From the moment he was elected executive director of the NFL Players Association in March 2009, DeMaurice Smith always took the long view when it came to negotiations with the owners on a new collective bargaining agreement. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. It's one of the reasons that slightly more than a year ago he received approval from the executive committee to secure insurance that would pay each player roughly $200,000 if there were no football in 2011. Smith disclosed the fund to only a handful of people outside of the executive committee. However with negotiations seemingly at a standstill late Wednesday night, the decision was made to play one of their aces in the hole. So in the relative quiet of the sides' New York City bargaining room the next morning, Baltimore Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth informed the owners of the previously secret lockout fund. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/jim_trotter/07/15/secret-lockout-fund/
I doubt it. I've never gotten the impression that Billy Hunter is anywhere near as crafty and aggressive as Demaurice Smith.
200k is not that much to the established players, thats what harrison made to pay his fines last year
The bulk of the votes for accepting a new CBA are going to be fringe NFL players, guys who are making under $1million. $200k is very big for them.
200K is a lot of money to most of us, but that probably barely gets a lot of players through a couple of months.
Yeah, but for 80% of the rank and file guys in the league that's roughly half-their base compensation ... and that's huge because it's the rank and file guys who stand to lose the most with a lost season because the teams largely see them as expendable and replaceable ... they're also the ones who would have probably pushed the players union to settle as quickly as possible and get back to playing instead of remaining unified and letting the negotiations run their course. Brilliant move by D. Smith.
It may be an interesting legal case if they do not play and try to collect on the insurance money. By mentioning the insurance I wonder if the insurer can claim they are not bargaining in good faith. If you have car insurance, that doesn't mean you can purposely try to crash your car and get hurt to collect $$$. That is pretty impossible to prove... but if you posted on Facebook in advance that you were going to do it...
This is lockout insurance, it requires the owners, not the players, to make the decision not to play games. So there's really no case to be made by the insurers. The owners chose to lock the players out...the only way there could be insurance fraud is if the players and owners were colluding, in order to make the insurance company pay the lockout insurance. That's an obviously absurd idea, though...the teams and players would be forgoing millions in order for players to collect $200K apiece. This is like going to an insurance company and saying, "Look, I think someone is out to smash my car in the driveway. Will you give me purposeful-car-smashing-by-that-guy insurance?" and the insurance company agreeing. Unless you then make an agreement with that guy to smash your car, there's nothing wrong with holding that insurance and saying you were holding it in the event that that guy smashed your car. And if that guy stands to lose millions for smashing your car (and you do, too), there's basically no argument that he did it to help you defraud the insurance company.
Billy Hunter probably didn't think of it because like most people, he didn't dream insurers who are this dumb exist.
How is it dumb? If no games are missed from the lockout insurance company keeps all the premiums as profit. If games are missed, insurance company has to pay out large sums of money but can get a government bailout.
the "dumb" insurance company will likely keep their premiums without paying out a dime, we should all be so dumb
Maybe it wasn't dumb to gamble on the NFL missing games, but it would be dumb for underwriters to gamble on the NBA not missing a lot of games this season. Because it's almost a certainty. Huh?
