Canal Street Chronicles, a New Orleans Saints community

jeffduncantp Jeff Duncan Interesting. RT @Greg_A_Bedard: NFL source said Brees & Manning have requested to be exempt from franchise tag as part of the settlement GAAA!!!!! They're going to queer the deal!!

CollinsworthNBC Cris Collinsworth The only way a settlement will happen is if the 8th circuit lifts the lockout. Otherwise the owners will walk away from the table. Players could lose the only hammer they ever had in negotiations, the threat of anti-trust litigation. If lockout is lifted, both sides will have MUCH to lose in court. Owners could lose on Anti-Trust grounds with treble (triple) damages. I don't think either side will take the chance of losing it all, and a settlement will be reached. But only if the lockout is lifted. If the lockout is not lifted, I predict no football until at least November, and maybe a season lost.

"...collusion, to artificially controlling competition, to inhibiting player movement, to making their costs certain, and generally suppressing every free market principle. The fact that they had the consent of players via collective bargaining created a non-statutory labor exemption — it gave the owners legal cover for the socialistic anti-competitive way they operate. "

Deb says: Mar 13, 2011 11:09 PM @Those who keep insisting players offered nothing, pay attention: "[E]arlier this year, the players offered to take 50 cents of every dollar earned, without regard to expense credits or anything else that would be deducted before getting out the carving knife. The proposal represented a lower percentage of total dollars than the players have received in each year since 2002." The owners demanded an additional $1 billion from players. The owners spent two years stockpiling lockout funds to finance them while they shut down the league. The owners hired a lockout specialist to head their "negotiating" team. The owners kept walking away from the negotiating table before making a ninth-hour offer that didn’t address the disputed revenues. The owners have waged a propaganda war to convince naive fans that labor is trying to hit them up for more money when it’s the other way around. The owners shut down the league–as they obviously intended to do from the start. The players are going to court in hopes of resuming business. The percentage of the NFL revenues earmarked for players is comparable to the percentage of budget earmarked for human resources in any labor intensive industry. NFL owners are not suffering and players are paid commensurate with the revenue they generate for the owners.

Pete Kendall is a retired NFL guard (1996-2008).

The owners have been preparing for this lockout for years. When negotiating with networks over the TV contract, the owners specifically sought a contract that would pay them even if there was no season and did so with the intent to ease their financial pain if they locked the players out. A document obtained by HuffPost Hill shows that the owners "decision tree," which has been cited in court cases but not published, cites "cash needs during lockout" as one of the "key factors" driving the negotiations for payment even without games.