A Sea Of Red

The league's action was a legal bombshell. Instead of standing on its lower-court wins over American Needle, the league told the Supreme Court that it wants the justices to consider an issue far beyond the caps-and-hats contract. It wants the court to grant the NFL total immunity from all forms of antitrust scrutiny, an immunity that would then apply to the NBA, the NHL and MLB, as well.

The legal doctrine at the center of the case is known as "single entity." If the NFL manages to persuade the Supreme Court that the league is a single entity competing with other providers of entertainment rather than a group of 32 separate businesses competing with each other, the landscape of the sports industry will be transformed, according to law professors and experts contacted by ESPN.com.

If it is a single unit and not 32 separate, competing teams, any violation of American antitrust law would be impossible to establish. A violation of the Sherman Act begins with a "combination, contract or conspiracy" that restrains competition and hurts consumers. If the NFL is a single unit, it cannot be in combination, contract or conspiracy. It would be immune to the antitrust cases that have allowed player unions to establish and to protect free agency and other benefits.

Under the rule of single entity suggested by the NFL, the league could be vulnerable to antitrust scrutiny only if it were to join with other leagues or other providers of entertainment in setting prices, a highly unlikely development.

With their new powers and freedom from antitrust concerns, all four leagues would enter a new reality. Owners could attack free agency, using their new bargaining power to restrict player movement from team to team and impose a salary schedule, which is how the Cavaliers' James conceivably could find his options severely limited after the upcoming NBA season.

Leagues could easily establish a similar salary schedule for coaches and managers, who are considered a part of management and cannot legally form a union. Thus, the Vikings' Frazier, who has already interviewed for a number of NFL head-coaching openings but has yet to land one of the top jobs, could see his earning power restricted if and when he does.

And leagues could further centralize control over other team operations such as paraphernalia sales, TV programming and web initiatives.

For the NCAA, the single-entity concept could bring to an end a string of embarrassing and expensive losses in antitrust lawsuits. And the BCS would enjoy new protection against antitrust attacks that have the potential to break up its bowl system.

If the NFL succeeds in its single-entity gambit in the Supreme Court, the words "decertification" and "class action" will disappear from the vocabulary of sports. Unions will be left to the uncertainties of bargaining a contract with strikes as their only significant leverage. Instead of resolving bargaining impasses with court cases, the deadlocks will be resolved in strikes and lockouts -- the baseball way.

Can the NFL and the other leagues succeed? A decision will come in the spring or early summer of 2010. If the NFL can find five votes for its single-entity concept, it will transform the industry.

Leagues will enjoy unfettered monopoly powers.

Salaries for players and coaches will drop.

Free agency will wither away.

Sponsors will pay more.

Fans will pay more for tickets, television and Internet broadcasts and for paraphernalia.

And owners' profits will soar.

TDDance234 wrote:I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing. On one hand, I'd like to see salaries drop considerably and altering free agency would put a greater emphasis on the draft and coaching.