Many years ago, before I covered sports, I covered politics and government. When people ask why I switched, I usually tell them that politics and sports are the same — highly partisan competition — but sports get you outdoors more.
No story confirms this similarity better than the NFL lockout, which is why sports fans have an easier time than legal analysts understanding what’s going on.
In sports, loyalties are easy to discern. The kid wearing orange is a Broncos fan. The gal wearing red is a Chiefs fan. The guy wearing black and silver is an ex-convict. And so on.
In politics, it’s just as easy. If you’re a Democrat, you’re for labor. If you’re a Republican, you’re for management. There are exceptions, of course, like the kid wearing orange because grandma knitted the sweater, but these rules work most of the time.
As a sports fan, if you understand the rules and you’ve studied the rosters, you already know how the lockout ends. The only question is when.
Just in case you haven’t been following this quagmire — and I hope you’ve been doing something more productive, like watching “NCIS” reruns — in this context the players are labor and the owners are management.
So: In one corner, you have the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Judge Susan Richard Nelson, who ruled for the players last month and lifted the lockout for about a minute and a half, was appointed by Barack Obama, a Democrat.
In the other corner, you have the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. The NFL appealed Nelson’s ruling to a three- judge panel consisting of Duane Benton, Kermit Bye and Steven Colloton. Benton and Colloton were appointed by George W. Bush, a Republican. Bye was appointed by Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The vote was 2-1 for the NFL and the lockout was on again.
I know, I know, you political partisans want to make this about ideology. You legal beagles want to make it about the law.
It is not about ideology. It is not about the law. It is about which team you’re on.
You want to argue about right and wrong in a battle to split up $9.5 billion between the very rich and the pretty rich? Feel free. Sports fans usually prefer to know the score.
To determine the likely winner, we must acknowledge there are occasional upsets in both sports and politics. The favored Lakers get swept out of the playoffs. The 2007 Rockies come out of nowhere and advance to the World Series.
In the case of the lockout, we have senior U.S. District Judge David Doty, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, a Republican, but pretty much always comes down on the side of the players. Hey, the dude is 81. Maybe he saw “Knute Rockne All American,” in which Reagan played the Gipper. Heck, maybe he was on the set.
Doty is the occasional outlier, like undrafted free agent Rod Smith becoming a star or No. 2 draft pick Ryan Leaf becoming a bust. Such surprises happen on the bench too (see Blackmun, Harry). As I might have mentioned, politics and sports are the same, only the red- faced people shouting at one another change.
It was Doty who ruled that the owners’ deal with the TV networks to collect $4 billion even if they didn’t play any games was not kosher. This is the lone remaining peg on which the players can hang their helmets. If Doty awards players some of that cash, both sides could afford to keep the dispute going indefinitely, were it not for one crucial element common to sports and politics:
Home-court advantage. The owners can appeal Doty’s ruling, just as they appealed Nelson’s. And that appeal too would go to the 8th Circuit.
By my count, nine of the 11 active judges on the 8th Circuit bench were appointed by Republicans, including Chief Judge William J. Riley, a George W. Bush appointee. So the odds that any three-judge panel will include both Democratic appointees are basically nil. Which makes the players’ chances of winning in the 8th Circuit basically nil.
They could appeal either appellate ruling to the Supreme Court, of course, but that would take forever and I can tell you right now the final score there is 5-4 for the owners unless somebody dies in the meantime.
So there you have it. A sports fan is in a much better position than an expert in antitrust law to understand that, short of “The Pelican Brief,” the owners win. The only question that remains is how long it takes the players to figure this out and make a deal.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297, dkrieger@denverpost.com or
