fanfromvirginia
Inconceivable!
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http://www.slate.com/id/2216797/
snippet:
"Two years after his retirement, Smith went before a judge and asserted that the draft constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Had it not been for the draft, he argued, he would have been able to negotiate a more lucrative contract for his one year as a professional. And he demanded that the NFL make up the difference.
The case succeeded at the district court, securing $276,000 in treble damages for Smith, and he won again when the league appealed. In 1977, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled the "draft inescapably forces each seller of football services to deal with one, and only one buyer, robbing the seller, as in any monopsonistic market, of any real bargaining power."
For a moment, Yazoo Smith seemed destined to stand beside Curt Flood, the outfielder who had fought Major League Baseball's "reserve clause" in 1970 and opened the door to free agency, as a giant in the annals of sports-labor history. If the Yazoo decision held up, there would be no more drafts in professional football—or, indeed, in any other professional sport.
But league lawyers (including future Commissioner Paul Tagliabue) had already been working on a Plan B. They realized that even if they lost the Smith case, they might still manage an end-around on the rules against monopolies by securing the support of the NFL Players Association (founded in 1956). A set of recent Supreme Court decisions—in a 1965 case involving meat-cutters and a 1975 case involving plumbers—had established a "non-statutory labor exemption" to antitrust law. That meant the leagues could still hold their drafts as long as they could get the unions to agree to them."
snippet:
"Two years after his retirement, Smith went before a judge and asserted that the draft constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Had it not been for the draft, he argued, he would have been able to negotiate a more lucrative contract for his one year as a professional. And he demanded that the NFL make up the difference.
The case succeeded at the district court, securing $276,000 in treble damages for Smith, and he won again when the league appealed. In 1977, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled the "draft inescapably forces each seller of football services to deal with one, and only one buyer, robbing the seller, as in any monopsonistic market, of any real bargaining power."
For a moment, Yazoo Smith seemed destined to stand beside Curt Flood, the outfielder who had fought Major League Baseball's "reserve clause" in 1970 and opened the door to free agency, as a giant in the annals of sports-labor history. If the Yazoo decision held up, there would be no more drafts in professional football—or, indeed, in any other professional sport.
But league lawyers (including future Commissioner Paul Tagliabue) had already been working on a Plan B. They realized that even if they lost the Smith case, they might still manage an end-around on the rules against monopolies by securing the support of the NFL Players Association (founded in 1956). A set of recent Supreme Court decisions—in a 1965 case involving meat-cutters and a 1975 case involving plumbers—had established a "non-statutory labor exemption" to antitrust law. That meant the leagues could still hold their drafts as long as they could get the unions to agree to them."
