8th Circuit Court Grants Stay, Lockout Continues

Now things are getting interesting....

The National Hockey League yesterday asked the appeals court for permission to file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting team owners in the NFL case.

“The NHL has a direct interest in ensuring that the determination of terms and conditions of employment for NHL players is the product of a bona fide labor process rather than the ‘lever’ of potential antitrust liability,” attorneys for the hockey league said in their filing.

That league too questioned the players’ ability to disclaim their union and then file suit seeking injunctive relief.

NHL Argument
“The NHL respectfully submits that this cannot be the state of the law,” its lawyers wrote.


NFL Club Owners Seek Reversal of Lockout Order in Labor Fight With Players - Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-09/nfl-owners-ask-u-s-appeals-court-to-reverse-lockout-lift-order.html)

Wow for once a positive look at the lockout....

NFL.com news: In lockout with many losers, Burress might actually be a winner (http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d81fe04ae/article/burress-might-actually-benefit-from-lengthy-lockout?module=HP_headlines)

Uh Oh, Now everyone is coming out of the wood work to file supporting the owners;
Mediation over but NFL says progress was made - ESPN (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=6559848)

Separately, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce business lobbying group filed a brief Tuesday supporting the league.

The chamber, like the NFL, noted that the dispute is currently before the National Labor Relations Board in the form of an unfair labor negotiations charge against the players. Until then, the chamber said, the court fight should be on hold and the NFL should be able to lock out its players if needed.

"For the collective bargaining process to work as Congress intended, the parties to the dispute must largely be left by the courts to their own devices," the chamber said. "The prospect of self-help forces the parties to make difficult choices" with the option of judges coming to their aid."

The NHL, which could face its own labor problem next year, earlier filed a similar brief supporting the NFL.

Information from ESPN's

Uh Oh, Now everyone is coming out of the wood work to file supporting the owners;
Mediation over but NFL says progress was made - ESPN (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=6559848)

I support the owners. Great men like Mike Brown who would rather make disgruntled players suffer in Cincy rather then building his team through the draft with additional picks. Ralph Wilson, who's so senile that he hired a guy named Buddy Nix to build his team then confused the AFC East with the ACC in the hiring of Chan Gailey. Whose team thought that Aaron Maybin would be better then Brian Orakpo.

Guys like Jerry Jones, who thinks he's a great NFL GM. Guys like Dan Snyder who by taking a step back approach now has the time to sue newspapers in addition to bankrupt season ticket holders.

Bill Bidwell, who didn't start trying to win until he realized that the state of Arizona wouldn't build a stadium for a team that didn't even try.

These great business men are men of honor and greatness and I support them.

^ I'm soo confused, but it seems like the reward is lazyness and lack of production? Like Hayensworth. OMG, I just had an epiphany!

I am not completely for the players, but I sure as hell are not going to have a drop of sympathy for the owners on this battle. Yet I am sure they are going to win this, since they appear to be willing to sacrifice a lot (2011 season) to get what they want.

I'm not sure who I'm for at this point. I just don't want games to be missed. Especially that first week being the 10 year anniversay of 9-11. Football needs to be played on that day and it will be a huge public relations nightmare if there's no football on 9-11. And having seen two strikes, 82 and 87, it's only a matter of time before the owners are going to win. Eventually the players will cave in.

^ no matter what side your on it's going to boil down to attrition. Did the players save enough money to last the lockout? or are they going to have to get loans to pay back help out? In the end I'm hedging the players will be forced to give in.

What I don't get is they had 2 meetings, two weeks go by, they had 2 meetings, two weeks will go by, etc. etc. Why can't the magistrate mediator order them to sit every day up until June 3rd? Why do we have to wait until June 3rd now and then they can sit down June 7th?

Why the delay? They can still keep sitting down and talking while they wait to see who was wrong.

Someone needs to make a Real Men of Genius commercial for the lockout.

Today we salute you Mr. Overzealous Power Mongering Litigation Attorney

Mr Overzealous Power Mongering Litigation ATTORNEYYYY

lsC3ni7A88M

They offered to open the books to a third party audit and the NFLPA refused. They wanted to look them over themselves, most likely to look for leverage.

NFL's Statement On NFLPA Decertification - Battle Red Blog (http://www.battleredblog.com/2011/3/11/2045119/nfls-statement-on-nflpa-decertification)

That doesn't say they offered to open their books to a third party. The "audited' information that they offering is going to hide any personal expenses they may be masking as their business expenses. This isn't the real information needed to ascertain whether the owners are lying about their claim of loss of profits. THIS is what the owners don't want players seeing because it'll kill their very plea that they are losing money when in fact they are blowing it for personal gain. (See the LA Dodgers for a prime example) Now, most owners aren't going to go all out like the McCourts but I will bet you my life that owners do use their business stuff for personal use and write it off as a "business expense". In fact, every owner I know in America does this. Goes back to my idea that you can't expect the players to take cuts all because you run your business horribly.


What point of the players leaving 6 hrs prior to the deadline to file their decertification and not staying, not requesting and extension, and not even offering a counter offer makes the owners the bad guys who wanted to opt out of the CBA? I'm sorry but to put it in your words..." I don't care that the players opted out of the CBA."

I don't know of any courts that stay open till midnight, so they had to decertify by 5pm that day or the case wouldn't have stayed in Minnesota. Surely you do realize this right? They would have had an extension of the CBA before that 5pm deadline in order stop the NFLPA from decertifying. However, it had been said that there was no use of going forward at this point because both sides were no budging. They had no other choice but to decertify.



One thing to remember in the owners argument that player costs are the reason they are losing profits. Player salaries for the most part are not guaranteed. (unlike MLB and NBA) The salary cap of a team is no indication of how much they are actually paying their players that year. I still don't believe their bullcrap. I've never seen a business in my life bring in more revenue each year and lose profits. Not without somebody either embezzling money or doing a piss poor job running it.