If this was posted elsewhere, lemme know and I will nix.
NFL owners can't have it both ways
So this story is in the news again. Remember the one about how the league docked the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins salary-cap money in the 2012 and 2013 offseasons because the other owners didn't like the way Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder structured contracts during the supposedly uncapped 2010 season?
Yeah, it's back. While it's difficult to imagine it advancing very far, there remains a chance it could get embarrassing for the league's owners before it's all said and done. They're wrong on this and always have been. Either there were secret spending rules in place in 2010 despite the lack of a salary cap, or the Cowboys and the Redskins didn't break any rules. One of those things, by definition, has to be true. Although the NFL Players Association likely can't win a court case on this, it might have a chance to expose the owners as sneaky hypocrites. Which might, in their eyes, be worth the effort.
This had appeared to be a settled issue. Jones and Snyder did some grumbling but ultimately realized they were basically complicit in the same shady behavior as the owners who were mad at them for doing it wrong. And even though the NFLPA put its hand up and made the point that agreeing to regulate spending in a year without a salary cap sure does sound a lot like collusion, U.S. District Judge David Doty ruled that the union had given up its right to pursue damages as part of the 2011 collective bargaining agreement.
Now, though, the story is back, as the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed part of Doty's ruling last week. That decision could allow the union to pursue discovery in the case -- meaning union leadership and counsel could be allowed to interview Jones, Snyder and other owners about what the arrangement was back in 2010. If that happens, the owners are going to look pretty bad. Because the 2010 arrangement seems to be the textbook definition of collusion.
More...
SNIP:
Nobody looks good here. The Cowboys and Redskins were trying to get over on their fellow owners, who were trying to get over on the union, which then later agreed to the sanctions against the Cowboys and Redskins in exchange for a higher salary cap than the owners were initially offering in 2012. Ugly all around.
But after the owners got what they wanted out of the whole arrangement, they acted out of arrogance in publicly punishing Jones and Snyder. And Giants owner John Mara, who chaired the committee in charge of imposing the penalties, made a regrettable PR decision when he angrily proclaimed that the Cowboys and Redskins were "lucky they didn't lose draft picks" over the whole thing.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_...uncapped-2010-season
