Business deals happen every day; Contracts expire, renew, and are negotiated without the public knowing for many large corporations and even sporting leagues. However, some contract changes cannot escape the media’s attention. The National Football League (NFL) is facing an expiration of its Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) (NFL Lockout Now One Month Old). Currently, the agreement has expired and NFL team owners have selfishly chosen to “lock” the players out. The term lockout means that the players are essentially not allowed to participate in any team activities or duties until the owner’s rescind this lockout. While many believe this is simply a battle between team owners and a player union, it can only appear to most as a selfish act of the NFL owners trying to rich, greedy men in expensive suits, and the only people they are hurting, are the fans of football.
Firstly, one cannot place blame solely on side of the negations as the player’s union has declined potential offers themselves. However, the owners are the ones whom opted out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement near its expiration. This is different from when the players and their union decide to strike. This would have indicated the players have stopped trying. Yet, this is clearly not the case in the NFL. At one point before the owners opted out of the CBA, the player’s union had asked to see the owner’s financial books as money was among the greatest topic of these negotiations. The owners refused to do so and were adamant that their team finances where not valuable to the fair negotiation of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. These owners clearly want a “fight” and are too stubborn to back down from their “wall” of money that protects them. While on th...
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...he most powerful of men, corporations, or societies. When it is one’s ignorance and negligence to not know when they have enough and crave for more than they will ever need, will they hurt the people that have gotten them where they are and will take them where they need to go? Do the owner’s not know that they cannot survive without players and more importantly, the fans they are hurting in this process? I think it is time they step up to the plate and seriously try to meet the player’s negations points to end this lockout and let the players play and the fans watch football.
Works Cited
AP. Mediation resumes in NFL labor dispute. 14 April 2011. .
NFL Lockout Now One Month Old. 12 April 2011. .
For this assignment, we learned that Maurice Clarett filed a case against the NFL where he argued that the NFL’s three-year rule acted as an unreasonable restraint in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Act. On the other hand, the NFL argued that its three-year rule was covered from the antitrust laws by the nonstatutory labor exemption. First, the case was reviewed by the district court which concluded that the NFL's eligibility rules violated antitrust laws by requiring the player to wait at least three years before entering the NFL draft and that the eligibility criteria was not immune from those antitrust laws. The court favored Clarett making him eligible for the 2004 NFL Draft.
The NFL position in this article makes them look very greedy and indifferent about the overall health of their football players. One of the ethical perspectives that can be used to analyze the NFL's position in this article is deontology. Deontology is the perspective where rules is the defining factor for ethical decisions. From the deontology perspective it makes it seem that the NFL has decided not to follow the rules and even blurred the lines as to what potential injuries their players can get. They wanted their injured players to play without having to follow through the with proper procedure in verifying that the players are in conditions healthy enough to play. It looks as if the NFL cares only about bringing in money and not care about
Through channels of competitive balance, the leagues have put restrictions on free agency. The MLB does this by requiring players to be in the league for six years before declaring free agency, and the NFL puts a restriction on free agency for some players, done by allowing teams to match offers players have received from other teams. Determining a player’s MRP becomes an easier process than in the labor markets of other industries due to the availability of statistics of player’s and their contribution to their team’s success. The difficulty of this process lies in the determination of how revenues for a team are produced.
Throughout history in the NFL, head injuries and fixing those problems have always been hidden from the athletes because of the NFL striving to make a large profit instead of caring for the players. With this being an ongoing problem between NFL players and the NFL itself, many past and current players are digging deeper to find the truth and statistics continue to show how serious this problem actually is. When the lawsuits first began to come known to the public, the NFL agreed to pay over seven hundred million dollars to compensate former players suffering neurological injuries. Many believe the NFL offered this so quickly, hoping to avoid a potential public relations nightmare. The NFL, a ten billion dollar annual business, couldn’t take any type of guilt, or legal discovery, which some inside and out of the industry expected could have caused a fatal blow to the game’s future (Thiel). The settlement may have prevented the public from learning much about the past, but the issue of head injuries is a danger to football and won’t just go away because NFL wants it to (Waldron).
An argument can be based on whether or not the NFL should be held liable when players know what a violent sport they participate in. The NFL is 10 Billion dollar a year business and the majority of their income are made through the exploitation of their players (Grove, J 760). The argument can be made that players should seek compensation for injuries because salaries for injured players are not guaranteed beyond the season in which the injury is sustained (Grove, J 760). It has been posed as whether or not the government should step in to help regulate owed compensation. One way the state or federal government can intervene and impose legislative act...
them. Players must be responsible for themselves because the NFL has made the game safer for
As long has there has been business, Management and Labor have warred against each other for a bigger piece of the pie. Major League Baseball is no different. In the early years of professional baseball the owners controlled the salaries of the players and decided where they could play and what they would be paid. The players were bound to their team by the Reserve Clause that stated, the services of a player will be reserved exclusively for that team for the next season. This resulted in keeping the player’s salaries artificially low because the players were not allowed to offer their services to any other team. The Reserve Clause was in effect for more than One Hundred years of baseball history. It was challenged several times but the owners had won every time, until in 1970 when the St. Louis Cardinals traded outfielder Curt Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies. Flood refused to play for the Phillies and sued to become a free-agent. Flood’s case was in court for several years going all the way to the Supreme Court. He was never able to play in the Major League again. While he did not win his case, he laid the groundwork for a later case that involved two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally who filed a grievance against the league contending that, because they didn't sign contracts with their previous teams they were free agents. The owners and the Players Association agreed to submit to binding, impartial, arbitration in order to settle this case. On December 23, 1975 the arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled in favor of the players and the Reserve Clause was broken, and the era of free agency began in the Major Leagues. In 1976 when free agency began the average player salary was only $52 thousand dollars, but it has increased steadily ever since. By 1990 the average salary for a Major League Baseball player had risen to $589 thousand dollars. This Year baseball will start the 2001 season with an average player salary of more than $2 million, about 40 times higher than the typical wage in 1976 when free agency began.
Playing football comes with several risks factors that players’ acknowledge prior to playing the game starting a young age. Regardless, these players still chose to play the game, which they end up loving and cherishing despite all the risks accompanied with it. Football is one of the toughest sports in the world; it takes a certain amount of strength, speed, and aggressiveness to play 48 minutes of hard-nosed football. However, the National Football League (NFL) is in the midst of a controversial issue. Is the NFL getting soft? This has been a debatable issue for several years. While some believe that implementing all these rules in the NFL is progressively turning the game soft, others say that the NFL is not getting soft; it is just trying to make the game safer for its players.
If there’s one thing we dread in the summer more than the heat, it’s the afflicting sentiment that surrounds oneself when one is inhibited from experiencing the thrills of football for six long and gruesome months. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football is a part of many Americans’ Saturdays, but to fewer does it mean their lives. Recently coming under debate, many sporting fans and college athletes believe that players should be paid more than just tuition, room, board, and books. Two articles on this issue that bring up valid points worth discussing are Paul Marx’ “Athlete’s New Day” and Warren Hartenstine’s “College Athletes Should Not Be Paid.” From these articles I have found on the basis of logical,
In college there are hated rivals that can’t stand each other. This causes college fans to have lots of pride in their teams. College stadiums also have student sections, which take the atmosphere on game day to the next level. College players know how the fans feel. This inspires them to play their hardest, and leave everything on the field to represent their school. In the NFL, instead of playing for a team because you want to represent them, players will play for teams who offer them the longest and largest contracts. Players hold out from participating in training camp because they want a bigger contract, and some even sit out games. The NFL seems to be more like a business, and geared towards making money. NFL players holding out, and being focused on money angers fans. Not all players are like this, but fans feel that the ones like this are being
The National Football League is a professional American football league consisting of 32 teams, divided equally between the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference. The NFL was founded in 1920s and ever since then has been a representative of the "All-American, Family Entertainment, Sport". Football is played from kids starting at age five to adulthood and is very popular throughout different races and social classes. With the increase of people playing football, came the increase of the sports related injuries.
The players have become employees of the NCAA as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.
Abstract: Collegiate athletes participating in the two revenue sports (football, men's basketball) sacrifice their time, education, and risk physical harm for their respected programs. The players are controlled by a governing body (NCAA) that dictates when they can show up to work, and when they cannot show up for work. They are restricted from making any substantial financial gains outside of their sports arena. These athletes receive no compensation for their efforts, while others prosper from their abilities. The athletes participating in the two revenue sports of college athletics, football and men's basketball should be compensated for their time, dedication, and work put forth in their respected sports.
Football is a culture and within that culture is the desire to make money. In the 2014-2015 season, the NFL made $7.24 billion. Many dedicated fans travel to the stadium on a Sunday afternoon to experience the culture of football: the tailgate in the parking lot, the hundreds of dollars they pay to publicly display their favorite team’s gear, the front row seats to the game for them and their best buddy, the hotdogs and beer from the concussion stands. Many fans will participate in the NFL’s lifestyle every week. But the question is, do they really care about the actual sport or is it just the comradery and entertainment that it
...to settle for less, and in compensation a possible retirement plan or some form of benefits should be assembled. The only athletes that I truly disagree with are the ones that can’t differentiate between “needs” and “wants”. Luxuries are wants, and necessities are needs; if they could settle for less (yet still reasonable) money they would avoid lockouts and holdouts, and continue to entertain our society, which is their whole purpose.