Supreme Court denies NFL's plea for anti-trust protection

In other words, the NFL is 32 separate entities, not one big thing working for the mutual good of all.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5214509&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines

My question: Why does MLB remain the only major professional sports league with anti-trust protection? Hoping someone here has some insight into this. I'll hang up and listen.

 

I was wondering the same thing

 

Baseball got an early exemption to the Sherman Antitrust Act when the Supreme Court said it didn't apply because they weren't participating in interstate commerce.

The exemption was twice reaffirmed, once in the 50s and again in the 70s, despite the court admitting that the basis for it -- that baseball isn't interstate commerce -- doesn't hold up anymore. It's one of those strange outcomes where the precedent is more important than the basis underlying the precedent.

You can get a pretty good primer on it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_v._Kuhn

 

How much of a financial hit can a team like Jacksonville take?

 

The 1922 ruling, Federal Baseball Club vs. National League, was a complete legal aberration -- a case begging for outright reversal. The premise of the ruling, that MLB was not engaged in interstate commerce, was absurd in 1922 and is indescribably preposterous today.

It should be the first Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Vincent L. Gambini: "In regard to the majority opinion in Federal Baseball Club vs. National League written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 'everything that guy said is bullshit.' "

As far as today's ruling: don't worry, the billionaire-slurpers in Congress will snap right to attention and pass an "emergency exemption," because if the NFL (and NBA and MLB) isn't allowed to violate antitrust laws with impunity, where the hell is our society headed??

And of course they have nothing more pressing to worry about.

 

This has big implications for the union and league labor relations. This ruling effectively means that the players can, as they did in the '80s, threaten to decertify the union, and sue any contract imposed by the league on antitrust grounds. Since that is really the only weapon the players have (the strike thing never works too well), this is a big deal.

 

An antitrust exemption will be rammed through Congress in about three days flat.

And then the owners will be able to impose whatever terms they want.

 

That tactic didn't work so well for the MLB umpires under Richie Phillips.

Or, as Sandy Alderson said at the time, "it's either an offer to be accepted or a threat to be ignored."

 

Nice get. Kafka! Kafka! Kafka!

 

So now each individual team will do their own licensing?

Ask NASCAR how well that works.

 

Thanks, dools.