Nfl Lockout

Current Event Assignment: 2011 NFL Lockout

Very few businesses have seen the financial success that the National Football League (NFL) and its organizations have seen in the past 20 years. Many teams that were originally purchased for thousands of dollars have been transformed into multi-million dollar empires. In March of 2011, the league, its players and owners, and its fans came to the realization of how fragile the structure of the league was when the league came to a halt under an owner imposed lockout.

In 1993, the terms of labor were established by the NFL and the NFL Players’ Association under a collective bargaining agreement. Since 1993, the agreement has been renewed and ratified several times. Under this current labor agreement, the players were entitled to 57 percent of the league’s revenue. Also, there were many restrictions and regulations on issues such as free agency that began affecting negotiations on both sides. In May of 2008 the owners decided to opt out of the agreement in hopes of establishing a new agreement guaranteeing the owners a larger percentage of the revenue.(3)

In 2010, the last season under the existing agreement, players continued to force the issue that the owners’ were not losing money and were seeking to ratify the labor dispute to their benefit. In order to file an antitrust lawsuit, the players’ association would need to disband and formally renounce their collective bargaining rights. However, under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the NFL could ignore any potential lawsuit the players might file.(1) The NFL’s political action committee had made donations to lawmakers who oversaw the league’s affiliation with legal matters. Also, the players union had hired firms to lobby to members of the U.S. Congress claiming that a lockout would potentially cause significant financial stresses to each of the NFL’s cities.(1) It appeared that Congress, just like with steroids in baseball, would be intervening in the NFL...