Tom Brady is Collateral Damage in NFL’s Labor War

The NFL’s case against Tom Brady isn’t about guilt or innocence; the NFL is fighting to keep their entire power structure in place, and Brady is just a potential casualty.

Tom Brady’s offseason to-do list:

1) Set clock on wall in training gym to count down to Super Bowl 51. Check.

2) Adopt adorable puppy and upload video re-enactment of The Lion King. Check.

(AWWWWWWWWWWWW!)

3) Prepare for NFL’s appeal of previously nullified four-game suspension on March 3^rd.

Wait, what?

Yup, after Roger Goodell suspended Tom Brady for four games, then upheld his own decision in Brady’s appeal, and then got nuked by Judge Richard Berman when Brady took the NFL to court, the league is appealing that ruling – the one that overturned Brady’s suspension after finding Roger Goodell and the NFL blatantly misused their authority under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. You know, the CBA that Goodell and Friends are arguing should allow them to dish out any punishment for any offense that they think they should be able to, regardless of guilt, evidence, fair process, all that stuff.

But don’t worry – according to Roger Goodell, the NFL’s appeal isn’t anything personal.

From NESN:

"“This is about our rights in the collective bargaining agreement. That’s all it is.” Goodell said. “We filed this litigation initially to reinforce the fact that we had this right in our collective bargaining agreement. We had a decision from Judge Berman. We disagree with it. That’s what appeals courts are for.“I’m not spending any time on this issue, but it is important for us to know what we bargained for and what we agreed to in our collective bargaining agreement and make sure that those processes that are agreed to in our collective bargaining agreement are followed. And so we are not going to allow that kind of a decision to stand when we think it’s in conflict with our collective bargaining agreement. That is the issue.“It has nothing to do with any individual player or anyone else. It has something to do with Judge Berman’s decision, and that’s what we’re appealing.”"

Aside from the league’s legal brief for their appeal doubling down on Brady “participating in a scheme to tamper with the game balls” (their words, not mine), for once, Roger Goodell is actually telling the truth. Sort of.

This appeal is all about the CBA – namely, how Goodell’s look-at-how-big-my-johnson-is abuse of power has the league at the point where another loss in court could mean the whole precious power structure they fought so hard for is FUBAR. If an appeals court upholds Judge Richard Berman’s decision that the Master of Integrity misused his authority and didn’t provide a fair appeals process, then…well, here’s how CSNNE’s Gary Tanguay put it:

"“When Brady appealed to Goodell, the commish doubled down on his idiocy, equating Brady’s offense to PED abuse. His over-the-top ruling, and over-the-top denial of Brady’s appeal (remember, Goodell reduces virtuallyevery suspension on appeal) opened the door for Berman to overturn the suspension. That was what Berman was ruling about: Whether Goodell overstepped his boundaries and abused his powers. Berman rather emphatically said he did. And now those powers — which, as we said, the NFL may be willing to go the Supreme Court to preserve — are in serious legal jeopardy.”“If the NFL gets beat again, the foundation of power that the owners have over the players will begin to crumble. And Roger Goodell will be known as the commissioner that allowed the initial crack.In Curran’s article, Michael LeRoy of the University Of Illinois College Of Law predicts the NFL will fight this all the way to the Supreme Court because another decision in Brady’s favor sets precedence and delivers a major blow to ownership’s grip on the players. Their absolute power will have been weakened. Legally.”"

Think about how hard a commissioner has to work to screw up and potentially torpedo a system that fixes the deck in the league’s favor in almost every step of the way.

The way the current CBA is written, there’s specific penalties for several different types of player misconduct, like failing drug tests, PED violations, and so on. Everything else that the league doesn’t like, whether it’s Pacman Jones beating up strippers or Terrelle Pryor allegedly signing autographs while he was playing at Ohio State, can fall under some version of either the Personal Conduct Policy and, of course “Conduct Detrimental to the League”.