Well, the NFLPA finally moved forward with filing its collusion claim against the League today. The two sides had agreed earlier to delay the filing as part of an effort to continue negotiations but it looks like they’ve hit another impasse so the claim now goes into the hands of appointed Special Master Stephen Burbank. Read the press announcement on Sports Illustrated: Click HERE.
It was obvious after the meeting that the NFL’s in house attorney, Harold Henderson, tried to do an end run with his attempts to get real information to the retired players. Here’s the follow up on our Snowing in Dallas (click HERE to read that) post about Commissioner Goodell’s visit to Dallas. Many of you were well aware ahead of time that John Wooten had invited John Hogan to the meeting in Dallas. As a courtesy, we decided not to publicize his trip, with hopes that John Hogan would be given some time to actually address many of the issues he has personally encountered with the NFLPA’s disability program (or lack thereof). But that was not to be. John was initially turned away from the “closed” meeting and then allowed to take a seat but was told he couldn’t address the group about his findings and ideas. John left the meeting before it finished and then received an interesting e-mail from John Wooten (after we posted Snowing in Dallas) denying he had invited John Hogan to attend. What was more interesting however was another e-mail that came in after Wooten sent that e-mail out to John Hogan AND Harold Henderson. Henderson then sent a short and terse e-mail back to John Wooten and it sure looks like he doesn’t know too much about the Internet and e-mail either (like our good friends at Akin Gump!). Looks like Henderson clicked on that REPLY ALL button and sent his message out to John Wooten as well as John Hogan and several other people in the NFL organization: Jeff Pash, Peter Abitante and Deborah Pugliese). Pash is an Executive VP and an attorney, Abitante is their PR flak (?!!) and Pugliese is Goodell’s secretary. Now why would Henderson have to keep their PR counsel informed? Here’s the e-mail:
or so you would have thought, judging from the cold reception attorney John Hogan received when he showed up at Commissioner Roger Goodell’s “open” forum to hear about retired players’ complaints. John was there at the invitation of John Wooten of the NFL Players Alliance. After canceling appointments and juggling court appearances so that he could make the meeting (all at his OWN expense), John arrived at the meeting and was first stopped from entering the room. After a brief delay, John was finally allowed to take a seat in the meeting room. But in no uncertain terms, he was then told that he wasn’t allowed to speak at all because the floor was only open to players! So John sat through the entire meeting and took copious notes – over ten pages of ‘em!
We just received word that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will be making the first stop of his planned 32-city tour in Dallas. The Dallas NFL Alumni announced that the Commish will be on Wednesday, October 8th at the Cooper Guest Lodge Hotel, Spa & Conference Center at 6:00 pm. For directions to the Cooper Guest Lodge Hotel, clickHERE.
Daniel Kaplan of Sports Business Journal reports in a new article that the NFL is carrying over $9 billion (yes, that’s a ‘B’!) in debt. Apparently, it was revealed as an exhibit in court filings from recent union discussions. But before you fall over in amazement, the league’s lawyers also said that the debt is not really a problem since their projected cash flow is more than adequate to service the debt (almost $7 billion in 2006 alone).
What’s interesting, however, is that over 25% of that debt is from financing for new stadiums in New York and Dallas. So here’s the math: They have $9 billion in debt but they can easily finance nearly $2.5 billion in loans to the Giants, Jets and Cowboys because they have nearly $7 billion a year in cash flow.
