Cleveland Browns linebacker and player rep Scott Fujita knows the people who run the NFL are smart, he says, which is why he can’t figure out why they’re taking so long to let players back into team facilities in the wake of Judge Susan Nelson’s Monday ruling.
“They’re either crazy or they must feel pretty confident about their next step,” Fujita told ProPlayerInsiders.com in a phone interview Wednesday. “Because it seems to me they’re taking a huge gamble. They are basically violating a court order. What happened (Tuesday) could be construed as acting in contempt of a court order.”
He’s referring to Tuesday’s odd events, when players showed up at team facilities but were not allowed by their teams to work out. The NFL has said it wants to keep the lockout in place until Nelson rules on its request for a stay of her Monday ruling, which could happen late Wednesday. In the meantime, the players have made it clear that they believe Nelson’s ruling means the lockout is no longer in effect and that they should be permitted to work out with their teams and coaches.
Wednesday morning, the players wrote to Nelson urging that she deny the NFL’s request for a stay of her injunction and order the league to begin the league year immediately. They asked that the NFL put up a $1 billion bond if a stay is issued. (Nelson gave the NFL until 4 pm CT to respond to that point.) And they dismissed the league’s assertion that it requires more time to figure out how to handle the injunction and establish work rules under which the league year could start in absence of a collective bargaining agreement.
“If the NFL defendants are faced with a dilemma, they put themselves in that position by repeatedly imposing rules and restrictions that violate the antitrust laws,” attorneys for the players wrote.
The NFL has argued that Nelson should issue a stay of her injunction while their appeal is heard because they are at either (a) imposing new work rules that could open them up to antitrust litigation or (b) beginning the league year with lax rules that would result in an unrestricted free-agent frenzy.
“Any alleged predicament is of their own making,” the players’ attorneys wrote. “There is no reason why the NFL defendants cannot devise a lawful player system, and their complaints about potential antitrust scrutiny are not well-founded where such scrutiny is a reality of doing business.”
Nelson appears unlikely to grant a stay, since she wrote an 89-page decision explaining the reasoning behind the injunction. If she does not, the NFL will ask the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to issue the stay while they hear the appeal. The 8th Circuit could take up to a week to decide on the stay and more than a month to rule on the appeal. In the meantime, the league believes the best course of action is to maintain the lockout status quo.
“We have to react to the judgment and make sure it’s done in an orderly process,” commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday at a pre-draft event in New York City.
The players, however, believe Nelson’s ruling clearly allows them to return to work.
“The last four words of her ruling were ‘the lockout is enjoined,’” said Fujita, who advised his Browns teammates to show up at team headquarters Tuesday and Wednesday if they wanted to. “For us, the reality is, we’re in transition mode. We have a new coaching staff we haven’t been able to have any contact with during this, and guys want to get to work. To me, it’s about as black and white as it gets. Based on what Judge Nelson ruled, we should be allowed to do whatever we would normally be doing this time of year.”
It remains to be seen when and whether that will be allowed to happen. Fujita acknowledged that the players won a big victory Monday, but he knows this whole thing is far from over.
“Small, incremental progress,” Fujita said. “We’ve just got to keep chipping away at the rock.”
