8th Circuit Court Grants Stay, Lockout Continues

[Dirtbag59]

Originally Posted by NC_Skins

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.

It would have most likely been audited by a public firm, companies which ever since the fall of Arthur Anderson and Enron are under intense scrutiny (which is an understatement) to audit statements correctly. They already know 99% of the tricks companies use to either inflate earnings for stock purposes or report losses for tax purposes.

What's amazing, and what shows the absolute distrust the players have for the owners, is that the NFL offered the players to have an independent auditor -- to be determined by both sides -- study the audited financial statements. The independent auditor would have studied the statements, then reported to the union the year-by-year profit-and-loss statements for each team. Theoretically, that would have shown whether teams were becoming less profitable in the past two or three years, a core argument of the ownership.

Read more: Full access to financial statements at core of NFL labor issues - Peter King - SI.com

In short if the owners try to pull a fast one it would most likely be discovered by the auditors and corrected. Remember these aren't the accountants employed by the teams or the NFL. This would be done by an outside firm that would be putting it's reputation on the line in the interest of providing accurate financial reports.

And also remember this is a very public case thats being watched closely by the government, no accounting firm in their right mind is going to help the owners, or the players for that matter, cook the books.

Bottom line I would fully expect the third party audits to be accurate. What I wouldn't trust is the players getting their hands on these reports and not trying to toy around with the numbers to help their case. As has been said before the players are obsessed with obtaining leverage, as are the owners but the players seem to be under more pressure, and pressure is one of the key motivators when it comes to potential fraud.