Releasing a unified statement to the markets on Wednesday, the league's 32 franchise owners remembered the 96-year-old jurist as a devastating, three-decade headwind to their absolute monopoly on the workforce.
NEW YORK — Releasing a unified statement to the markets on Wednesday, the National Football League's 32 franchise owners paused to mourn the passing of U.S. District Judge David S. Doty, remembering the 96-year-old jurist as a devastating, three-decade headwind to their absolute monopoly on human labor.
Doty, who presided over the landmark 1993 settlement that established free agency and the salary cap, was widely eulogized in ownership circles as the man who tragically introduced the concept of worker mobility to professional football.
Prior to Doty’s intervention, analysts noted the league enjoyed a highly efficient business model wherein players were tethered to their drafting teams indefinitely. The system provided exceptional cost certainty and protected owners from the indignity of bidding against one another for talent.
For thirty years, Judge Doty represented a catastrophic systemic risk to our ability to own a man's labor in perpetuity.
The league's internal modeling estimates that Doty’s insistence on a competitive labor market has cost ownership tens of billions in potential shareholder value. In the years following the 1993 ruling, Doty continually oversaw disputes between the league and its players, serving as an unnecessary regulatory friction against the owners' preferred method of unilateral, unquestioned discipline.
The broader market reacted positively to the news of his passing. The league’s newly approved private equity partners, including Ares Management and Arctos Partners, issued a client note Tuesday suggesting the judge’s absence provides excellent forward guidance for restricting guaranteed contracts in the next collective bargaining cycle.