This update will be brief, and unfortunately, will not indicate that things are going in the right direction. They’re not necessarily going in the wrong direction either, but it looked like things were about to snowball pretty quickly into some actual football movement for a few days there.
On Friday night, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals granted the owners the temporary stay that they requested, bringing the apparent progress that could have potentially led to free agency opening on Monday to a screeching halt. While this certainly is not good news to anyone who wants to see football, this is not quite the doomsday scenario that would give leverage back to the owners and jeopardize the 2011 NFL season. Not yet at least.
The “temporary stay” that was granted by the 8th circuit court is an entirely different request than the stay the owners requested to be put in place during the appeals process. The temporary stay is simply an interim measure that is in place while the court deliberates and ultimately comes to a ruling on the stay request itself. In effect, the appellate court essentially granted a stay on Judge Nelson’s ruling while it decides if it should grant a stay on Judge Nelson’s ruling. Makes perfect sense, I know.
Not being a legal expert myself, it is difficult to speculate how this forecasts the pending ruling on the stay itself, other than that it should come early this week. It is being reported, however, that the decision to grant the temporary stay was a 2-1 ruling, with Judge Kermit Bye issuing a lengthy dissent as to why this temporary stay, an “emergency measure” should not have been granted in this “non-emergency situation.”
What we can hope as NFL fans is that this temporary stay was granted simply to calm everybody down in the interim until the appellate court ultimately forces the NFL to begin its league year. Without rules in place following Judge Nelson’s ruling, teams were treating player interaction differently across the league, and we can be hopeful that the pending ruling will force the league year to open for the long-term, thereby forcing owners to produce a system of rules immediately. If not, we could be looking at a 6-8 week extension of the lockout, which could become indefinite if the owners win their appeal.
All we can do now is keep our fingers crossed and hope to hear good news within the next couple of days.
