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Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule
ok.
but I don't believe that argument is being made. I think the collusion argument revolves around the owners agreeing(or conspiring to agree) to specific methods outside those agreed to in writing by both parties, in order to affect the outcome of the CBA negotiations.
The parts I highlighted, in my opinion, show that the NFLPA would have wanted to be included in any additional restrictions that may have been placed on teams.
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That argument is definitely being made (bold added):
(although, the last one may need to go to the Head of Referees if he really means illegal collision - sounds like unnecessary roughness to me)
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Originally Posted by SBXVII
I'll tell you why. I'm still sticking by the issue that the agreement the owners had between each other to keep costs down was collusion. They didn't want the NFLPA to find out cause it would have opened them up to a law suit. The league waited until after the new CBA was agreed upon, agreed to drop all rights of law suits, and only then did they pull in the NFLPA Rep and remind him of his dropped rights and to put icing on the cake they pointed out that they would conveniently keep the CAP for each team where it is if they agreed to the punishment. Black mail. To not agree meant a lower CAP for each team. The league was afraid of what the NFLPA woud do so they had to black mail/bribe them into not taking action.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FRPLG
I don't think it is as clear cut as you believe it is. In this case the owners were certainly trying to impede teams from freeing future cap space as you have stated. Opening up cap space for future years allows a team to spend more money. By trying to create a virtual cap at the time to inhibit future cap gains they are necessarily depressing future salaries.
Did they have other reasons to desire such limits? Sure, keeping the franchise tag prices down and so forth...all of the reasons involve depressing future monies spent though. They just do.
I strongly believe that what the league attempted to do was collusive. At the very least it is something that would have been a very major issue during labor negotiations. The fact that the league both allowed the contracts at the time and never publicly discussed limiting such actions is a great indication that the league was quite concerned that the tactic the were employing was questionable. If you have a better explanation as to why they contracts were approved even though they were deemed undesirable for the league then I'd love to hear it.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigHairedAristocrat
The issue isn't that the 3 teams didn't understand the warning or even that a warning wasn't given. The issue is the warning was "you better agree to illegally collide with the rest of us bullies or else well penalize you for breaking a rule that doesn't exist"
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