AzPatsFan
Veteran Starter w/Big Long Term Deal
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2004
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Az, i respect your opinion as well and likewise have agreed with you on many occasions, but not this one. from what i can tell you are saying that the players simply have to take whatever the owners offer and that's not a negotiation.
The owners were not complaining about insufficient revenue in the pre-2006 CBA. I hardly think the terms of that CBA treated the football players as enslaved workers in a sweat shop, Take it or Leave.
It pays Sports leagues, just like Hollywood does, to have a "Star system", to encourage attendance at the productions that it vends. It adds "glamour, mystique and aura " to their product offering. Some of the best cinematic offerings of Hollywood were made with non-Star personnel that became "Stars" for the effort, but were not before hand, from Casablanca to Star Wars. The productions themselves create, "Stars".
There are altogether too many unthinking people that assume a court litigation settling whether the owners can conduct a particular labor action called a "lockout", has any meaning or solves any particular thing.
It is as useless to an eventual settlement, as whether the Union can "de-certify", another legal buffoonery. Antitrust Law violations must favor the Players; as Sport leagues must routinely violate these laws in order to operate.
Even eventual awards with triple damages solves nothing either, but it at least effects some terms of the nature of any eventual settlement, such as outlawing a patently illegal, collegiate Draft. What about Union scale?
Many Union agreements specify the "union wage" for all employees of a category, regardless of seniority. How do you think it will affect a Sports league to pay all QBs or all Tackles the same? Of what use is Free Agency then?
Like other Union agreements, there could be only one payscale for the player's lifetime until another CBA is agreed to, which may alter it. It may encourage fans of teams assigned a Brady or Manning, but what about another team's fans faced with a lifetime of Ryan Leaf, or Jamarcus Russel, but no way to change it?
Trades are another patently illegal device. Why can you tear up a home and settled family existence to send a player elsewhere. What would the incentive be, if the pay were all the same. Who would trade a better say Tackle for a poorer one, and for what, with what?
The Player's chosen "unelected", "non-existent" Union head is a Lawyer. He thinks winning a judgment changes something, anything. It doesn't, except to add credibility that he is a "tough guy", Union leader, which may be important to his NFLPA re-election, but not to the interests of the Players.
It is as useless as litigating whether a Union exists or not, which is another stupid legal irrelevancy going on. The lawyers can bill, and argue how many Unions can exist on the head of a Pin, but does that change a thing? Of course not.
Any Court award, payable by the owners, for patently obvious, but un-conceded, "genuine" Antitrust violations, merely lowers the amount of money they are wiling and will pay to the Players. The discussion of what the next CBA will be, is not changed one iota, and has merely been obfuscated and delayed from even starting to occur.
The day after an exhaustion of the last Appeal on an unfavorable "lockout" opinion, and the owners are still free to conduct another labor stoppage such as to cancel the season just like the NHL owners did. Caterwauling that its impossible due to existing stadium leases, existing player contracts, et cetera were just as valid for the NHL owners. But they still managed to carry that unprecedented, labor action through.
There has been ZERO progress on reaching a negotiated settlement and neither side is even offering proposals to do so. There is no basis to decree what a "Fair" profit is, except as a way to curry PR and fan favor, but that doesn't sign paychecks.
It is a test of wills and bank accounts now, until one side cries "Uncle". Meanwhile the Lawyers stage a ceremonial Kabuki dance, to make it appear as if something is happening. In such a contest, I favor the old dictum, "... God fights on the side with the best artillery...".
The Owners have that; the Players hope the Owners don't have the will to use it.
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