Pat, there are actually many reasons why the owners should open their books:

1. Put simply, because legal authority will compel it when the players' anti-trust case moves forward.
The owners are now operating what can only be described as a monopoly. Since the NFL likely generates more than 90% of total revenue of professional football in the United States, that's primae facia evidence that the NFL's structure violates the Sherman Anti-trust act.

As you know, opening the company books is part of the evidentiary process for a Sherman anti-trust case.

The NFL had an anti-trust exemption based on the existence of a collective bargaining agreement. The NFL opted to terminate the CBA and the players decided they were willing to abide by free market rules rather than accept limitations on their employment rights in return for what would now be a lower share of the revenue pie.

Since money is a principle term in any contract, its hardly unreasonable for the players to decertify under such circumstances. The NFL bears the burden of proof before the court will give any weight to their contention that the NFLPA's decertification is a sham.

Of course, the NFL is under no obligation to open their books until proper legal authority compels them to do so.

2. The NFL bargained in bad faith.
I don't think we can really argue this point. The NFL agreed to share revenue with the players. This agreement created a presumed fiduciary duty to negotiate a fair market value contract for broadcast rights with the players as third party beneficiaries to this contract.

The NFL violated this fiduciary duty when they instead negotiated a contract where the TV networks would indemnify the league in case of a labor dispute. That agreement violates their fiduciary duty to the players since it used a portion of revenue earned by the players to indemnify the owners alone, without providing the players their contractual share. In essense, the owners converted some of the players' rightful revenue in order to insure themselves against a work stoppage.

To add further insult, this contract term is illusory, since the owners were in complete control over whether a lockout occured. The TV networks could theoretically refuse to pay on these grounds, but that act would compromise their ability to win future broadcast rights from a party that holds a monopolistic position in the market.

When a party bargains in bad faith and converts rightful revenue of their employees toward their own purpose, the employees now have a right for full disclosure in order to discover any further conversion.

3. The NFL wants to maintain a employment model where it compels their employees to surrender considerable free market rights.
Opening the books is part of establishing any kind of argument that the only viable model for their business requires such a surrender.

I don't remember every comment he made, but in general I'd say yes. Is there a specific comment you'd like me to focus on?

Sure, but it would have to be something egregious. In general though, I rarely support labor in collective bargaining disputes.

The players decertified, then the owners locked them out. It's not tough to follow.

It's not relevant in my eyes. My guess is there were a lot of half truths in there, just like what the players are saying.

No, because labor is only risking a job. Ownership is risking their company. If ownership's demands were truly outside what the market would support then they wouldn't be able to get replacements and in the end they'd only hurt themselves.

I am not buying it. Heck Gene Upshaw said after the last labor deal he would never go for the salary cap again.

Kessler’s vision for the NFL moves one step closer

Posted by Mike Florio on April 26, 2011, 9:32 AM EDT

Plenty of players, agents, and media members have scoffed at NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s brand-new op-ed item appearing in the Wall Street Journal, which explains the end result of the legal strategy that the players hatched on March 11 with the filing of the Tom Brady antitrust lawsuit.

Goodell sets forth some of the same things we’ve been saying of late — that ultimate player victory in the Brady antitrust lawsuit will result in an NFL with no labor deal, no limits on free agency, no rules that apply across the 32 teams, and no draft. As to the “no draft” concept, Goodell even quotes agent Brian Ayrault’s recent tweets directed to PFT regarding Ayrault’s belief that there should be no draft.

In addition to no draft, Goodell explains that, under the players’ vision of the NFL as crafted by lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, the league would be lacking various devices that have protected players for years. There would be no minimum team payroll (i.e., salary floor). There would be no minimum player salary. There would be no standard compensation for players who suffer serious injuries while practicing or playing. The would be no league-wide benefit plans. There would be no limits on free agency, with franchise “perpetually out of the playoffs” serving “essentially as farm teams for the elites.” (It reminds me of my once-beloved Pirates. If they had anyone in the past decade or so that an elite team actually wanted.)

Also, each team would be permitted to determine its rules for training camp and offseason workouts, with no limits on duration or intensity of practices. And without a league-wide program of drug testing, teams would be left to their own devices. Some teams may choose not to test for marijuana. Others may choose not to test for steroids. (The end result likely would be a decision by Congress to impose Olympic-style testing on the sport, something neither the league nor the players want.)

Those who disagree with Goodell (Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com has characterized the op-ed as “scare tactics”) believe that Kessler’s legal positions are aimed merely at securing more leverage. The players will have plenty of leverage if the lockout ultimately is lifted on appeal, and then Kessler can position the players for even more by arguing that any rules imposed by the teams for 2011 constitute a violation of the antitrust laws.

There’s no reason to believe that Kessler and the players won’t make that argument, especially since the players realize that more leverage can eventually be parlayed into a Collective Bargaining Agreement with better terms for the players. Though we’ve heard privately from NFLPA* sources that the Brady antitrust litigation won’t be attacking the draft, no one has come out and said publicly that the draft won’t be attacked. (We gave NFLPA* executive director DeMaurice Smith a chance to do just that last month, and he didn’t.)

Besides, the attack can come from college players entering the league. If there isn’t a labor agreement in place between the owners and the reconstituted union to make the NFL immune from employee-launched antitrust attacks, Andrew Luck or anyone else can argue that they should (as Ayrault believes) to “be able to choose who they work for.”
Thus, unless and until one of the 10 named plaintiffs or one of their lawyers says “we’re not and we never will attack the draft” and unless and until a new CBA is in place, preventing the clients of Ayrault and other like-minded agents from doing essentially what Maurice Clarett did in 2004 (one of the few big cases in the past decade that the NFL actually won), the draft is in jeopardy.

We hope that, in the end, cooler heads prevail. But cooler heads have yet to make an appearance in two-plus years of negotiation and legal wrangling. There’s no reason, even after the ruling to lift the lockout, to believe that the league will buckle or that Kessler and company will stop pushing for the ultimate leverage for a labor deal that would make even Marvin Miller say, “Wow, that’s a damn good labor deal.” And then, if Kessler and company obtain an order from the highest court in the land that any rules implemented by the NFL violate the draft and if Kessler and company make pie-in-the-sky demands including, for example, partial ownership of the teams by the players, the NFL may decide that it’s better to roll the dice in a rules-free NFL.

If it ultimately happens both sides will share the blame. But as long as Kessler is pushing for no draft — and as long as no CBA is in place to stop future rookies from doing the same — everyone who follows football needs to recognize the possibility that, in the future, there will be no draft.
Maybe by then the Pirates will be competitive, and I can go work for Calcaterra.

And as a fan of a small market team you're siding with the players?

Of course the owners don't have to open their books. That's their right. It's also the right of the players to demand that they open their books if the owners wish to negotiate an agreement that takes money out of the players pocket.

They both exercised their rights, and now the courts are handling the fallout. So far it looks like the players made the smart play.

If I'm arrested, it is my right to remain silent. That doesn't mean it is smart for me to do so regardless of the situation.

That's not entirely true, IMO.

1. The players in those leagues aren't as good as the players in another league, the NFL. If there weren't an established, superior league, those players would be seen as the cream of the crop. College football thrives despite being filled with inferior players.

2. Those leagues don't have the funding, the infrastructure, the exposure, or the tradition of the NFL.

If the NFL turned over it's players, and the former NFL players moved to the AFL, UFL and CFL, none of those leagues would be likely to eclipse the new NFL.

:facepalm: Good God, man. The Owners were going to lock the players out.

The owners requested an additional extension to the talks. The owners conceded a half dozen important items in their last offer to the players, hours before the union decertified.

There is no burden of proof. The owners own the teams. They don't have to prove anything, not to players and not to fans. It's their ball and they can take it home and end the game if they want to.

I'm not saying that would be wise, but they can.

:doh!: Its clear you dont get it.

I told you that already if you would have listened :p

Because they had to decertify or be forced to wait at least a month. That would have weakened the players position. The owners refused to negotiate in good faith and at the 11th hour put forth a proposal that was still cutting money from the players with no justification.

Not for another two years until that contract expired.