The New Rozelle Rule - Part Two

Everyone is worth a first rounder

Before the NFL as we know it existed the owners ruled the players with an iron hand. One player stood up to the owners and took his case to the Supreme Court and won, then nothing changed. The league was growing in popularity. Something had to give. Curly R's three part look at the financial and personal freedoms of NFL players throughout the years continues.

Part One: The Reserve Clause and the Rozelle Rule
Part Two: Mackey v. NFL
Part Three: Tonight

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When the NFL and AFL merged in 1970, they also combined players associations. After a contentious battle between NFL Rams player Ed Meador and AFL Bills player Jack Kemp for who would be player president of the newly merged association, Baltimore tight end John Mackey, he of the Mackey Award for college football's top tight end, became the compromise candidate. In his first negotiations with the league John was asked to sign a contract sight unseen, one that signed away quote in perpetuity unquote certain rights and privileges by the players. John tore that contract into little pieces, sought counsel from a labor rights law firm and the end result was a petition to the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to certify the NFLPA as a recognized union.

Two years later and still without significant leverage to compel owners to meet their demands for better salaries, benefits and freedom of movement between teams, in 1973 John and the NFLPA filed an antitrust lawsuit, similar to Bill Radovich's 28 years earlier, that sought an end to enforcement of the Rozelle Rule and the attendant virtual indentured servitude players had to their original team. In 1976 the US District Court for the 8th Circuit ruled that the Rozelle Rule was in violation of antitrust laws and no longer could be enforced.

The victory however was short lived, and due in the main not to nefarious dealing by the owners but rather to the skyrocketing popularity of the NFL in the late 1970s.

In 1977 the NFLPA and the league negotiated a new deal in which the owners successfully convinced the players to accept compensation for those players affected by the Rozelle Rule while leaving a form of the compensation system in place. Under the new agreement benefits for players were upgraded and arbitration was introduced as a method to settle contract impasses. The subjective power to determine team move compensation on a case by case basis was removed from the commissioner's office and converted into a value based system that determined due compensation to the old team based on the value of the player's new contract with the new team.

Not anticipated by the player's association was the huge increases in revenue experienced by the league in the late 1970s due to the increasing popularity of the game itself as well as the addition of two regular season games (taking the schedule from 14 games to 16) and the expansion of the playoff field from eight to 10 teams in 1978.

The unintended and unforseen consequence of this success was an increase in the size of new player contracts. Under the system agreed upon in 1977 many new player contracts now qualified the original team for compensation of up to or exceeding a first round pick from the new team; the compensation system was fixed based on lower overall average contract numbers and did not have a sliding scale based on growth in average contract size. As such movement between teams was still depressed.

Unable to come to agreement on better rules governing free agency the players went on strike for 57 days in 1982 when the 1977 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expired. The resulting compromise for the new CBA increased the contract values triggering compensatory draft picks though did not alter the basic framework. This had the effect of lowering the price in compensation a new team would pay to an old team for a free agent but did not change the game overall.

The 1982 CBA expired in 1987 and the union, once again unable to come to agreement with owners on loosening rules on player movement between teams, went on strike again, this time for 24 days. The players, unable to come to terms with the owners, came back to work without a contract. On the first day back to work in 1987 the union filed another antitrust lawsuit, the Freeman McNeil suit, that dragged on until 1991, challenging the right of the first refusal / compensation system as it was formally known, as well as the relatively new Plan B free agency system which called for teams to protect 37 veteran players each year and expose the others as free agents, with the losing team still entitled to compensation.

The league relented and in the CBA negotiated before the 1992 season free agency restrictions were dropped by the league in favor of a league wide hard salary cap. This is the basic system still in place.

Vestiges of the old system of reserve and compensation still exist in the NFL. Players with three or fewer years of accrued NFL service and expired contracts are designated as restricted free agents and the current team has right of first refusal over another team attempting to sign that player. And in the area of unrestricted free agency, teams are entitled to compensatory draft picks on a scale based on the value of the player's new contract with his new team. These compensatory picks however, do not come from the old team, they are granted as additional draft picks by the league. These draft picks cannot be traded.

The game of individuals had arrived, players now had greater independence within the league than ever before and could exert real influence over their football destiny.


Curly R's The New Rozelle Rule concludes tonight with part three, The Reebok Rule.



Chad Johnson aka Ocho Cinco uncredited image from here.