For the NFL and its fans, the Super Bowl is the ultimate day of reckoning.
But amid the pregame hype this year, there is an undertone of tension over
an off-the-field battle that is also projected to come to a head soon.
A federal district judge in Manhattan is expected to rule by early February
in what could be the most important legal case in recent professional football
history -- a case with the potential to alter the way both the professional
and college games have done business for more than three-quarters of a century.
Running back Maurice Clarett of Ohio State, suspended last year for alleged
NCAA rules violations and lying to investigators after scoring 18 touchdowns
and leading the Buckeyes to a national championship, is pursuing the option
of going pro. But he's blocked by an NFL rule that says players can't enter
the draft until three seasons after their high school class's graduation.
Clarett, 20, would not be eligible for the draft until 2005.
So Clarett is suing the NFL, claiming that the rule violates federal antitrust
law.
The debate over Clarett's case is largely about the costs and benefits,
moral and economic, of letting non-seniors -- or conceivably even a gridiron
version of LeBron James, basketball's high-school sensation now in his first
year in the NBA -- move directly into the pro football ranks.
"If the ruling goes against us, the group hurt least will be the NFL,"
said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "On the other hand, many young men will
chase an unrealistic dream and give up their best chance at a college education
and the opportunity to develop their skills. College football as a sport,
and all the other college sports that depend on it for revenue, will also
be hurt."
Clarett's lawyer, Alan C. Milstein, argues in his court filings that Clarett
has a right to be assessed as an individual and that the true purpose of the
NFL rule is to "perpetuate the free farm system known as the NCAA,"
where the costs of player maturation -- and player injuries -- are shouldered
by colleges and players.
But as a legal matter, the case before U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin
will hinge on lesser-known considerations -- specifically, whether, in the
eyes of the law, the NFL's rule is a product of a collective bargaining process
between players and owners that is even more important than Clarett's right
to pursue his fortune in a free market.
The NFL says the case is controlled by a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that
said antitrust law did not bar the Washington Redskins and other teams from
imposing a $1,000 per week salary on non-roster practice players, after contract
talks between the NFL and the NFL Players' Association broke down.
In that case, Brown v. Pro Football, Inc., the court ruled 8-1
that the salary imposition was a tactic in a collective bargaining process,
and thus permissible because courts have recognized that antitrust law cannot
necessarily be applied to labor-management relations, lest the fight against
monopoly thwart labor law's goal of promoting negotiation.
Thus, the NFL argues that its rule is something that labor and management
have agreed on for the benefit of pro football -- and, as such, beyond the
reach of antitrust law. Milstein counters that the rule was never specifically
bargained over by the owners and the players' union. It is, he says, a cozy,
anti-competitive arrangement between the NFL, the NCAA and the NFL Players
Association of the kind antitrust law was designed to break up.
He points out that Clarett, at 6 feet and 230 pounds, is already bigger
than some successful NFL players.
Certainly the origins of the NFL's rule lie in the early league's desire
to avoid tension with the college game. It was adopted after Illinois's star
running back, Harold "Red" Grange, stunned the sports world by leaving
school at the end of the 1925 college season and joining the Chicago Bears
of the five-year-old NFL for a reported $50,000.
At the time, the college game reigned supreme, and pro owners feared taking
it on. "The NFL felt pressured to do something, or else it would take
a hit it could less afford than the colleges could," said John M. Carroll,
a professor of history at Lamar University and author of "Red Grange
and the Rise of Modern Football."
"The Grange Rule," as it was originally known, has since been
modified, most significantly in 1990, when the four-year limit was replaced
by a three-year one. But its declared purpose remains the same: to prevent
youngsters driven by often false hopes of quick riches from entering the pros
before they are mentally and physically mature enough to survive in a violent
professional sport.
Grange himself suffered a crippling knee injury in 1927. He sat out the
1928 season, then played four more years, but was never the same.
Milstein argues that the labor exemption as defined in the Brown case does
not apply to Clarett's claim because the NFL's rule, unlike the salary imposition
at issue in the Brown case, was never included in the collective bargaining
agreements between the NFL and the NFLPA, or even discussed in detail during
negotiations.
"Another peculiar thing about the rule is, what is the rule, what does
it say, and where is it?" Milstein said in an interview, noting that
at times the NFL or its spokesmen have said that the rule bars players from
joining the draft until three NFL seasons have elapsed since their high school
graduations, and at other times they have said it applies to three college
seasons.
The league is considering whether to allow Pittsburgh all-American wide
receiver Larry Fitzgerald, the runner-up in the Heisman Trophy voting this
season as a sophomore, to become eligible for the NFL draft in April. Fitzgerald
contends that because he attended prep school for a year after he would have
graduated from a high school that he has fulfilled the three-year rule.
In its memo to Scheindlin, the NFL says the rule was implicitly bargained
when the players' union agreed generally not to sue the league over any of
its by-laws. "Even if the eligibility rule had not been the subject of
an agreement with the NFLPA," the NFL's lawyer, Gregg H. Levy, wrote,
"it would still be exempt from antitrust challenge because it was implemented
in the context of a collective bargaining relationship."
Levy also argued that Clarett lacks legal standing to bring the case because
he cannot show that the eligibility rule has depressed overall player pay.
In fact, Levy noted, the NFL is paying players over 99 percent of the maximum
allowed under the salary cap. But Milstein responds that the rule effectively
forces a certain number of players to play in college "for nothing,"
when they could compete, and earn big dollars, in the pros.
Milstein's task is complicated by the fact that the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 2nd Circuit, which would hear any appeal of Scheindlin's ruling, barred
an antitrust challenge by Philadelphia 76ers first-round draft pick Leon Wood
against the NBA's salary cap in 1997. The 2nd Circuit said the suit was covered
by the labor exemption, even though Wood himself was not part of the union
when the cap was negotiated. Unlike Wood, however, Clarett has not been drafted
-- or even declared eligible for the draft -- so Milstein argues that he is
in a fundamentally different position than Wood was.
Clarett, who was suspended after Ohio State charged him with accepting money
and free cell phone service from supporters, and allegedly lying about it
to the school's investigators, needs a ruling soon so that his eligibility
for the April draft will be established in time for the annual mid-February
NFL workout for would-be draftees.
At present, each side has told the court that it is entitled by law to a
victory without the need for a jury trial. Scheindlin can rule in favor of
either side, or decide that there are factual issues that require a trial.
If Scheindlin rules in Clarett's favor, the NFL would presumably appeal
and seek a stay of her order -- which, if granted, could leave Clarett still
unable to go pro.
Any appeals would be heard by the 2nd Circuit, and, if it comes to that,
the Supreme Court.
Perhaps because of such uncertainties, a lawyer for Clarett in Ohio recently
told the press that he is considering returning to Ohio State football. But
Milstein said in an interview Tuesday that Clarett, while "keeping his
options open," remains "absolutely committed" to the lawsuit.
Even if Clarett wins his case, it is unclear whether the abandonment of
the three-year rule would change football as much as the free market in youthful
talent has transformed pro and college basketball. There are many more players
on a pro football team than there are on a pro basketball team, so the impact
of any single new player is unlikely to determine a team's fortunes. The potential
damage to the NCAA is significant, but could be mitigated if the league were
to relax its rule that eliminates the college eligibility of any player who
takes certain steps toward turning pro, such as hiring an agent.
The NCAA could permit players to test the waters in the NFL draft, then
return to college play if the NFL turns out not to be interested.
"I think you could sit down and write out a list of 10 to 12 deep effects
it might have," said Grant Taeff, executive director of the American
Football Coaches Association, a professional organization of college coaches
that strongly supports the rule. "We live in a society where youngsters
aspire to the NFL and very few get there."
Still, he added, "it's not like Chicken Little -- 'The sky is falling.'
Everyone would adjust and go on."
Copyright (c)2001 Daily Pennsylvanian
via UWire
