NFL Heads Toward Showdown with Players

Despite the relative labor peace and the long, sustained increase in the NFL's popularity, the owners may be heading on a different tack. In February of this year, it was reported the Owners were considering opting out of the current collective bargaining agreement, which would put the league's salary cap in jeopardy for the 2010 season due to their belief the arrangement agreed to in March 2006 has created a financially untenable situation for the league.

In 1993, the National Football League and its Players Association - the NFLPA - agreed to terms on a successor collective bargaining agreement that included a salary cap. In the years since, competitive balance in the league has changed such that season-to-season changes in the success of previously unsuccessful franchises has made for an increase in popularity of the game and league, which has had the effect of increasing revenues. Increased revenues - the criteria on which the salary cap is based - has led to increased player salaries.

At the time of the March 2006 agreement, the owners and players agreed to an increase in the sharing of qualified league revenues to 60%, ostensibly to maintain the salary cap. Now, it seems the League and some owners are publicly taking the position a salary cap is not absolutely necessary, although it is the preferred approach. The NFLPA, for its part, has said that if the salary cap is allowed to expire, it will never accept another.

While the owners are publicly taking the position that the salary cap may not be that important, the NFLPA has some internal unrest upon which the owners are likely to be seizing.

NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw is scheduled to leave office in 2010 with some apparent movement on his part to influence succession planning and with some internal dissention as to organizational status of some positions within the NFLPA.

Currently the Players Association is looking at the various scenarios which could be at play if/when the owners exercise the option to cancel the collective bargaining agreement: negotiating a successor agreement, strike vs. lock out, and decertification. If the players were to decertify the NFLPA as the exclusive bargaining agent of the players, the NFL could be in violation of anti-trust statutes.

The NFLPA has already decertified once in 1989, which led to player anti-trust suits and eventually to the 1993 collective bargaining agreement granting free agency rights in return for a salary cap.

RESOURCES/REFERENCES

http://www.mlive.com/business/ambizdaily/
bizjournals/index.ssf?/base/abd-3/1208155207283290.xml

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3341989

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/
576779/nfl_owners_considers_cancelling_agreement.html

http://www.profootballtalk.com/2008/04/11/
upshaw-feared-that-vincent-would-undermine-him/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_
Players_Association#The_1987_strike_and_decertification