The FIFA World Cup may be front and center in our sporting minds today — even the boys at Shutdown Corner put together their NFL Starting XI (Randy Moss on the wing? Are y’all wakin’ and bakin’ with Santonio Holmes?) — but there is rather important news on the NFL front today. It appears the Players Association might have found a way to save the 2011 season after all.
As I’ve written here before, NFL owners have guaranteed contracts with the television networks for the 2011 season. That means they don’t have to play a single down of football that year, and the networks still have to pony up the cash. According to NFLPA boss DeMaurice Smith, that amounts to about $4 billion.
Smith, however, has formulated his counterattack, and it’s a big one:
On Wednesday, the players association filed a Special Master claim, contesting that the league took lower revenue (the kind that would be shared with the players under any agreement) in exchange for guaranteed money in the event of a lockout in 2011 (not a cent of which the players would see) in a renegotiation of television contracts. Smith and the players say that this is a direct violation of the fiduciary duty the owners are required to act under — they must seek revenue with an equal eye for the good of the players as for themselves.
You can read the whole background on this claim here, but the long and the short of it is this: If the arbitrator of this case rules that the NFL acted in bad faith at the negotiating table, the NFLPA can effectively block the owners from getting their $4 billion until a new collective bargaining agreement is in place.
This, my friends, is some serious hardball. Smith is betting that this move will convince the owners to stop stonewalling and start negotiating. The owners are already claiming the NFLPA’s charges are “meritless,” and it appears the owners are digging in to fight this point.
If you want to see the 2011 NFL season happen, you will absolutely side with Smith and the NFLPA here. NFL owners don’t want the 2011 season to happen. Smith and the NFLPA do. The owners will piss all over you, and you’ll take it, because they have the product that you want, and they know you’ll shell out huge sums of money to get it, even after a whole season is canceled.
You and I won’t stop being football fans. The players know this. They’re on your side. They want football in 2011 just as much as you do. I would encourage all of you out there not to fall into that stereotypical “billionaires v. millionaires” argument that always pops up around labor negotiations in sports. This time around, it is merely ”32 rich bastards v. everyone else.” Here’s hoping they don’t let the bastards win.
