NFL Players to Seek Role in Discipline Matters as CBA Negotiations Resume

After a delay of more than a month, the NFL and its players will meet Tuesday for their second collective bargaining session. There are many issues to discuss as the sides work to avoid an uncapped 2010 season and a 2011 lockout of players by the owners. But according to sources close to the situation, one issue the players plan to raise during these negotiations is their desire to have some say in an NFL discipline policy currently controlled 100 percent by commissioner Roger Goodell.

FanHouse's Stephanie Stradley wrote in-depth about this issue a couple of weeks ago, and it's an issue that came up earlier this month when players union head DeMaurice Smith met with player reps from the 32 teams to plot strategy in advance of the next round of negotiations. According to a source familiar with that meeting, players are very upset over the idea of the commissioner as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to the league's personal conduct policy, and have expressed to union leadership a desire to seek some changes to the system.

What the union hasn't decided, however, is what form those changes should take.

The union knows it's walking a tightrope on these issues. It acknowledges that much of the player behavior that has resulted in discipline is way out of line, and it doesn't want to get into the position of having to defend the indefensible. That's why the preferred solution (from the players' end) may end up being an independent arbitrator that rules on discipline imposed by Goodell. The question is whether Goodell, who has made the personal conduct policy a hallmark of his commissionership so far, would agree to ceding any of the power he currently has over the system.

The players are bracing for a fight on this and a number of issues. Smith told FanHouse last month that he believes the owners' plan is to lock the players out in 2011, and the union believes the owners could actually make money during a lockout, since the TV contracts would pay off even if there were no games and they'd save on overhead because they wouldn't have to pay their players or open their stadiums. Smith has publicly asked that owners provide the union with audited financial statements as proof of the financial hardship they're citing as a reason for opting out of the current agreement, and so far the league has resisted -- perhaps in part because the financial records of the publicly-owned Packers, the one team that has no choice in the matter, showed a $20.1 million profit when they were released last month.

Smith, a Washington attorney with Capitol Hill connections, has already taken his case to Congress, and part of the union's strategy may be to enlist congressional help in threatening the NFL with a revocation of its antitrust status and/or its federally protected tax-exempt non-profit status. Smith has spent most of his time since the first CBA meeting (which was June 3) reaching out to players to deliver his message. He believes the key to the union's success in standing up to the league's lockout threat will be unity and his ability to enlist high-profile NFL stars to deliver the union's message (They opted out, not us. A work stoppage will be a lockout by them, not a strike by us. The current system is fine with us, why won't they say why they didn't like it?) as the negotiations wear on.

The negotiations are set to resume Tuesday, with both sides working against a March 2010 deadline, after which the 2010 season would be played without a salary cap and the threat of a 2011 lockout would become much more serious.