8th Circuit Court Grants Stay, Lockout Continues

[NC_Skins]

Originally Posted by Dirtbag59

They offered to open the books to a third party audit and the NFLPA refused. They wanted to look them over themselves, most likely to look for leverage.

NFL's Statement On NFLPA Decertification - Battle Red Blog

That doesn't say they offered to open their books to a third party. The "audited' information that they offering is going to hide any personal expenses they may be masking as their business expenses. This isn't the real information needed to ascertain whether the owners are lying about their claim of loss of profits. THIS is what the owners don't want players seeing because it'll kill their very plea that they are losing money when in fact they are blowing it for personal gain. (See the LA Dodgers for a prime example) Now, most owners aren't going to go all out like the McCourts but I will bet you my life that owners do use their business stuff for personal use and write it off as a "business expense". In fact, every owner I know in America does this. Goes back to my idea that you can't expect the players to take cuts all because you run your business horribly.

Originally Posted by SBXVII

What point of the players leaving 6 hrs prior to the deadline to file their decertification and not staying, not requesting and extension, and not even offering a counter offer makes the owners the bad guys who wanted to opt out of the CBA? I'm sorry but to put it in your words..." I don't care that the players opted out of the CBA."

I don't know of any courts that stay open till midnight, so they had to decertify by 5pm that day or the case wouldn't have stayed in Minnesota. Surely you do realize this right? They would have had an extension of the CBA before that 5pm deadline in order stop the NFLPA from decertifying. However, it had been said that there was no use of going forward at this point because both sides were no budging. They had no other choice but to decertify.



One thing to remember in the owners argument that player costs are the reason they are losing profits. Player salaries for the most part are not guaranteed. (unlike MLB and NBA) The salary cap of a team is no indication of how much they are actually paying their players that year. I still don't believe their bullcrap. I've never seen a business in my life bring in more revenue each year and lose profits. Not without somebody either embezzling money or doing a piss poor job running it.