Tag Archives: Collective Bargaining Agreement

What is the Commissioner's Exemption List? Why have you never heard of it before? Why is it being used to distance the NFL from player's accused of domestic violence?

The entire situation involving Ray Rice is extremely sad. In the last 72 hours, everyone – and I do mean everyone – has asked if the Ravens and the NFL saw TMZ’s video of the incident inside the elevator prior to its public release. That’s the wrong question. The right question is – What did the Ravens and the NFL expect to see? The way the League handled – or mishandled if you prefer – the Ray Rice situation is Exhibit A for the problems with the NFL’s Personal Conduct Policy. Everything about the Ray Rice situation has been upsetting, but hopefully this negative can be transformed into a positive by addressing the endemic issue of domestic violence.

Recent media reports have suggested that in addition to ongoing trade talks with Minnesota for superstar power forward Kevin Love, Cleveland has only recently made #1 overall draft pick and fashionable lothario Andrew Wiggins available in such trade talks. So let’s forget about ‘would they,’ ‘should they’ make this trade and focus on ‘could they?’ Let’s assume the trade is going down, and lets assume it does include Andrew Wiggins (a trade which would vastly alter the landscape of the NBA).[i] This article will break down the CBA rules regarding trades and salaries, and give a couple possible pictures of what such a trade could look like under the CBA rules.

Perhaps not entirely lost amidst the LeBron decision and an endless stream of “I’m Coming Home” YouTube montages, was a curious series of events regarding NBA up-and-comer Chandler Parsons. What doesn’t make sense is this: If Houston knew they would not match a max offer sheet for Parsons, why decline the team option? They could have kept him cheap for one more year and then made their best offer in unrestricted free agency. Given how well Parsons had played and developed, Houston had to know a large offer sheet designed not to be matched was going to come his way and so the only reason to decline the team option was if you were planning on matching any offer sheet.

Should the NFL test for and punish the use of marijuana by its athletes? Does the cost-benefit analysis of the current policies offer a net positive to the league?

Momentum is growing for a change to the NBA draft age restrictions. But, in order to discuss or construct ideal draft eligibility requirements requires an understanding of the relevant law, past challenges to such requirements and the structures other sports have used.

Last month, two more lawsuits were filed by former NHL players against the NHL alleging that the NHL failed to take adequate steps to protect players from the dangers of concussions and actively encouraged violence in the game in order to increase league revenues. With multiple class action lawsuits now filed against the NHL, the obvious comparison for most sports fans will be to the concussion litigation that the NFL faced beginning in 2011. So far, many of the arguments made by the former NHL players are similar to the arguments made by former NFL players. However, there are a number of differences between the two sports and leagues and how they have each addressed the concussion issue over the past decade. In the complaints filed against the NHL, it is apparent that some of the differences between the NHL and NFL could lead to very different results for the NHL litigation.

The revamped rookie wage scale implemented under the current NFL collective bargaining agreement allows business incentives to influence draft choices. When first round draft picks were walking away with signing bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars this would not have been possible. The financial impact of a rookie would have done little to offset their contractual demands. But things have changed. Theoretically, if the average price of the 2,300 season tickets the Browns have sold since drafting Manziel is $1,000 then the financial impact of drafting him is approximately $2.3 million. This amounts to more than 25% of the approximate rookie contract Manziel will sign covering his first four years in the League. Perhaps in the near future teams will not only commission a study on the analytics of potential draft picks but their economic impact as well.

The biggest news yesterday in the sports law world was of course that Northwestern’s Kain Colter is seeking to unionize his fellow members of the Wildcat football team. While this is certainly a big deal, it is a long way from coming to fruition and is fraught with obstacles that must be overcome. Moreover, unionizing college athletes will also open a pandora’s box of secondary issues that will have to be addressed. Tax-exemptions, Title-IX, the O’Bannon antitrust suit, and a slew of other issues will have to be addressed if the landscape of collegiate-athletics is overhauled by unionizing the players.