NFL Players came within 5 minutes of decertifying last Thursday

Peter King and Jim Trotter have an excellent "behind-the-scenes" perspective on SI on what happened in last week's negotiation. Jim includes this passage:

With only five minutes to go before the union's deadline to decertify last Thursday -- a move that might have obliterated the NFL as we know it today -- a player walked into the negotiating room that included commissioner Roger Goodell, league attorney Jeff Pash, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith and union president Kevin Mawae and declared: "We're done! We're decertifying."

To read the rest, click here. It is great read.

MIT Sloan Sports Analytic Conference

As noted in this space recently, the 5th Annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference was held in Boston this weekend. The conference’s mission is “to provide a forum for industry professionals (executives and leading researchers) and students to discuss the increasing role of analytics in the sports industry.”

A sold out conference found 1,500 attendees listening to an astounding array of panelists—including our own Michael McCann sitting on a panel discussing Sports Labor Issues. Some of the more interesting speakers included Malcolm Gladwell, Mark Cuban (sporting a “talk nerdy to me” t-shirt), ESPN’s Bill “The Sports Guy” Simmons, and Brian Burke of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

To get a sense of the conference, which not surprisingly did a wonderful job using social media, you can check out the Twitter feeds at this link.

Serving an academic purpose, the conference had a MBA Sports Case Competition (MIT was just announced as the winner so several attendees and I will be asking for a recount) and accepted over 100 research papers. The authors of these papers were around to share their insights but the papers themselves can be accessed online at this link.

If the NFLPA ends up suing the NFL, should Tom Brady be the named plaintiff?

Marc Thaler of ESPN Boston considers that question.

New Sports Illustrated Column: 10 Answers to 10 Big Questions on NFL Labor Crisis

I have a new SI column that answers 10 key questions about what will happen if we see decertification/lockout in the NFLPA-NFL labor dispute. Here are two of the answers:

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7) With the NFLPA decertified, could college players skip the NFL draft and sign with NFL teams?

No, at least not yet. First off, if the league, as expected, shuts down operations, it could cancel the 2011 NFL Draft, which is scheduled to take place between April 28 and 30. The NFL is unlikely to cancel the draft, however, due to language in Article XVI of the collective bargaining agreement and since teams have prepared for it and doing so would only elevate the chaos of the labor crisis. Therefore, absent a legal challenge, the draft will likely remain the exclusive process by which amateur players join the NFL.

Once the NFLPA decertifies, however, a college player or a group of college players could bring an antitrust challenge against the NFL over the draft. The lawsuit would likely argue that the draft harms them economically, and harms competition in general, since college players could earn more income and play on their preferred teams if they were free agents and not subject to the draft. If a court were sympathetic to the argument, it could issue an injunction postponing the draft until after an evaluation of the antitrust challenge.

Alternatively, star freshman or sophomore players could challenge the NFL's draft eligibility restriction that players be three years removed from high school before they are draft eligible. Without the labor exemption protecting the eligibility restriction, a court may reason that certain players are good enough to attract NFL teams before they are three years removed from high school and thus the restriction against them harms competition for players, since players "good enough" to turn pro are denied the chance.

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10) Following a lockout, can players join teams in other leagues like the United Football League, the Arena Football League or the Canadian Football League?

Yes. Players could join such leagues because their NFL contracts would be suspended and the NFLPA assures that they would continue to receive their $60,000 lockout compensation regardless of other income.

However, there would not be enough roster spots in those leagues for all NFL players. Most NFL players, moreover, would probably resist the temptation of joining a league that does not pay nearly as well as the NFL.

For example, the salary cap is about $4.25 million for each team in the CFL, whose season runs from June 30 to Nov. 27. To put that number in perspective, the salary cap for each NFL team in the last capped season -- 2009 -- was $130 million. Also, the average CFL salary is about $50,000; the average NFL salary is $1.9 million and the minimum NFL salary is $325,000 (NFL practice squad players normally earn $88,400). While $50,000 would be a good salary for many employees, it would probably seem low for someone who is exposing his body to potentially catastrophic injury on every play, particularly for someone who is accustomed to earning much more for that risk.

The lack of viable alternatives for NFL players to play professional football highlights a key difference in bargaining leverage between them and NBA players, who may also be subject to a lengthy work stoppage later this year. Some NBA players, particularly stars, would be able to recoup a substantial portion of their lost NBA income by playing in Europe, whereas few NFL players can recoup a substantial portion by playing pro football elsewhere.

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To read the other eight question/answers, click here.

New Joint Sports Illustrated and CBS News Investigation into Crime and College Football

Our cover story in this week's Sports Illustrated concerns a joint investigation by SI and CBS News on crime and college football. I had the honor of being part of this investigation, which we've conducted over the last 6 months.

We looked at criminal backgrounds of 2,800+ collegiate players on SI's 2010 preseason Top 25. And we found that one in fourteen players had been in trouble with the law either before or after entering college, and many universities did not conduct background checks on these individuals when recruiting them.

Here are some of the key findings:

• Seven percent of the players in the preseason Top 25 -- 204 in all (1 of every 14) -- had been charged with or cited for a crime, including dozens of players with multiple arrests.

• Of the 277 incidents uncovered, nearly 40 percent involved serious offenses, including 56 violent crimes such as assault and battery (25 cases), domestic violence (6), aggravated assault (4), robbery (4) and sex offenses (3). In addition there were 41 charges for property crimes, including burglary and theft and larceny.

• There were more than 105 drug and alcohol offenses, including DUI, drug possession and intent to distribute cocaine.

• Race was not a major factor. In the overall sample, 48 percent of the players were black and 44.5 percent were white. Sixty percent of the players with a criminal history were black and 38 percent were white.

• In cases in which the outcome was known, players were guilty or paid some penalty in nearly 60 percent of the 277 total incidents.

Should schools be allowed to recruit students who have had criminal histories?

New Sports Illustrated Column on Greg Anderson Going Back to Prison for Barry Bonds

I have a new SI column on Barry Bonds and yesterday's ruling that Greg Anderson -- the former trainer and incredibly/almost unbelievably loyal friend of Bonds -- will be going back to prison.

Here's an excerpt:

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Anderson is already familiar with the consequences of disregarding a court order. He spent a year in prison between 2006 and 2007 for refusing to testify in related proceedings against Bonds. Assuming Anderson does not have a change of heart -- and his lawyer, Mark Geragos insists that he won't -- he could spend as much as a month in this prison this time around. While the penalty may seem duplicative and unnecessary, since Anderson has already spent considerable time in prison for Bonds and it appears that additional prison time will not change his thinking, Judge Illston does not want to reward Anderson for choosing his loyalty to Bonds over his civic obligation to a court.

Even without Anderson's live cooperation, prosecutors can still use Anderson's voice to implicate Bonds. In a taped conversation of Anderson and Bonds' former business partner, Steve Hoskins, from 2003, Anderson boasts that he provided Bonds with "the Clear" (tetrahydrogestrinone or THT). Also in the conversation, Hoskins characterizes Bonds as "taking those shots." . . . .

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Bonds' attorneys will also have their work cut out for them in explaining why their client would decline an offer of immunity when appearing before the grand jury. Bonds had to agree to testify truthfully about drugs; he refused. Judge Illston ruled that such a piece of evidence is admissible. During the trial, Bonds' attorneys will probably reason that their client did not need immunity since, in their view, he was already telling the truth when stating he did not use steroids. A jury may conclude, however, that Bonds was worried more about how accepting the immunity offer would have harmed his baseball legacy than about how declining the offer would have harmed his legal standing.

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To read the rest, click here.

NFLPA Decertification -- Impact on Agents

With NFLPA decertification a strong possibility before the March 3rd deadline, most of our attention to the ramifications of this labor impasse has been directed towards owners and players. However, there is another segment of union representatives who also will be affected—agents. Under the current (but not for long) CBA, the NFLPA is recognized as “the sole and exclusive bargaining representative of present and future employees players in the NFL.” Thus, while unions are vested with the legal right to negotiate on behalf of their members, the NFLPA—along with the NBPA, MLBPA, and NHLPA—grant those rights to individual agents.

The NFLPA has developed regulations that govern all contract advisors which include certification, conduct, agreements between advisors and players, and discipline and oversight among others. If the NFLPA decertifies, agents will no longer be legally bound to a union because there will be no union. While it is likely that the agents will be asked to “voluntarily” register and comply with NFLPA guidelines there is no legal requirement that they do so.

What does this mean? To start, the NFLPA’s “Junior Rule” would no longer be in effect. The “Junior Rule”—found in Section 3 B (30) (a) of the NFLPA’s Regulations governing contract advisors—prohibits contact with a college player until:

“after a prospective player’s last regular season college or conference championship game (excluding any post-season bowl game) or December 1, whichever is later, of the college football season immediately prior to the year in which such prospective player would be eligible to apply for the NFL Draft.”

Thus, while the NCAA does not make such contact illegal, agents are not allowed to contact freshman, sophomores, or juniors under NFLPA guidelines. Without these regulations it is entirely likely that we will see agents reaching out to those highly desirable underclassmen if decertification comes to pass. Furthermore, it is also entirely possible that after the dust settles the “Junior Rule” does not return.

What other NFLPA rules relative to agents will lose their legal imprimatur? What about the requirement that a contract advisor be certified by the NFLPA? How about the cap on commissions set at 3%? What about the Standard Representation Agreement (SRA) that every player signs when they select an agent—will agents be able to sign new clients to different terms? Certainly arbitration rules that govern disputes between agents and the NFLPA will be on hold.

The bottom line is that decertification may bring changes that are ancillary to the labor impasse but meaningful in unintended ways.