Submitted by Kevin, Mar 19, 2007 11:44

Dear Mr. Smith,

The reason Courtney Paris, Maurice Clarett, or any other athlete who may challenge entry into a league is barred from doing so has nothing to do with some diabolical plan of a league. The professional sports leagues and the players' associations go through a collective bargaining process to determine, among other things, the standard for entry into the leagues. In professional sports, league after league and players' association after players' assocation have decided to enact minimum entry requirements for young athletes.

As federal law stands, if an employer and its employees collectively bargain for terms of employment, then those standards cannot be challenged. If courts were to overturn such agreements, they would void every collective bargaining agreement in place across all industries, effectively ending the right to unionize. No judge is going to shut down all unions over an athlete.

Every few years, the leagues and players' assocations renegotiate the terms of their respective collective bargaining agreements. If, at that point, the league and players' unions want to change the entry rule, they can. But, it is ignorance of federal labor law to say "the league keeps out Paris." The leagues simply negotiate with the players - and it was the NFL Players' Assocation that backed the rule that keeps guys like Clarett out of the league until a certain number of years have passed.

Collective bargaining has long been the vehicle by which employers and employees come to terms of employment. Athletics is not going to change that. The livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of middle class laborers depend upon the collective bargaining process. Congress and the federal judiciary have long understood this. Sadly, journalists who write about athletics do not.

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