No, trying to get them to open their books is not taking away their right to keep them closed. As you said later in the post, they have the right to ASK them to open the books, which is what they did.

The court case isn't about forcing the NFL owners to open their books, it is about the NFL owners setting up loaded TV contracts to give them leverage over the players when those same owners are contractually obligated to looks out for the well being of the players as well.

They are supposed to try to maximize profits for EVERYONE, instead they deliberately set up a scenario that would keep money rolling in for them, yet allow them to freeze out the players.

I know you are blinded by these Owner/Employee labels you are clinging to, but do you think that being a "boss" gives the owners the right to neglect or outright break their own contractual obligations?




See, here is the thing dude... If it was that simple we wouldn't be having this conversation, now would we? The players would have been fired and the NFL would have gotten replacements and that would be the end of the story. That isn't the case. Why not? Because as it has been mentioned before, the players ARE the product.

The NFL is bigger than the CFL or the Arena league because of the product, and the product isn't the game. If it was, we wouldn't care about this strike because we could watch the Voodoo or the Argonauts or something. They play football too. The fans watch the NFL because they field the best of the best. Finding anyone who is willing to play is NOT a viable solution to the problem.




Yes, the owners OWN. And without the best players in the world, what they own isn't worth a damn. The man that OWNS the Colorado Avalanche also works for the man who owns the Denver Broncos. Why? Because he wants to work with the best of the best, and that is something that the Arena League doesn't have to offer. Football is not about planes or about stadiums. If it was, wouldn't the Lions be a good football team? They fly to games in nice planes, and they have a nice stadium, and... they suck. Why have they sucked for so long? Crappy players. There aren't even enough elite players in the country to fill the 32 teams in the NFL. Teams full of scrub replacements won't fill those stadium seats. The planes and the stadium and the game itself are all secondary to the real product, which is the players.

The players do indeed have the right to ask for whatever salary they deem to be fair, and to refuse to work for a salary they deem unfair. As I have said before, this is not a pedestrian owner/employee relationship. Those rules do not apply here. The only reason they apply to a normal work situation is because of the availability of replacements of an equivalent value. If this wasn't true, the players would still be making $40,000 a year.

You can replace a waiter with a guy off the street. The same for an office worker. They have a low value because there are many of them. The more education or specialized training you need to do a job, the more value they have, because there are less people available to do those jobs. If you hire unqualified people for them, then the whole business starts to suffer. This is why Commander's Palace doesn't scout for executive chefs at Waffle House.