Dave Pear's Blog

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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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NFL and NFLPA’s labor woes may not be over yet

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Tuesday, 02 August 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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The National Football League owners have a labor agreement with the present members of the reconstituted National Football League Players Association but it appears that the league still has problems with the players association’s stance on not helping out former players with their medical needs years after their last game in the league. The league apparently informed Carl Eller’s legal team on Friday that the-then decertified National Football League Players Association decided not to take a $500 million offer over ten-years to get retirees life football medical benefits and an uptick in pensions as part of the recently completed collective bargaining agreement.
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Handouts to NFL owners have been an absolute failure

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Former New York Jets great Marty Lyons says retired players need health benefits now
Thursday, 19 May 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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NEW YORK. N.Y. — In October 1987, New York Jets defensive lineman Marty Lyons decided to cross a picket line and play football because he didn’t like the way National Football League Players Association Executive Director Gene Upshaw was conducting the association’s business. The NFLPA went on strike looking for a liberalized form of free agency and more money. The NFLPA didn’t bother asking for after-career lifetime health benefits.
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Lyons has never looked back at his decision to cross the picket line and in hindsight thinks the 1987 four-week strike was a waste of time.
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“I don’t worry about it, I got more important things to do than worry about a labor dispute, worry about a lockout” said Lyons on Tuesday at the announcement that he was elected into the College Football Hall of Fame. “I got four kids, I try to be the best father, best husband that I can to them. Whatever happens in this dispute, they will settle it.
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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Fans don’t matter in sports
Monday, 16 May 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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And so the National Football League lockout has become a version of the People’s Court. The good guys, the National Football League Players Association, are fighting for workers’ rights and are begging “fans” to help them lift the lockout. The owners, the bad guys, want to take away the players ability to make truckloads of money and are threatening their long term health care. Wait, the players have done such a great job in past collective bargaining agreements that former players lose health benefits five years after their playing careers are done and only if a player has three years in the league.
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The “People’s Court” is now playing in Minneapolis, Minnesota where United States District Judge David Doty is figuring out of the owners owe the players money over how the league managed to negotiate TV contracts to protect that side if in the event of a 2011 lockout. The players are seeking $707 million in damages. The fans will get ZERO if Judge Doty gives the players a monetary award even through a good chunk of that TV money comes from the cable TV subscriber-based ESPN and the satellite pay service DirecTV. In fact a good many people who never watch an NFL game on either ESPN or DirecTV are subsidizing the billions of dollars that ESPN and DirecTV pays the NFL.
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The chances are that Judge David Doty will not address relief for subscribers are great. Fans are not a part of the lockout equation. Cable TV subscribers never received a rebate in 1994 and 1995 when Major League Baseball shutdown the 1994 season and the National Hockey League’s lockout did not end until January leaving cable TV subscribers without a product from mid-September 1994 through January 1995. An awful lot of teams had local cable TV deals in 1994 and 1995 and subscribers were playing for something that they didn’t get. Programming in terms of games which they were charged for. In 1998-99, the National Basketball Association locked out the league players for about 30 games. Not one cable TV subscriber received a penny back for missed games. Interestingly enough the owner of the Golden State Warriors, Chris Cohan, tried to stiff the Oakland Alameda Coliseum Authority and not pay rent at the Oakland Arena during the NBA lockout.
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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Covenant between fans and sports is a facade
Thursday, 12 May 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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NFL Smoke & Mirrors

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Two decades later, sports is out of whack
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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About two decades ago, a tall man with an identifiable nasal twang was holding court at Gallagher’s Steak House one afternoon as he lifted a martini with a shaking hand to his mouth. The septuagenarian with a bad wig was standing near the slabs of meat that were hanging at the steak house and in a crescendo was complaining about the world of sports. The empty room began filling up as the man droned.
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“Sports is out of whack,” said the man with the familiar voice in a loudish way as he fumbled to take a sip of his martini. He was disgusted with the industry that he first entered in the 1950s as Willie Mays’ advisor.
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Last week was yet another week of vindication for the man who was despised by sportswriters for telling it like it is.
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The three — make that about five — events of the week of April 25-April 30, had nothing to do with actual games. There was the draft in a locked-out-then-open-for-business-then-locked-out National Football League.
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There was Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson moving as much earth as he could to try and keep the city’s National Basketball Association team in team in town despite the fact that the unemployment level had hit 12 percent in his region. At the same time he was rounding up $10 million in marketing partnership for the owners of the NBA Kings, the Maloof brothers, Johnson was cutting workers at the city’s police and fire departments and school administrators were trying to figure out whether they can keep sports going in Sacramento public schools.
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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Why are NFL owners really locking out the players?

Tuesday, 26 April 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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The National Football League has been pretending that all is well in the land of the 32 franchises and the league’s more than 1,600 employees. Teams are conducting cheerleader tryouts. The league released the 2011 pre-season schedule, then came the regular season schedule announcement and the exciting month of NFL football reaches a climax with three days worth of what is essentially a major restraint of trade, the college draft. That exercise, which starts on Thursday, is made legal thanks to the 2006 National Football League-National Football League Players Association collective bargaining agreement which gives the NFL the right to offer college players a chance to join the players ranks through that mechanism even though the college players have no say in the 2006 agreement.
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So all is wonderful in the land of the NFL except for one minor detail: NFL owners have locked out the employees who perform on the field — the players and no new negotiations on the collective bargaining agreement are scheduled until May 16 after a flurry of court decisions will be made on the legality of the lockout and whether the owners can use TV monies from 2011 rights from FOX, NBC, CBS, Disney’s ESPN and DirecTV for football operations even if there is no product.
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The lockout was lifted by a Minnesota judge on Monday afternoon; the NFL will appeal the ruling which means both sides are back to the bargaining table with no rules for business for 2011. It could be that 2010 rules apply which is not necessarily good for either side. Players will have to wait six years, not four for free agency and the owners have no salary cap to control players costs.
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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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NFL lockout 2011: Why are Gov. Christie and other politicians strangely silent?

Thursday, 21 April 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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The National Football League Draft is on the horizon and there has been a deafening silence from a group of people who actually have some power to exert some influence on what appears to be stagnating talks between the owners, who have locked out their employees — the players — and the players’ representatives.
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People like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who has no problem yelling at his employers in public settings — New Jersey voters — has gone mute on the issue. Christie is no better than Texas Congressman Lamar Smith who doesn’t think Congress ought to be involved in the dispute or President Barack Obama. Christie is in a governor’s league that includes both Democrats (Andrew Cuomo of New York, Jerry Brown of California, Mark Dayton of Minnesota among others) and Republicans (Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Rick Perry of Texas, Jan Brewer of Arizona, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana) who should be out there jawboning NFL owners to get a deal done with the players.

All the governors are cutting costs so you figure the potential of losing money because there will be no business conducted because of the lockout would stoke their combative fires.
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But it hasn’t.
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Time for a brief intermission while Jennifer catches her breath as she finalizes the second half of our Conference videos. But we’re not letting up from our focus on providing information and finding and promoting programs that will help to improve retired players’ lives after football.
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One of our recent posts from Evan Weiner covered Gene Atkins’ life after football (click HERE to read that earlier post). Evan’s post brought up one of the issues that we mention a lot and it was one of the topics that we did not have an opportunity to cover at our recent Conference: ERISA law. You’ve heard Dave and many of the other players and attorneys referring to it.
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The US Department of Labor defines ERISA Law as, “The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a federal law that sets minimum standards for most voluntarily established pension and health plans in private industry to provide protection for individuals in these plans.
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“ERISA requires plans to provide participants with plan information including important information about plan features and funding; provides fiduciary responsibilities for those who manage and control plan assets; requires plans to establish a grievance and appeals process for participants to get benefits from their plans; and gives participants the right to sue for benefits and breaches of fiduciary duty.”
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You can read the Dept. of Labor’s website information on ERISA law - click HERE.
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Jeffrey Dahl is the attorney representing Gene Atkins in his lawsuit against the NFL. We just received his permission to post his recent article from Journal of Consumer and Commercial Law detailing the NFL’s longstanding history of violations of ERISA law and why he filed the case on behalf of Atkins. It’s a long read but well worth the effort if you want to bring yourself up to speed on what the League has been doing over the years to chip away at its employees’ rights under Federal laws that were meant to protect them. We’re looking forward to having Jeff speak at next year’s Conference!
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We’ve uploaded the entire article to Scribd for easier viewing and to make it downloadable. You can click the link to go over to Scribd’s site where you can enlarge it for easier navigation (hit the ESC key to close). You can also click the DOWNLOAD button to save a PDF copy for printing and reading later.
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Jeffrey Dahl NFL and ERISA
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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

NFL’s big game against the players starts this week in Minneapolis

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

Sports owners are entitled to lion’s share of stadium revenues – and here’s why

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We’ve arrived in Las Vegas to prepare for our First Annual Independent Football Veterans Conference. In a short span of two months, we’ve been fortunate in being able to assemble a terrific lineup of speakers who will help to cover a focused range of topics that are most relevant to retired football players today: From legal matters to pensions as well as information on some of the latest discoveries and treatments for those injuries most of you have been carrying for years. You can read about the topics we’ll be covering along with a Speakers’ List over at our new 2011 Conference website – just click HERE. And you’ll also find our finalized schedule there.

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

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23 March 2011
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BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
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(New York, N. Y.) — Pat Matson has a very clear interest in the National Football League owners-National Football League Players Association or correctly the former National Football League Players Association as the players have decertified as a “union.” Matson was a player in both the American Football League with Denver and Cincinnati and when the American Football League-National Football League completed their merger in 1970, Matson moved to the NFL with Cincinnati.

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

Gene Atkins: A discarded and disabled former football player forgotten in the NFL lockout

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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

Are sports fans resilient or suckers?

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