Burn those draft cards!

Prior to the decertification of the National Football League Players' Association, the players and owners bargained collectively on the rules by which the NFL operated.

Unlike most industries, the NFL was allowed to operate in such a way that violated the Sherman Anti-trust Act. The league created high barriers to the formation of any competing league so as to guarantee itself a monopoly over the professional football industry. Everyone turned a blind eye to what the league was doing because it was small potatoes -- until the cable industry matured.

Suddenly the NFL was a hot property and the rights fees have escalated to the point that the NFL brings in roughly $9 billion a year. That money is divided among the owners and players per their collectively bargained agreement.

But with the decertification of the NFLPA, and with the amount of cash that flows in NFL coffers, folks are starting to take a harder look at how the NFL operates. After the NFL instituted a lockout this spring, the players were successful in having a federal judge in Minnesota sign an injunction preventing the NFL from continuing the lockout. The players alleged that the NFL was in violation of anti-trust laws.

Now that the lockout has been lifted there is uncertainty regarding the rules under which the league will operate in 2011. Any rules the league tries to impose to limit the right of free agents to sign with the teams of their choice may be challenged as being in restraint of trade. But what about tonight's draft?

By instituting a draft, the league is preventing new players from exercising their right to choose where they work. The league is also preventing teams from exercising their right to hire the players they choose. The draft hurts incoming players chosen late in the round because they are unable to effectively bargain with their employer over the terms of their employment. The draft also hurts those players who aren't chosen by driving their wages down to the league minimum.

The draft gives the teams all of the leverage in their negotiations with the players. If a player doesn't like the offer made by the team he has two choices - he can sign or he can sit at home; but if he chooses to sit at home, he still can't choose where he plays because the team that drafted him retains their "rights" to his services.

The only question is whether anyone will have the nerve to stand up and challenge it.

The NFL's spring of discontent

While I do some legal work for a local teacher organization, I would never pretend to be a labor lawyer. I have a basic understanding of the process by which the local school district goes about screwing its employees dismissing teachers, but that's about as far as my knowledge extends in that field.

Having made that disclaimer I am quite intrigued by the machinations of the NFL owners and the players in their ongoing negotiations - or whatever you choose to call it at this time. The owners, most of whom have never seen a local government they wouldn't attempt to fleece, claim the players were negotiating in bad faith and that they intended to decertify the players' union all along. The players, many of whom seem to have forgotten how us reg'lar folk live, point to the television contract in which the owners agreed to less overall money in exchange for a guaranteed payment in 2011 whether or not there was any football.

With the NFLPA decertifying itself and the players filing suit in federal court arguing that the NFL is violating anti-trust laws, how on earth can the parties come to a new agreement?

If the players' union isn't a union anymore then how can their be a new collective bargaining agreement? If the NFLPA is now a trade association, how does that give it the right to bargain on behalf of the players? Wouldn't that mean the NFLPA is a union? And, if it's a union, the lawsuit filed by the players is a nullity.

And what kind of a union signs off on agreements that benefit the few at the expense of the many? I don't know of too many "union shops" in which each employee negotiates his or her own deal with the employer. I don't know of too many "union shops" in which the union agrees to a wage scale that pays new workers an obscene amount of money before they've ever worked but doesn't protect older workers from being laid off for no other reason than they're older.

On the other hand, the owners were beyond stupid not doing themselves any good by giving money back to the networks and DirecTV in exchange for guaranteed income in 2011. How could anyone think that was anything more than a blatant showing of bad faith on the part of the league?

As to the division of the booty, the league and the owners are telling us constantly that building new stadiums benefits local economies by creating new jobs and the like. Once again I must ask, if that's true, why can't the owners find private investors who are willing to plop down the bucks for the owners' new playpens? Why are these owners, who profess an undying love of capitalism, so insistent that state and local governments fund their stadiums?

Take a look at the area surrounding Reliant Stadium in Houston. Anyone who's been here for the past 20-30 years will tell you that South Main looks as rundown and seedy now as it did back in the 1980's. The new stadium did nothing for the economy. There were no benefits. It just means that we financed a fancy new (antiseptic) building so that a (very) rich man could stuff his pockets with more cash.

Now I'm not going with the "a pox on both your houses" attitude in this matter. My sympathies are more with the players - they're the ones everyone's paying to see and they're the ones risking permanent injury and disability every time they step out onto that field.