOTHING to do with whether balls were deflated or not, which I agree have no place in the hearing.

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You're arguing the NFLPA side, and I've largely agreed with their filing, but the NFL isn't going along with that theory. The NFL response is that this is a unique case, and that the closest analogy is PEDs. It's a stupid argument, but it only takes one judge to buy it.

The complaint was well written but trying to come up with a success rate if the case is heard on the merits is a useless exercise unless you are an expert on the nuances of the CBA and "law of the shop" in prior NFL discipline matters. My view is that most federal judges are strongly predisposed to punt reviews of arbitral awards on jurisdictional grounds and not even reach the merits. For that reason, I would put the chances of success at around 25%.

letekro said:

The complaint was well written but trying to come up with a success rate if the case is heard on the merits is a useless exercise unless you are an expert on the nuances of the CBA and "law of the shop" in prior NFL discipline matters. My view is that most federal judges are strongly predisposed to punt reviews of arbitral awards on jurisdictional grounds and not even reach the merits. For that reason, I would put the chances of success at around 25%.

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This is not the area of law (collective bargaining agreements, labor law etc.) I'm really familiar with, so this like most of the discussion I've seen is speculative, but I think Brady's chances are higher here than normal if even half of what the NFLPA set forth in their complaint istrue. It is true that in an arbitration the factual findings and a decision on the merits based on those factual findings is almost never, ever overturned absent a showing of overt bias. But the NFLPA seems to be attacking the scope of the arbitrators powers in terms of what standards of conduct the arbitrator can even hear (player violations versus club/team violations) and what penalties can be imposed. As to these elements there is also the question of advance notice of the rules of conduct that apply to Brady and the potential penalty that follows a violation of those rules. This all goes to fundamental due process under the CBA. Finally there is an argument about procedural due process in terms of time limits, access to the Wells interview notes and the inability to call all witnesses such as Goodell who ruled himself that his own testimony was not relevant. My point is that these seem to be issues the court would be more willing to consider than simply being asked to review a decision the losing side doesn't like. We'll see, but I'm cautiously hopeful.

What do you think the NFL was expecting to happen? Did they think they'd get a quick decision by a judge supporting their position?

That didn't happen.

patfanken said:

Now I'm not a legal scholar, but the punishment doesn't come close to the rules of the game in the CBA, since "ball tampering" has previously carried the penalty of a fin of less than $10k.

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The only other incident of ball tampering I can think of resulted in a letter of warning, and not even a terribly sternly worded one at that.

One other thing we don't know is if the judge is appalled by the the NFL's actions...If so, they're more inclined to lean on them. We don't know, we can only hope.

raduray said:

Given the rapid pace of developments over the past week, this is old. It would be interesting to see a trend line on the Pitts/NE game odds. Is that available online?

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I've always used one of the biggest and well-known (not necessarily the "best" though) books in the business, and believe it or not, the week 1 line is exactly the same as it was in the beginning of May when Brady's suspension was announced.

Seeing as how the line would obviously move with the amount of money placed on either side, this is the best predictor that we have to try and judge the "trend" that you mention. At the moment, we are still favored by -3 points, which is the same as the initial line on May 11th.

Prior to Brady's suspension, NE was favored by about 7-8 points, depending on the specific book/site.

Deus Irae said:

Because Goodell's screwing up even with everything stacked in his favor. Think about this: The owners/Goodell demanded this, yet they're still getting killed in court. Why? Because Goodell's a crusading true believer who thinks the rules apply to everyone buy himself. In the real world, Goodell would probably already be unemployed, and the business he was running would probably be facing about 20-30 lawsuits. In the NFL, Goodell's gotten away with the Rice/Peterson/Hardy screw ups because he kicked the NFLPA's ass in the CBA negotiations, and he's helped bring in huge TV deals.



The sense of that really hinges upon the judge, as the NFL just needs to exercise a minimum level of 'due process'. That evaluation of the standard can change from court to court, and judge to judge.



You're arguing the NFLPA side, and I've largely agreed with their filing, but the NFL isn't going along with that theory. The NFL response is that this is a unique case, and that the closest analogy is PEDs. It's a stupid argument, but it only takes one judge to buy it.

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Stupid indeed. Goodell tried to draw a parallel between an equipment violation and a PED violation by pointing to how such a violation is imposed with discipline per the Steroid Policy. And yet he has denied Due Process, which is a player's right under that very same policy.

This right of appeal (“Due Process Appeal”) is limited to claims only in the following circumstances:

(a) The conduct of the appeal or hearing did not comport with one or more of the following established principles of industrial due process: (i) the Player was not provided with notice of the basis for the discipline; (ii) the Player was improperly denied an opportunity to present evidence or testimony in support of his appeal; (iii) the Player was improperly denied the opportunity to cross-examine a witness whose testimony was offered in the Section 5 appeal hearing in support of the discipline imposed; or (iv) the Player was improperly denied access to documents or other evidence in the possession of the League or a Club and unavailable to the Player or his representatives indicating that he did not violate the Policy or that a witness whose testimony was offered in the Section 5 appeal hearing was untruthful; or

(b) The decision affirming the discipline subjected the Player to an increased and disparate sanction when compared to other similarly situated Players and the Hearing Officer failed to reasonably set forth the basis for the variation. Any discipline imposed that falls within a specified numerical limit set forth in the Policy shall have a rebuttable presumption that it is not disparate.

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That first circumstance is almost verbatim to what the NFLPA is claiming in their suit.

RayClay said:

Right. But they didn't though. An equipment violation. A crime that didn't exist before and therefore no punishment was explained before hand. Many other failures to to follow rules, have rules or have punishments that were consistent and agreed upon.

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems there were a lot of those.

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This needs to be repeated often, as in reality it is not a big deal.. if he had floundered in the tightly controlled setting of SB 49 there may have been more validity to the whole idea of deflated balls, however as he excelled in the 4th quarter this "equipment violation" seems to have lost some value..

It has become a big deal because the NFL wanted it to become a big deal, although not convinced that they believed that it would become a national story repeated daily.... the whole thing reeks of unintended consequence.

TriplecHamp said:

Most of the statistics I have seen referenced are looking at the odds of your standard arbitrator being overruled by a federal judge.

There is a lot more information available to us to make a better odds estimate but nobody has used them.

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I think I desperately need the football season to start. When I read this, I started wondering if they kept stats on individual arbitrators and who led the league and...****, I can't believe my entire summer has been wasted over this stupid ****ing case.

TheRightTool said:

Stupid indeed. Goodell tried to draw a parallel between an equipment violation and a PED violation by pointing to how such a violation is imposed with discipline per the Steroid Policy. And yet he has denied Due Process, which is a player's right under that very same policy.



That first circumstance is almost verbatim to what the NFLPA is claiming in their suit.

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As for iv, wasn't he also denied access to the investigator's notes? I believe the league claimed that Wells' report was just as good..Ugh, no, those were Wells' conclusions. "We'll take the unaltered notes for $400 Alex"