8th Circuit Court Grants Stay, Lockout Continues

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Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

FRPLG: one comment - I think both sides have had a moment(or more ) of bad faith moves. The tv money on the owners side was a highly antagonistic move. The pre-expiration disclaimer/antitrust suit was just as bad faith on the players side. It is hard to believe either has had pure good faith motive but instead both simply have played along fairly predictable lines.

I always felt the tv money contract and going around to all 32 teams to vote on the right to decertify served the same purpose in this standoff. Neither was in good faith or bad faith, but were simply pre-negotiation leveraging. To decertify or lockout before talks broke off would have been the first bad faith move.

If the NFLPA had let the decertification deadline pass and then the owners went, shut off mediation, and locked the union out anyway, then that would have been an act of bad faith and I think the public would be squarely on the players side. But the NFLPA would be caught with far less leverage than they are now (their only play would have been to wait out the owners). And I don't think Smith trusted that the owners wouldn't stab him in the back if he didn't decertify.

A fantastic Prisoner's Dilemma though. And at the end of the day, I suppose that all the March negotiations ended up as was an exercise in game theory.