With the National Football League punting on how to handle players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police mistreatment of African Americans, all the owners (and Commissioner Roger Goodell) may have done is trade one headache for another: Accelerating the pending labor Armageddon which many analysts believe could cost the league part, if not all, of a season when the current collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2020 season.
It doesn’t take much watching of ESPN to see the relationship between management and labor is at its nadir in professional football. While everyone’s making money off the game of football, trust between players and owners—especially around Goodell’s role in enforcing player conduct both on and off the field—is nearly non-existent. At its core is the current status of the current CBA.
That much was clear from the way the NFL implemented the anthem change in the first place. Instead of going to the NFLPA and working out a compromise, ownership opted to sidestep the CBA entirely and alter the league’s “Game Operations Manual” instead. This move was not lost on the union in its statement about the policy change: “Our union will review the new ‘policy’ and challenge any aspect of it that is inconsistent with the collective bargaining agreement.”
Does this suggest that a lawsuit by NFLPA head DeMarius Smith challenging the anthem policy is coming? Would it give the union a chance to force ownership back to the table to work out a new CBA? Could such a lawsuit lead to the union discovering what they’ve long claimed was happening behind the scenes: collusion by the owners on everything from player salaries to an unwillingness to sign certain players?
Who can honestly say? But regardless, the new anthem rule will almost certainly be added to the list of grievances the union has been keeping track of ever since a federal judge ended the owners’ lockout in 2011 and forced the two sides to negotiate the current CBA.
There’s been bad blood between the two sides ever since. So bad in fact, the NFLPA started urging players to set aside money in mid-2017 in anticipation of a lockout or strike they believe is certain to occur in 2021.
So congratulations National Football League, you got the public relations problem that is Donald Trump off your back. (Sort of.) Good luck dealing with the repercussions of how you achieved it.
