Judge Doty Will Hear NFLPA’s Collusion Arguments

One day after the 2012 NFL regular season came to a close, Judge David Doty issued a ruling, denying the NFLPA’s collusion claim regarding the 2010 uncapped season.

Doty ruled that the NFLPA “released the claims it attempts to assert,” and consequently, “the court is without jurisdiction and denies petition to reopen.”

Judge David Doty of the U.S. District Court of Minnesota has agreed to hear arguments regarding a lawsuit filed by the NFL Players Association, which alleges that the NFL colluded to have a ‘secret’ salary cap in the uncapped 2010 year. The lawsuit was filed on May 23 and its merits have been contested by the NFL.

Doty has not yet made a decision on whether or not his court will hear the case, and will review arguments from the NFL and NFLPA at a hearing on Sept. 6, then determine whether or not to hear the lawsuit.

It has been two weeks since the NFL Players Association filed a collusion complaint against the NFL, claiming a “secret” salary cap was in place during the uncapped 2010 season. On Thursday, the union set about the business of gathering more evidence for its case, submitting requests for documents to the NFL and instructing agents to withhold information related to 2010 contract negotiations, as reported by Pro Football Talk.

The request sent to agents reveals that the NFLPA has already received some evidence from agents. The key passage from the memo reads:

From the NFLPA’s press conference Thursday:

↵Reporter: “What would you say to the owners contention that you guys signed off on the reallocation letter, and that should basically render the lawsuit null and void?”

Timing is everything in the NFL, from rushing the passer to running a route to setting up a block. Timing is also at the heart of the NFLPA’s collusion complaint against the league filed on Wednesday morning, and the outcome of the case could hinge on a question of timing as well as the language from prior agreements between the league and the union.

On the conference call with members of the press, questions over an agreement between the NFLPA and the NFL calling for the reallocation of 2012 cap dollars as a result of the 2010 actions taken by the Cowboys and Redskins continued to surface.

The player’s union is claiming that the NFL imposed a “secret” $123 million salary cap for teams during the 2010 season. According to the NFLPA complaint, that would violate anti-collusion and anti-circumvention provisions of the Reggie White settlement. In more simple terms, the owners agreed to a secret cap on player salaries despite opting out of the collective bargaining agreement that imposed a cap and the owners then set a new cap without the involvement of the NFLPA.

Quoted in the NFLPA release detailing the complaint, executive director Dominique Foxworth said:

Back in March, a report from Jason King at Yahoo! Sports began like this:

More galling: The fact that it was all cosigned by an independent arbitrator on Tuesday. Then again, we’re talking about Roger Goodell here. None of this should be surprising.

The joint statement released by the teams on Tuesday afternoon read:

Dallas was stripped of $10 million in cap space and Washington $36 million for contracts issued during the 2010 season, which was uncapped after owners opted out of the collective bargaining agreement. Burbank accepted the NFL’s argument that the league and its commissioner can take action to maintain competitive balance within the league.

Both the Redskins and Cowboys filed a grievance arguing their case but the arbitrator, Stephen Burbank, has ruled against them. The NFL’s motion to dismiss the claim was passed, and the penalties will not be rescinded.

As NFL Network’s Albert Breer points out, this is a fairly major precedent set by Burbank.

Keep up with the latest developments with our Redskins, Cowboys Salary Cap StoryStream. For more on the Cowboys, visit SB Nation’s Blogging The Boys and SB Nation Dallas. And for more on the Redskins, check out Hogs Haven and SB Nation DC.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who represents NFL owners, made the original ruling on the case so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the owners, who are benefiting from the penalties via a $1.6 million increase in salary cap space, voted it down.

The case is not over, though, as NFL Network’s Jason La Canfora reported last week.

The NFL has docked the Redskins $36 million dollars and the Cowboys $10 million dollars in cap space, which can be spread across the next two seasons.

It has been reported that the NFL repeatedly warned teams not to use the uncapped year to manipulate the salary cap, but that could also be perceived as collusion. That will be an important debate, especially since the decision could come from outside the League:

Here’s the thing: Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder are two of the most indefensible human beings on earth. They are reptiles in thousand dollar suits, they’ve spent the better part of the past decade behaving like children or tyrants, and usually some combination therein. Most of all, though, Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder are human proof that life is unfair.

So, it would take something REALLY unfair to have any of us defending Jones and Snyder on the point of fairness. If there’s cosmic injustice out there, nobody’s earned it more than those two. But Roger Goodell has a special talent for dwarfing even the biggest villains, so here we are.

ESPN 980 in Washington D.C. reports, and others have confirmed that the Redskins will take an approximate $18.4 million hit this year.

The Redskins released a statement on Monday indicating they “have received no written documentation from the NFL concerning adjustments to the team salary cap in 2012 as reported in various media outlets.”

I didn’t even know there was a rule like this in place but, according to multiple reports, the Redskins and Cowboys were warned about it several times. Pro Football Talk reports that the league told teams “at least six times” that there would be consequences for teams who used the uncapped year as a vehicle to dump as much money as possible and decrease future salary cap numbers.

The disconnect I see is that the NFL should have said back in 2010 that the Redskins and Cowboys contracts were a problem. Maybe they did and we just don’t know that but it seems to me that if they violated some sort of rule then the league should have informed them of that back then, and not two years later.

Wrong. According to ESPN, the Cowboys will be docked $10 million in cap space and the Redskins will lose out on a whopping $36 million. That’s an incredible amount of space for Washington, who at last check had a reported $31.1 million in salary cap space. They can divide that up between 2012 and 2013, according to the report.

The Cowboys had just under $5 million available so, while it’s not quite $36 million, that $10 million will affect them.