Negotiation Puts Hockey in the Penalty Box

Comiskey was able to get away with paying low salaries because of the "reserve clause" in players' contracts. This clause prevented players from changing teams without the permission of the owners. Without a union, the players had no bargaining power.

The collective bargaining agreement between the National Hockey League and the player’s association stipulates that arbitration must be used initially in order to resolve disputes relating to salary, grievances, and system. A case that did a good job of demonstrating the authority of the collective bargaining agreement’s stipulation of an arbitration clause was McCourt v. California Sports, Incorporated. In this case plaintiff signed a National Hockey League Standard Players Contract to play professional hockey with defendant team. After defendant picked up a free agent from another team, the other team proposed that plaintiff's contract be assigned to it as compensation. An arbitrator agreed and plaintiff's contract was assigned. Plaintiff filed suit alleging that the reserve system and the assignment of his contract as compensation for the free agent violated § 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C.S. § 1 (1976). The district court entered a preliminary injunction restraining defendants, hockey league, team, and players' association, from enforcing the arbitration award and from penalizing plaintiff for refusing to

Teams with large payrolls routinely win at a higher rate than teams who cannot afford to spend the massive amounts of money other teams do. For example, in the last fifteen years the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, two teams which regularly are among the highest spending teams in baseball, won on average 94.7 and 86.8 games respectively. By comparison, the San Diego Padres and the Kansas City Royals, two teams who are not able to compete financially with teams with deeper pockets, won an average of 77.1 and 71.6 games respectively in that same time span (Major League Baseball). This disparity in season wins is a direct cause of Major League Baseball’s lack of a salary cap. Over the course of a 162 game season, teams with higher payrolls, and therefore better talent on their roster, will prevail more often than

Jayson Stark, ESPN columnist, presents an interesting argument of the downfall of baseball after free agency. He uses sarcasm and slight humor to introduce the reader to the topic of free agency and uses the argument style of comparison and contrast to predict what today might have held had there been no free agency. But within his column, player agent Tom Reich states, “The people who criticize free agency to easily today don’t realize how bad baseball was twenty-five years ago” (Stark). It is Stark who realizes that the talent of the game has improved, but the overall passion in each player may have decreased.

in the fix to uphold his end of the deal, and give the players the money they

7th Basic Agreement – in 1990, the owners tried to institute another lockout because the lack of a salary cap made it possible for large market teams to attract richer television contracts from local networks and offer players higher salaries. The owners were proposing a revenue sharing program that would mandate the

Every year, it becomes more obvious that many sports in America have problems. For years, Hockey has been criticized for its excessive violence. The National Football League has also been scrutinized for this reason as well as the fact that many of the top players have constantly been in trouble with the law. Major League Baseball is no different. The situation with baseball is more complicated, and is not only ruining the game itself, but also drawing millions of fans away from the sport. The biggest problem is with the high salaries paid to athletes. These salaries are taking the competitiveness out of several sports, especially baseball, where there is no salary cap. Action must be taken

Never the less, we need to look deeper into the negotiations to see what is really being argues and who is genuinely at fault. One of the bigger arguing points of the expiration and creation of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement was the expansion of the football season from 16 games to 18 games. While, at the surface this may seem as though it is simple “two games”, it would be a dramatic change to many season aspects. Firstly, this would reduce the number of pre-season games from four to two. This lessens the team’s “real life” preparation time. Which gives both players and coaches real scenarios to base decisions about who to play, what players to release from the team and generally how to plan for their seasons. Another great thing about preseason is it gives fans a chance to see their teams in a cheaper setting, as these games normally do not have full price tickets. Additionally, there was great concern from players about health reasoning, as a 16 game season is already cruel to a football player’s body. Many players are often on the sideline for at least a small portion of the season with some sort of injury. Adding two more games only increases the chances for injury, which is accelerated with the short preparation time in a shorter preseason. You may ask at this point, what the owner’s standpoint may be. Unfortunately, it is most simply as being stated to recuperate more income from potential income losses. Obviously, the owners only see money in the

Their salaries would not have to be counted on a cap because there teams wouldn't be able to field a team by taking that kind of hit on the cap.

The real gist of the lockout was the ratio of the revenue that each side was to take home from the total $4 billion. The players indicated that they were ready to concede on the salary issued but wanted a significant share of the revenue. On the other side, the owners indicated that they had and were still

Collective bargaining and unions have had a considerable effect on fans through professional sports. Because of these contract negotiations, athletes in recent years have benefited from an increasing share of ticket and television profits. Collective bargaining has resulted in strikes and lockouts and has disrupted several seasons through cancellation of games or even ending a season. The televising of sporting events has become the largest source of revenue

Salary Cap will also affect motivation of the players if they do not get what satisfy them. They will be majorly playing towards maximizing their wealth rather than wining and keeping the spirit of the game alive.

Whether it be baseball, football, soccer, or basketball, sports are appreciated not only in America, but all over the world. One of these sports that is particularly popular in America is Football. The immense crowds of people who sit at a stadium or on the couch to watch a game never fail to recognize every single play on the field; however, many fans pay little to no attention to one of the most important components of the game, the player-association relationship. When signing a contract with an NFL team an NFL player is effectively dedicating his life to his new organization. His duty is to play for his team in order to make the organization money, and money they make. In the NFL last year “each team received $226.4 million” (Brady 1).

In Major League Baseball the general belief is that the more a team spends on their payroll the more games they will win. With the absence of a salary cap baseball may seam unfair to the smaller market teams who can't bare the salary costs that the larger market teams can. In Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Lewis depicts just how the Oakland Athletics have been winning in an unfair game for almost a decade. The A's are a small market team that doesn't have nearly the amount of money at their disposal that their competitors in the American League do. However this past season the A's won their fourth American League West championship in the last seven years while having the lowest payroll in their division. In

Additionally, because of the tax rules, 50% of the purchased price, which is $12 million, was designed as the value of the player roster then. This value was capitalized and depreciated over six years.