NFLPA Wins Legal Challenge Against NFL
A ploy by the NFL to cut back on salaries for 2008 draft choices was foiled last week when the NFLPA won a Special Master case which challenged the league’s position on club guarantees of rookie salaries in future uncapped years.
The dispute centered around a provision of the CBA which states that any salary amounts which are “fully guaranteed” in an uncapped year must be re-allocated to the capped years of a rookie contract. This provision came into play this year because the NFL gave notice of its desire to terminate the CBA after the 2010 season, which resulted in 2010 and subsequent years to be considered “uncapped” under the CBA.
The league claimed that these future guaranteed amounts had to be reallocated not only to a club’s salary cap for the remaining capped years (2008 and 2009) but also to the individual draftee’s cap number. If reallocated in this manner, nearly all rookie contracts with future guarantees in the uncapped years would have had to be rejected because they would violate the rookie pool rules.
The NFLPA challenged the NFL’s position in a case filed before the Special Master in early July, and argued in a July 18 hearing that the guaranteed amounts need only be reallocated to the team’s cap, and not to the rookie’s individual cap number. Special Master Stephen Burbank of the University of Pennsylvania Law School accepted the union’s position and ruled against the League in a decision issued the next day. As a result, a significant number of draftees were able to finalize their contracts and report to training camp on time.
