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Originally Posted by JoeRedskin
Sorry, this is just wrong. Doty has historically been very player friendly and it has long been one of the owners' goals to get him removed from hearing appeals on CBA issues. It is why he was written out of the new CBA.
No. He ruled against them because that was what the law required. As a matter of law, The NFLPA the players had waived their claims - known and unknown - of collusion for anything that occurred prior to the new CBA being signed.
Everything you say is true. The owners colluded and negotiated in bad faith - but then the NFLPA affirmatively waived their claims against the owners for all claims when they signed the new CBA. If they believed that more claims were out there, they shouldn't have waived them. They did so as part of a settlement. Once you say, "Okay, I am done suing you." You can't go back and say "Well, except for this."
As for "blackmailing" the NFLPA, I would suggest it was more of a quid pro quo. The NFLPA came to them first and said "Hey, can we make an arrgangement to get more cap space this year??" to which the NFL said "Sure .... just sign here and let us punish these two teams who refused to join in this, heretofore, unknown collusion against you and you may have some extra cap space this year."
As for the acts before the new CBA, they were fully and legally waived. As for the bad acts afterwords, the penalties were imposed in a procedurally correct fashion (per the arbiter) and were arrived at through a quid pro quo bargain with the union.
The key was the waiver. Without it, the NFL had no leg to stand on. With it the union and Snyder, as far as any appeals concerning violations of the CBA, are legally without remedy.
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Although I'll agree your probably right with the Dotty issue, I'm not sure any of us really know the full facts regarding the meeting over the punishment. I could very easily see the NFL going to the NFLPA and suggesting that there is a problem and they need to meet. Then suggesting that it looked like the CAP would have to be lowered for whatever reason. Remember this came relatively soon after (6 months) the CBA had been signed. Why would the NFL not already know prior to the number crunching and during the CBA talks that there was a problem regarding the CAP? Instead they come up with some story and present it. Then while trying to figure something out the NFL suggests they will keep the CAP at where it is if the NFLPA will give up their rights to sue and allow the NFL to punish two of their own.
But thats my opinion since I don't know the facts either. But I doubt the owners would want for the NFLPA to stand in court and tell how they felt black mailed in order to get proof of collusion, lied to, and not have agreed on the punishment in advance ie; prior to the old CBA ending, and they wouldn't want for two teams to stand up and say "yes, the owners had an agreement to keep costs down against the players, and we felt that was not fair."