Filed under: Sports Business and Media
As the NFL's lockout calendar draws increasingly near, negotiations between the Players Association and the owners is already becoming too complicated for the average fan to follow.Yesterday, brought news that the owners filed a complaint with the NLRB claiming that the Players Association was engaging in unfair bargaining practices. As part of that complaint, the NFL cited the player union's threat to decertify in the event the owners lock out the players.
The decertification by the NFLPA would mean the NFL would be in danger of antitrust charges because Collective Bargaining Agreements countenance some forms of antitrust activity, the antitrust exemption, so long as that antitrust activity is bargained for by two parties acting in good faith. Remove that exemption and the NFL could face serious issues when 32 teams are acting in concert with one another.
Is your head spinning from that information?
I know it is.
And things are only going to get more complicated from here. That means that fans, who just want the damn games played, are going to tune out the day-to-day babble surrounding the negotiations.
We expect players to act like inmates. The owners of the asylum are supposed to take the high road, only they seem to have lost the map.
-- David Whitley on why the owners are at fault in the NFL labor dispute
Those details will be significant to a tiny minority of the overall fan base. And the information, misinformation, accusations and counter-accusations are going to be flying so fast and furious from both sides that you'll need a law degree and 20 years of labor relations practice under your belt, to actually be able to parse the significant information. Nope, instead of enmeshing themselves in the details the fans are going to blame someone if come September there are no games.
And I'll tell you who eventually is going to end up being blamed for the impasse by the vast majority of fans -- the players.
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Source: http://nfl.fanhouse.com/2011/02/15/fans-will-blame-players-for-nfl-lockout/
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