Matty, smoot, JR, RR, other knowledgeable posters: please let me know where I screw up this explanation:
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Originally Posted by SkinsGuru
Shanahan was warned by the league prior to doing so
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Yes, Shanahan didn't go along with the league's illegal collusion. The fault in this matter is not his. Wild example: If you own a franchise restaurant, and the franchise tells you to hold down your employees wages below the legal minimum or else, and you refuse, is the franchise justified in punishing you? Collusion to hold down NFL clubs spending, in an uncapped year, violated the CBA between the NFL and NFLPA at that time. Without the CBA, the NFL faces a lot of difficulty from existing federal anti-trust laws.
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Originally Posted by SkinsGuru
and HE made the decision to roll the dice thinking the league wouldn't follow through for fear of "collusion" being thrown around
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And initially, the NFL front office blinked. The league APPROVED the restructured contracts (for Haynesworth and Hall) that Shanny and Allen submitted. Because there was no salary cap that year, and the Skins and player agents agreed to the deal, the league had no legal grounds to reject the contracts. For NFL ownership to do so, to appear to violate the terms of the existing CBA (This wasn't a case of well maybe the cap was expired, the CBA in effect in 2010 specifically set that year as an UNCAPPED YEAR) , while negotiating a new CBA, would have raised plenty of eyebrows. So again, Shanny's contracts in question were approved by the NFL league office.
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Originally Posted by SkinsGuru
HE lost the gamble and the Skins were stripped of 36 million in cap space
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Two years after the fact, literally on the eve of free agency in 2012, the league front office announced the cap "penalty" against the Skins and cowboys, for contracts the league had approved in 2010. And the NFLPA had signed the new CBA, one of which terms was that the NFLPA could not sue the league for collusion prior to the new CBA. (This is the official basis on which the NFL front office could say basically that the Players Association had agreed to the penalty. This is what shut down the NFLPA's attempt to sue the league after the cap penalty came out. How much was said between the front office and players union behind the scenes before and after, and between the front office and the Skins, I dunno.) Doesn't change the morality of the matter.
Again the fault in this is not Shanny's. Blame those two duplicitous crooks Mara and Goodell, Demaurice Smith (exec of the NFLPA), and the owners that voted to enforce the penalties.
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Originally Posted by SkinsGuru
regardless of whether or not you believe the penalties were justified, Shanny new that punishment would occur if they did not get the NFL to stand down as we all know they couldn't . . .
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The NFL stood down in 2010, as described as above. That NFL ownership then proceeded in 2010-11 negotiations to get their ducks in a row, so among other things they could punish the Skins and cowboys for not going along with the NFLs warning about "taking advantage" of the "loophole" of the uncapped year. (Collusion, there is no better word for it in this case), isn't Shanny's fault. It's the fault of the people I listed above. In what degree, more knowledgeable people than me can tell us.