Thursday, April 21, 2011

Information on Mediation

Yes the NFL Labor dispute comes up again. Turns out the parties have broken up mediation for a while... about 4 weeks to be a little more exact. Classic. No free agency then until well after the draft is done.

It gets worse though; at least for the players. Apparently Mike Vrabel has dropped a clanger. The NFLPA is supposed to be decertified but the league is contesting that the union did that as sham to gain bargaining leverage (which they most likely did) and are still operating in the normal fashion, just not by name.

So you can imagine every ones surprise when Vrabel publicly spoke about procedures relating to the NFLPA, essentially hinting that it's business as usual, just don't tell anyone in case it gets back to the judge. Not a smart move.

It also turns out that as many as 70 other players may be about to jump in and throw their names into the main lawsuit. Most of them are expected to be lower tier players, who've only just realised that no salary cap means no salary floor and no guaranteed veteran minimums, which means that the vast majority of the leagues players who the (ex)NFLPA are supposedly fighting for, will lose out.

It's a wonder that it took them this long to realise.

Of course the grand irony of this case is that the 10 named plaintiffs, Brady et al, are complaining about rich men hoarding all the money and not sharing it around, while blithely ignoring the fact that if they win, most of the money dished out to players in the future will be hoarded by the rich men and not shared around.

Which is what I've been saying all along, for about 6 months or more. You almost couldn't make it up!

Anyway, onto the draft and I plan to have my further review of the Tight Ends up by Friday Night/Saturday Morning; but the way things have gone lately I'll expand that to say somewhere between Friday Night/Monday Morning. Then it's offensive line and finished off with defensive line.

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