Our union of professional football players stands firmly behind anyone who demands to be heard as a team. Every NFL player — past, present, and future — owes a debt of gratitude to our founders: Frank Gifford, Don Shula, Sam Huff and Norm Van Brocklin, who, in 1956, decided that they wanted to negotiate as a team with NFL owners over cleaner clothes, better work rules, better treatment of injuries and better health care. Our collective bargaining agreement today includes better pensions and benefits, safer practices, and injury protections because they fought for and won the ability to bargain and fight as one team.
If the NFLPA really wants to make a difference, it might start by no longer enabling the NFL’s end run around antitrust law by agreeing through collective bargaining to prohibit anyone from playing professional football until he’s more than three years removed from high school. Although venting a little righteous indignation the NCAA’s way doesn’t threaten any union member’s job, so there’s that.
Get The Picture 
“If the NFLPA really wants to make a difference, it might start by no longer enabling the NFL’s end run around antitrust law by agreeing through collective bargaining to prohibit anyone from playing professional football until he’s more than three years removed from high school.”
Not much chance of that. Unions prefer to keep entry barriers high in their labor market. Keep wages up.
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Which reinforces the tasty irony of your post.
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“But, we don’t want the Irish!”
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I don’t have any problem with requiring a 3 year waiting period for the nfl. Antitrust or not, minimum standards have to be set somehow and by somebody.
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Then, again, you’re not Jadeveon Clowney. 😉
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I guess there’s always gonna be a phenom. Does that merit adjusting all the regulations and requirements so 1 or 2 people can be moved to the front of the line? Call me old fashioned, but I still say what’s best for the majority should be the focus.
Having said that, once the guy is playing – whether nfl or cfb, and contributing to the generation of profit, he should be compensated.
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Unlike what he was doing in College Station, I suppose.
Obviously, there’s a logic to this I’m not grasping.
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As long as they’re not set by a voluntary agreement between athletes and management, eh?
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Why not? Why is it so unreasonable for an 18 year old athlete to at least have the option to be trained on NFL practice squads or through an NFL development league?
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If the NFLPA wants to really make a difference, don’t you think assisting CFB players to secure health benefits, etc is more important than the 3 year rule? I mean, certainly it is in the NFLPA’s book, but it would be in mine too.
To me, fighting to abolish the 3 year rule doesn’t seem nearly as important as securing the things on CAPA’s list. And abolishing the 3 year rule wouldn’t do anything to help achieve those things, would it?
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How exactly is the NFLPA going to help secure those benefits?
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I didn’t say they were. But I don’t think their voice of support is worthless. Cheap, sure. But, the more public statements of support by more people/groups, the better.
Sure it’s self-serving, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. And, to me at least, not wanting to mess with the 3 year rule doesn’t make their talk cheaper.
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Except the latter is something they could actually do that would constructively help college athletics.
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Besides, where do the NFL players come from? Virtually every single NFL player played college football before he went to the NFL. And the college players now will be the future NFL players. You’d think they would want to help their own.
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