Presumably, a report about potential collusion between a professional sports league and its players’ association to keep player salaries down might elicit the kind of breathless coverage they make movies about years later.
When it comes to Pablo Torre and Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio’s bombshell report last week about the NFL and NFLPA allegedly doing just that, not so much.
After the duo broke their story, which uncovered evidence that heavily implied the NFL had instructed its 32 franchises to collude to keep salaries down, the initial reaction from other media outlets, including those with TV partnerships with the league, was muted. ESPN took its sweet time getting a story up while Fox Sports appeared to ignore it altogether. Florio and Torre surmised that no one wanted to rock the boat too hard when it came to America’s biggest money-making sports entity. Meanwhile, they continued to extrapolate possibilities and assumptions from the evidence as silence settled around them.
A week later, Florio isn’t ready to let go of the lack of enthusiasm from their media colleagues who haven’t picked up the ball and run with it.
“It’s been six days since Pablo Torre’s podcast episode regarding the collusion ruling landed,” Florio wrote on PFT Monday. “And very few people in and around the NFL are saying anything about it.”
Florio noted that pretty much every entity and person involved in their reporting has refused to comment publicly. The only agent willing to go on the record with him was Peter Schaffer, who provided a statement to PFT.
“It’s clear the arbitrator confirmed teams colluded against guaranteed money — something we, as agents, have known they have done since the advent of free agency,” Schaffer said. “The real question has always been how do we create and force change?
“For over two decades, the agent community has urged the NFLPA in CBA negotiations to eliminate the NFL’s unilaterally imposed guarantee funding rule on guaranteed player contracts — the biggest obstacle to securing more fully guaranteed contracts. Now, with this ruling, we have leverage. It’s time to act. Let’s go. End the funding rule.”
Florio also shared an anonymous quote from another agent.
“I’ve got mouths to feed,” said the agent. “These f*ckers don’t forget things.”
Short of Florio, Torre, or different reporters digging around to find out more examples or information, it stands to reason the silence around the reporting will continue well into the 2025 season, when the presumption is that it will essentially be forgotten.