NFL Free Agency Battle Reaches the Courtroom

After five years of often intensive, grueling and always frustrating labor negotiations, the National Football Leauge union’s persistence for free agency and the league’s battle to preserve competitive balance has reached the courtroom.

An antitrust trial -- brought in the names of 11-year New York Jets running back Freeman McNeil, Green Bay Packers quarterback Don Majkowski and six other players, all of whom were nominal free agents in 1990 -- was scheduled to start today in a federal district courtroom in Minneapolis, and could last from five to eight weeks.

The union is hoping to accomplish in court what it could not get after the unsuccessful, 24-day 1987 strike, and in sporadic negotiations ever since -- unfettered free agency.

The players are challenging restrictive player-movement rules imposed by the NFL. They are seeking, in addition to unrestricted free agency, a total of $3 million in damages.

Although the NFL Players Association is not part of the suit, which was originally filed in July 1990, the union is funding the legal action and has been the moving force behind it.

The trial promises to be give-and-take between both sides. The plaintiffs plan to call several players to testify that they could have made much more money if they had been total free agents. Economic experts and player agents also will be called by the players to testify what free agency means to professional sports. Donald Fehr, head of the Major League Players Association, may be called to tell how well free agency has worked in baseball, as well as Charles Grantham, National Basketball Association Players Association director, to give similar testimony about his league.

But the NFL is expected to call its own economic experts to show that total free agency has caused severe damage to baseball in the form of tremendous salary increases and alleged economic damage to small-market clubs. The league also plans to call general managers to testify about differences between football and other sports, most notably the investment teams say they make in developing players. And team owners are expected to testify that unlimited free agency would destroy chances for critically needed competitive balance because player salaries would spiral out of control.

Many of the league’s small-market franchises, NFL officials say, would suffer greatly because top players would choose to play for the larger franchises in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.

But the players charge that the NFL’s current system affecting player movement -- Plan B, which was imposed by the league after the 1987 strike -- is restrictive and is an unreasonable restraint of trade. They say they should have a right to play for whatever team they want and offer their services to the highest bidder, without getting bogged down in player compensation and rights of first refusals by teams.

Under the current Plan B system of free agency, teams are allowed to protect 37 men on their 45-man roster. Unprotected players are free to negotiate with other teams, but a player’s current team is given the right to match any offer.

The NFL contends the plan, which the league says could be further liberalized, has resulted in several hundred players changing teams -- more in 1989 and 1990 than the combined total of free-agent movement in the NBA and Major League Baseball since 1982. Both sports have less restrictive free-agent systems.

The trial is being held because both sides were unable to reach a collective bargaining agreement after five years of negotiations and a costly strike. The last NFL collective bargaining agreement was negotiated in 1982.