from Fox:
Lifting football's labor lockout without a new contract in place would allow better-off teams to sign the best players, tipping the NFL's competitive balance and damaging the league, attorneys for the owners argued in court papers Monday.
The 74-page filing to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis laid out the league's position in advance of a June 3 hearing on its appeal of a key decision by U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson.
Nelson issued an injunction that lifted the lockout on April 25. But the 8th Circuit issued a temporary hold of that order four days later -- meaning that players cannot work out, or sign contracts, with any of the 32 clubs.
The arguments in the filing were an expanded version of what the league has claimed all along: that the union's move to decertify after the initial bargaining talks broke down is a sham; that Nelson does not have the jurisdiction to lift the lockout; and, that she should have waited for a decision from the National Labor Relations Board before issuing that ruling.
The league also said that lifting the lockout with no labor deal in place would cause chaos, with teams trying to make decisions on signing free agents and making trades under a set of rules that could change drastically under a new agreement.
"It would be difficult, if not impossible, to unscramble the eggs and return those players to clubs that otherwise may have had contract arrangements with (or, at least, a greater ability to enter into contracts with) such players in the absence of an injunction," the league's court brief said.
I'm not even going to pretend to understand any of what's being said here. What do you want to watch on Sunday afternoons this fall? I bet there will be some killer sermons.
