Player Restraints in Professional Sports

NFL & PLAYER MOBILITY RESTRICTIONS

National Football League (NFL) free agency and player mobility restrictions

Sports have managed to become gradually a lucrative business, which has seen to the interest by investors to protect this business. Team owners, who are the main stakeholders, have imposed rather extreme measures or approaches to protect their teams from supposed manipulation from their players. Through the NFL, team owners have imposed the mobility restrictions on the players to retain them and generate revenue from the players, and subsequently retain them in the team.

The intention of the study is to critique relevant literatures on the topic, and provide credible data about the aspects of NFL, free agency and mobility restrictions on players.

Methods

This study relied on prior literatures. The search strategy employed used terms such as "NFL and mobility restrictions on players" to find relevant studies. The main exclusion imposed in the studies is the literatures submitted by students, for example, dissertations and thesis.

Results

It is apparent that information from the studies suggests that the team owners generate revenue at the expense of their players. The main and consistent suggestion from most of them is that there is a need of free agency to ensure that players can choose their teams of choice. In addition, cases or litigation in the ordinary courts have found out that the mobility restrictions are extreme, and they cannot ensure a professional association among the players and the team owners. In addition, the dispute between NFL and NFLPA about the issue is the longest in history.

Conclusion

The studies show consistency that free agency is the superlative way to guarantee that there is competition in the market. In addition, team owners should give the players a chance to earn what they deserve. Moreover, even the court has come out to justify the players' concerns in relation to the exploitative nature of the mobility restrictions on players. A particular study justifies the "Franchise Player" adopted by NFL, suggesting that it has the capacity to reduce the high costs involved in the negotiation. However, the approach is still restrictive.

National Football League (NFL) Free Agency and Player Mobility Restrictions

Problem Statement

Sports have evolved to become a lucrative business venture, which has seen to emergence of many investors. Alternatively, this has seen to the development and observation of the sports law in an effort by the investors to protect their investment interests. Conversely, owing to the money involved in sports, team owners have also imposed their own rules, in an effort to protect their teams, particularly through imposing mobility restrictions to its players. Apparently, there are many mobility restrictions, which have also evolved over time.

They all serve the same purpose of protecting team owners from supposed manipulation from team players. However, it is not appropriate for team owners to restrict players, and impose their own mediated salaries on the players, considering the amount of money a single player brings or contributes to the team. In this context, it is also wrong for the team owners to limit the movements of players. Therefore, it is a problem in the context that as a profession, players might not be enjoying their professions, and they could be operating as slaves.

Methods

The study relied on prior studies. Therefore, the most appropriate method use to retrieve relevant information concerning the topic was through a literature review. Literature reviews are central to already existing literature on the topic, regardless of the year the study was conducted. In this context, literature reviews provide accounts of literatures undertaken by accredited scholars or investigators in relation to the topic of study. Then again, this study's aim is to give an evaluative study, which analyzes prior studies, only those relevant to the topic of study in an effort to unravel more information about the topic of study. In addition, the paper employed an online search. This followed search on Google and Google Scholar for relevant literature.

Search Strategy

Notably, NFL and player mobility is a historical phenomenon. It is evident from the literature, and this is because of literature dating back to the 1980s touching on the issue. Having no particular issue to look for, the search strategy included terms such as "NFL and player restriction mobility, NFL free agency, NFL free agency and player mobility, and player restriction mobility." In this context, the search strategy yielded a number of studies, which were relevant or showed some relevance to the topic of study.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The study imposed exclusion and inclusion criteria. In this regard, any study that did not show any relevance to the topic of study was not included in the study. This means that any study, which lacked or failed to provide or obey the search strategy terms employed, were excluded. In addition, the study did not impose exclusion criteria based on the year of publication. This is because most of the studies, which showed substantial relevance to the topic, were mainly published between the years 1990-2013. The quality of the paper also mattered; in this context, papers from relevant or accredited authors, scholars, and investigators were included in the study. However, if there were papers submitted by students, such as thesis, or dissertations.

Body of Review

What the Studies Say

In the chosen studies, they all showed a consistency on the issue of free agency. In all the studies, it referred to the player's ability to have the freedom of choosing to sign with their teams of choice in the league. In addition, the renowned sports agencies, which include NFL, NHL and MLB, share this similarity, and they recognize that it is fundamental in the continuation of a free market. In addition, without a free agency, it would be impossible to realize the unfairness, and this is dangerous because team owners would exploit players (Chalian, 2012).

However, with free agency, there is the creation of a competitive market where players can negotiate with many teams, and this would allow them to receive benefits equivalent to their value. With the top three leagues sharing this crucial aspect, it would be possible to examine the adverse effects of variations in contract structures. In the past, people engaged in sports because of their love to the game; however, this is not the case anymore. Currently, players of all types of sports appear to be hired to play. Recently, it has become common for the players to maximize their salaries, and freedoms (Simmons, 2007; Depken, 2000).

This, therefore, has resulted to a counterattack from team owners who have fought to ensure that they retain as much revenue from the players, which has only created conflicts. As a measure or approach to mitigate the conflicts, players and team owners have opted to hold negotiations between the player's associations and the professional leagues. Historically, team owners imposed the player restrictions mobility in an effort to contain their players' salaries. They restrained the movements of the player through the reserve clause, which gave the team owner exclusive rights to the player's services and subsequently gave the owner the right to offer their desired salaries to the players.

In addition, the reserve clause forced players to accept the provided contract, and failure to accept this; they would lose their eligibility to play the sport. The college draft, which is still in existence to date, is another mobility restriction clause, which indoctrinated the players into the reserve system. In reference to the college draft, teams chose players who were later placed on the reserve lists. Still, there is another type of mobility restriction known as first refusal. In this context, first refusal operates together with the free agency restrictions to limit the player's movements, prior to them playing for the team for a particular period.

Failure of a player playing for the threshold years, when their contract expires, then, the players become restricted free agents and remain subject to the first team's right of first refusal. This restriction gave the team power to match any offer from external teams made to the players, in an effort to keep the player. However, when the player meets or plays for the team for the required time, then one becomes an unrestricted free agent (Depken, 2000).

At the phase, the player could sign with any of the available teams without any imposed limitation. Although there were a number of player mobility restrictions, prior studies suggest that the mobility restrictions failed, mainly because of the increased antitrust and player demands. This saw to the development of new methods, which also aimed to restrict player mobility. A typical example of the new techniques is the salary cap, and this enables the player's freedom to move intra-league; however, there are limits about the number of teams, which the player was supposed to undertake negotiations (Levine, 1995).

Critique

Mobility restrictions give the team owners power to manipulate the players, and this is why there are many conflicts between players and their managers, or team owners. Team owners do not want to adopt the free agency, mainly because they want to pay players unfairly. This is because the team owners retained a substantial amount of the generated revenues by players. In addition, this also saw to the owners gaining from the selling of the player's services, mainly when they went to other teams (Depken, 2002). However, in free movement or unrestricted movement, the player stood to gain revenue, which the team owner could have earned instead.

Therefore, anyone can clearly see that the restrictions on player mobility were motivated by greed, or selfishness from the side of team owners. In fact, this is contrary to the law of fair share, in terms of the players being used to earn revenue for their team owners (Anderson & Seigfried, 1997). This also raises questions on the credibility or rather the importance of talent, if ones talent is meant to benefit the untalented, but privileged person. The untalented and privileged in this context refers to the team owners who had the money to run teams.

Because of this, many players sought to seek free agency. The importance of free agency explains why the National Football League has been battling about the aspect with the National Football League Players Association. Actually, the conflict is one termed as being the longest labor conflict in history. The NFL argued on behalf of the team owners, whereas the NFLPA argued on behalf of the players. The latter represented their cases, in terms of grievances and clauses such as a reserve system, which players found unfavorable. It is, however, important to view the arising issues from several perspectives (Walter, 1992).

The issues surrounding the player mobility restrictions clauses are complex, and although they are harmful, and exploitative, it is essential to view them from a holistic approach. In this regard, when the courts rule in favor of the players, they are actually saturating the market. This means that, even if, players will be in a position to earn competitive salaries, free agency could result to adverse competitive effects on the products in question, for example, NFL football and consumer welfare (Richard, 2001). A normal reader can judge that team owners will make substantial revenue when they impose restrictions to players, and reduce competition in the market.

A closer analysis of this literature, it is also evident that the team owners are the source of success for the players. They nurture the talents, provide an environment for the players to practice, and give them the occasion to display their "nurtured" talents. Therefore, from this perspective, particularly from the team owner's point-of-view, they are correct. This is a measure of protecting the players from leaving the teams, and transferring the knowledge or skills, they have received from the owners. Therefore, the owners perceive them as an investment.

Even so, this does not change the fact that team owners do so with a single-minded objective to generate revenue at the expense of their players. Therefore, similar to the views held within the studies, imposing mobility restrictions is a violation of the human rights, and requires urgent reforms. Alternatively, the current "Franchise Player" adopted by NFL has also been met with a few objections. This was an approach initiated by the NFL to reduce the much litigation cases and conflicts witnessed between the players and NFL. The analysis of the latter or the current approach "Franchise Player" shows that it is more considerate than the former mobility restrictions on players. This is because, although it is restrictive, it has the capacity to eradicate the high costs involved in negotiation (Kendrick, 2008).

Findings

Studies in this subject apply the same approach when investigating the issues surrounding free agency, NFL and mobility restrictions on players. They are all empirical studies, and, this is evidence that information within the studies is credible. The issue of free agency is advocated in most of the studies, and the concept or rather the idea of mobility restrictions appears to receive criticism, although not direct, from a majority of the studies. The studies have borrowed a lot from the sports law, including the ordinary law used in court. They have also provided some examples of cases concerning the litigations, and subsequent outcomes of the cases.

The cases have also made it clear on the importance of the topic in the sports field. The cases are consistent within the chosen studies, and this shows that the studies undertook a careful analysis of the topic of study (Eckard, 2001). Although some of the studies have approached the topic through descriptions, some of the studies have approached the topic through case studies. Descriptions do not necessarily mean that the studies are not empirical; actually, they add onto the existing literature. Case studies provide more insight onto the topic either way. Nonetheless, the approaches and methodologies used are empirical, and, then, information provided is credible.