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sportsgeekonomics · 6 years ago

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Don't let the NCAA off the hook for Zion Williamson's exploitation

Zion Williamson’s (thankfully minor) injury on Wednesday night launched a flurry of activity from the hot-take industry. There were the obvious ones (in which I participated) like “gosh, I hope Zion Williamson has loss of value insurance.” And then less obvious ones like “isn’t it an outrage that NCAA rules prohibit Duke from providing that insurance with Duke’s own money (they have to use a special NCAA fund and if that’s empty, no go).”

These were generally pro-athlete and more or less correct.

But the worst of the bunch, the absolutely most suit-sniffing, barely-whisper-truth-to-power-and do-so-while groveling sort of take is the “this is not the NCAA’s fault, not at all” approach.

The NCAA itself took this approach, because of course they would.

https://twitter.com/NCAA/status/1098995124741332992

https://twitter.com/NCAA/status/1098995126117064705

So if you are a journalist, and a billion dollar industry claims to have no role whatsoever in denying athletes their market-rate of compensation, you have a choice. You can dig in and see whether that’s true, a bad spin of a barely true thing, or a bald-faced lie. Or you can just adopt that approach, more or less un-researched. Unfortunately, the latter was all too common among the hot-take sports crowd.

But besides these sorts of journalists being complicit in the exploitation of athletes by perpetuating the propaganda of the NCAA, here’s why it’s also just plain false that the “real problem” is the NBA/NBPA rule known as one-and-done. It's important to recognize that while many parties are arrayed against the economic welfare of athletes, when people say this is all the NBA's fault, it's missing the crux of the issue to focus on a side effect.

First, the NCAA is not telling the truth when it claims to have nothing to do with one-and-done. One-and-done is a legally validated rule, tested in the courts through the NFL equivalent rule (which is basically three-and-done). That rule was declared illegal by a federal court in 2003, but the NFL appealed and had the ruling reversed. During the appeals process, the NCAA decided to inject itself into the legal process. It could have stayed neutral. Or it could have supported athletes’ rights to go to the NFL and the NBA whenever they want. And if they had done that then I guess I’d agree that they were not at all responsible for one-and-done. But they did not do that. Instead, what they did was actively tell the courts that college sports NEEDED rules like one and done, and please do not make them illegal.

Don’t believe me? I’ve got receipts.

On April 12, 2004, the NCAA filed what is known as an “Amicus Brief” – a “Friend of the Court” statement where a party that is not a part of the lawsuit nevertheless advises the Court what it thinks. Sometimes courts ask for amicus briefs, to get a sense of what the ramifications of a decision might be. Other times, parties just volunteer them. Here’s what the NCAA told the court:

If you can’t read through the legalese, let me translate for you: Please make it legal for the NFL (and any other league like the NBA) to tell 18 year olds they cannot play professionally. If you don’t, we might lose our best athletes unless we pay them and that would really suck.

And so, with this advice from the NCAA in hand, the appeals court struck down the ruling that three-and-done (and other rules like it) was illegal, and declared it totally legal for a league to collectively bargain with a union to make rules like one-and-done.

So that’s how false it is to say the NCAA had nothing to do with one-and-done. Nothing to do with it other than going out of its way to tell the court that made one-and-done illegal that it ought to make it legal, and that the future of the NCAA hinged critically on making rules like one-and-done permissible.

So fast forward to today, and the NBA and the players’ union, the NBPA, have a valid collective bargaining agreement (a CBA in the labor law jargon) that says you must be one year removed from high school to play in the NBA. Like it or not, the law has blessed this. And yes, the NBA and NBPA can change this rule (and in my view should change it) but (1) it is the subject of actual bargaining between owners and athletes, and thus (2) it is a legal rule, and of course (3) the NCAA went out of its way to make it legal.

But more importantly, this NBA/NBPA is not the main reason that college athletes are being exploited economically. Far more harmful to the athletes, both for those who would have gone to the NBA directly from college and those who might never play in the Association at all, are the NCAA rules themselves, the ones that say schools cannot compete for athletes using payments above a fixed level, with that level equal to a scholarship plus $2,000 to $6,000 dollars in cash.

Note – I am not saying college athletes don’t get paid at all – quite the opposite. They are paid. They get a value in the form of a scholarship and on top of that they get paid in cash, around $3,500 a year on average. What I am saying is they are not paid what the market would pay them, if schools like Duke didn’t agree, every single year, with schools like Kentucky that they will not compete for talent like Zion Williamson with the full vigor of a real, uncapped market.

And unlike the sort of caps the NBA and NBPA collectively bargain, the NCAA cap is not bargained at all. Rather, one side of the equation – management, in the form of the schools and conferences that make up the NCAA – colludes among itself and presents the price cap to athletes as a take-it-or-leave-it offer by a monopolist.[1] Which, on its face, is an anticompetitive act, suppressing the payment that thousands of athletes would get without the cap.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s remember back all the way to 2015, when an appeals court confirmed the 2014 ruling in O’Bannon which said that the cap the NCAA had in place from 1976 to 2015 was illegal. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (and the Supreme Court chose not to overrule) that in the NCAA rule was “patently and inexplicably stricter than is necessary” and “an antitrust court can and should invalidate it and order it replaced.” In other words – the cap was illegal.

So the NCAA adopted a new, slightly more generous cap, which is why college athletes now get paid in cash as well as in-kind. That $2K - $6K I mentioned above? Yeah, you can thank the antitrust laws for that.

But the thing is, the court didn’t say that just because the cap was looser now that it was automatically ok. And so four years later, the new cap is back in court, awaiting a ruling from the same district court where O’Bannon was heard. In that case, we’re just waiting for the ruling but the judge (Judge Claudia Wilken) has already told us what she thinks:

What I think Judge Wilken meant was that it was clear that the current cap on compensation had an “anticompetitive effect” on thousands of athletes. What does that mean? It means there was lots of evidence that thousands of athletes had gotten less money under the current rule than they would have if there had been no rule (or a less restrictive rule).

And one of the experts in that case, my friend and business partner, Dan Rascher testified to that exact effect. He explained his conclusions recently to the New York Times.

And this is what I think the real story is. Namely, that without the NBA/NBPA rule, which is legal, a dozen people or so would each earn millions of dollars more for one year. But without the NCAA rule, which is likely illegal, thousands of athletes would each earn tens or hundreds of thousands more – which is a far larger extraction of wealth – and the only parties responsible for that are the NCAA and its member institutions.

So when the hot-take crowd gets confronted with these sorts of facts, it’s fairly typical for them to fall back onto “ok, well, hot shot, you can complain all you want but no one has proposed a viable solution.” This is what I call the “what’s your plan” fallacy, namely that it’s not enough to point out where the real blame lies, it’s the requirement of the people who see the problem to also lay out, in full and glorious detail, how to fix it, or else the current rules get to stay in place forever. It’s something like the economic version of that tourist t-shirt, “the economic exploitation will continue until someone outside the system invents the perfect solution.”

But the “what's the plan” framing – where we have to agree on a fix before we can even entertain the possibility of ending a bad system – is bogus. You don’t keep letting a company pollute a river just because you haven’t figured out where they can properly send the pollution. You tell them to stop polluting and let them figure out what to do.

But even though it’s not the responsibility of the people who point out the problem to propose a solution, the secondary hot-take that “no one has offered a solution” is also just plain wrong. I myself have laid out at least three plans that would all fix the problem.

Eliminate the NCAA cap and let each conference set its own cap in competition with one another. This is the requested relief in the current case in front of Judge Wilken and was first proposed by me and Daniel Rascher (the professor quoted by the New York Times above) in 2000. This would allow each conference to decide how much they think makes sense to offer in pay but require them to put that offer into a market where other conferences could pay more, and let the market decide, for each athlete, what a fair exchange of benefits for services is. It’s basically, you know, the way all markets work except it treats the conference as the unit of decision making rather than each school (and rather than allowing the NCAA to create a cartel[2] of all conferences, like they do now).

You can do a half-measure and end the cap on third-party payments to athletes. This is an inferior solution, because it opens up half the market – the market for athletes name, image, and likeness rights, but it leaves in place the cap on the other half of the market, the market for athletic services. In the long run, athletes will do about as well, but as appealing as this solution is – sometimes it’s called the Olympic model because it’s how Olympians are primarily (though not entirely) paid for their participation in the Olympics – it has problems. The biggest is that if compensation moves outside of the university environment, it is more likely to skirt Title IX. That is, if athletes were paid for their services by schools or conferences, as in Plan 1 above, it’s very likely that the pay would be subject to Title IX matching. Roughly speaking, this would cut the market rate for male athletes in half and push up funding for female athletes accordingly. But if it’s Nike hiring Zion Williamson to do a shoe deal, it is much less likely there would be any need for a Title IX match. If you think Title IX is good, you should prefer Plan 1 to Plan 2, but either way, you’ll get to a market outcome that is less exploitative than the current system and works more efficiently to boot. At least two States are adopting this approach now, Washington and California. You can read about these efforts here: CA:https://theathletic.com/800397/2019/02/04/thompson-new-law-seeks-to-allow-california-collegiate-athletes-to-get-paid-for-use-of-their-name-image-and-likeness/ WA:http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/feb/21/outside-pay-for-college-athletes-gets-committee-ok/

There can be competitive entry by a rival college basketball league that considers “Amateurism” to be a problem that needs solving rather than a positive element of the sport. This is why I am proud to be a part of the executive team of the Historical Basketball League, the HBL. Because Amateurism is a Con.

I can already hear some of you asking:

WHAT IS THE HBL?

In June 2020, the HBL will launch in 12 cities across America and will work with the HBL Foundation to provide full scholarships to the cream of the crop – the top 150 or so college basketball players – to play for the HBL. In addition to those scholarships, which cannot be cancelled for injury or even if the athlete leaves for the NBA, the HBL will also pay athletes $50,000 to $150,000 and allow athletes to fully commercialize their name, image, and likeness. In other words, if the courts and society can’t force the NCAA to adopt Plan 1 or 2, the HBL is going to do it for them, buy up all the best talent, and show the world that labor markets aren’t exactly rocket science – the league that pays the best is going to get the best talent and they get the best ratings and then get the most revenue.

Now, to be clear, there is a lot more that is cool about the HBL. We are thrilled that fifteen-year NBA veteran David West has taken over our basketball operations, and Ricky Volante, Keith Sparks, and I are eager to work with David to make the league a success. Please check us out at HBLeague.com.

We’ll be playing our games in the summer to minimize the conflict between school and sports. Our athletes will be true students from Labor Day to Memorial Day, and then professional college athletes during the summer. We’ll focus on appropriate high-performance training, professional nutrition, and proper strength and conditioning. We’ll play by NBA rules and teach NBA schemes. We’ll be working to provide our athletes and their parents with financial literacy courses, public relations training, business courses, etc. We will holistically develop the whole person and send our athletes to the NBA and to other professional leagues across the globe – far better prepared for life on and off the court, and far better prepared than anything the NCAA provides today.

And no, the HBL is not going to ask the NCAA for permission to compete against them, or to agree on the optimal salary. The biggest fallacy of the “what’s your plan” hot take is that it assumes we need a plan at all. It implies athletes can't be subject to the same rules as everyone else. They can. By entering the same market as the NCAA – the college basketball market – what the HBL is saying is let’s just let the market do its thing.

In some sense, that's the common thread for all of the solutions, which is to recognize that we don’t have a plan for how we pay athletic directors, and no one worries why not. Just treat athletes like all other humans. It will all work out fine.

[1] Ok, to be technical it’s actually a monopsonist, which is just a fancy way of saying a monopolist when the monopolist is making the payments – like when it buys supplies or pays workers -- rather than charging the money. But that’s not important, I just want to make it clear I know the difference

[2] An economic cartel is not a drug cartel. To be an economic cartel you just have to get together with your potential competitors and agree not to compete on price. For example, you could get all 350+ D1 schools to agree on how much to pay athletes for their services, and this would make you a cartel. I’m looking at you, NCAA.

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shaftesburywyq · 2 years ago

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The majority of Madden NFL 23 players did not vote

What is the reason Madden 23 coins players supported the latest CBA, despite its clear weaknesses

Madden NFL 23 participants voted in favor of the new collective bargaining proposal from the owners with a narrow margin of 1.019-959 votes. The majority of Madden NFL 23 players did not vote. The CBA, which will go through the 2030 season was approved by a vote majority. It's a result I expected all along however, the margin was astonishing.

The deal was approved even with a vocal group of veterans on social media as well as in the union. There is discussion of players deciding to vote because of the current state of affairs with the coronavirus outbreak and the panic in the stock market and the stock market crash, but I find that difficult to believe. I think this CBA was likely to always be approved. Here's why.

There are two primary reasons why the CBA was approved

The first is that it supports in helping "rank-and-file" players in the union better than stars. The growth in minimum wages is significant and I'm certain that the majority of rank and file players are able to vote on what's essential now, and not what matters later in their career or in retirement.

This is why I was surprised to observe so many "no" results. There was a report earlier in the week about players wanted to change their vote and the Madden NFL 23 Players Association rejected their request. It was speculated that most of those players were looking to change their voting by changing it from "no" to "yes," once they had more details about the CBA. There were a lot of players who were initially"iMadden NFL infuriated by the voices on social media. I believe once they began to look into the CBA for themselves, they wanted to modify their votes.

Then again, according to Benjamin Allbright, it wouldn't have mattered anyway:

Concern: Madden NFL 23 CBAI'm told that the percentage of players who had asked to change their votes ranged from teens to teens. They "wouldn't have affected" in the last tally.Far most concerning was that around 20% of voters didnt vote.

The most powerful leverage for players in all this is the threat of sitting out games. My perspective is unique from this, as I was part of the lockout in 2011 and CBA discussions. Players believed they'd be able to stay out for the duration of a season. After that, as they started to savor the start of the training camp, the players bowed. The players needed cash. They had taken out loans that were high-interest, or were short of money in the months leading up to the season. They needed a deal and that was a requirement to pay lower rates.

While it is true that the Madden NFL 23PA had been informing players for a few years to cut costs in the event of a work stoppage, remember that I mentioned earlier: a majority of mut coins madden 23 participants are rank-and-file.

#mut coins madden 23

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sultaniyaharsh · 4 years ago

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Dan Marino Net Worth 2018

Dan Marino is quite possibly the most famous football players of the 1990s, and all that he has was acquired on the field.

An unbelievable quarterback for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League actually holds numerous records notwithstanding being resigned since 2000. The Clock Play which he pulled in Fake Spike Game against New York Giants is deified as probably the best move throughout the entire existence of America’s game.

Dan Marino Life

Brought into the world on September fifteenth, 1961, to Daniel and Veronica Marino, Dan is of blended Italian and Polish family. He has two more youthful sisters. As a child, the acclaimed signal guest has shown interest in baseball however before long moved to football. In 1979 he declined a proposal from Kansas City Royals and rather enlisted at the University of Pittsburgh, playing for Pittsburgh Panthers football crew from 1979 to 1982. His last year at school was one of his most vulnerable, driving numerous groups to disregard him in the draft for less known players.

In spite of being drafted 27th by Miami Dolphins, Marino won the Rookie of the Year grant in 1983. He played as though to show each and every individual who didn’t pick him at the draft what have they missed. His later profession is quite possibly the most conspicuous ones throughout the entire existence of football, and he was enlisted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005. His shirt number 13 was resigned by the Miami Dolphins in 2000. Marino is one of those players who went through his whole vocation with only one group, which says a lot about the fact that he was so important to the Dolphins.

Dan Marino Net Worth 2018

Dan Marino total assets for 2018 is assessed at $40 million. It is perhaps the biggest figure of any resigned football player. The number would have been far greater, had he not lost millions out of a bombed café business and furthermore spent a huge lump of his fortune with an end goal to keep his ill-conceived girl Chloe hidden from the general population. His interests in NASCAR crew likewise hasn’t worked out, prompting another scratch in Dan Marino total assets. His group, named Elliott-Marino Motorsports, just endured one season in spite of being supported by FirstPlus Mortgage.

Luckily, his Hollywood ventures have paid off, assisting him with recuperating his total assets. He showed up in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, along with Jim Carey and in Adam Sandler’s Little Nicky. He additionally had appearance appearances in Holly Man and Bad Boys 2. Marino voiced himself in a Simpson scene and went about as an expert for Oliver Stone’s games dramatization Any Given Sunday. A few pundits have noticed a solid similarity between the quarterback character Jack “Cap” Rooney, played by Dennis Quaid and Marino himself. Marino went through 11 years, from 2002 to 2013 as an examiner for CBA’s The NFL Today TV show.

Dan Marino Wife and Children

Dan Marino is hitched to Claire D. Veazey. A few lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with their six youngsters – Daniel Charles, Michael Joseph, Joseph Donald, Alexandra Claire, Nia and Niki Lin.

#Dan Marino Net Worth 2018

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904sad · 4 years ago

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The NFL can’t afford to undercut its players’ finances

The NFL has to realize that they already beat the NFLPA and its players earlier this year with the new CBA agreement. While they are correct to be concerned with their impending financial losses, they shouldn't be relying on the same players that they just took to task earlier this year. For one, the NFL has clearly shown that it fears its players revolting against the shield and pulling out of the season for their personal beliefs. If this were not to be the case, the NFL would not have made the political, cultural, and racial concessions that it did earlier this summer. Now, the NFL still has a lot to be worried about, as the players may revolt and opt-out of the season because they won't end up getting paid their contracts' full value.

At first, the NFL said that it wanted to hold a percentage of players' salaries in an escrow account. Now, the NFL has proposed a flat dollar amount that every team would be able to apply to their books and salary caps. In either case, the players would end up screwed, as the act of owning an NFL franchise is already a guarantee that one will make a boatload of money because of the way that the league's revenue sharing mechanisms are structured.

Let's say that the players don't agree to share the impending financial losses and decide to collectively strike for their health and personal finances. Where is the NFL going to get its scab players from? While the American Arena Football leagues have all cancelled their seasons, the players that work within them have been working day jobs and wondering whether or not their professional football careers are over. Hypothetically, the NFL would literally be calling up weekend warriors and paying them more money than they had ever seen in their lives to put on a product worse than the AAF ever could.

Now, we could imagine that numerous undrafted free agents would love to play for a couple of weeks and show off their skills to coaches and GMs that never would have given them the time of day otherwise. However, it is inevitable that some of these players would get hurt, and the injury settlement for an NFL player in the regular season is much different than a camp body that is just signed to take licks and provide some competition.

In the end, the NFL's current tiff with the NFLPA is just another example of how COVID-19 has changed the entire landscape of the American sports industry. One can only hope that the actions of those who work within it do not mirror the current lack of reason of the many who are outside of it.

#nfl #nfl schedule #nflpa #players #contracts #money spells

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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How coronavirus is affecting the NFL’s offseason schedule

Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

The NFL’s annual league meeting has been cancelled, and teams have suspended travel for scouting.

NFL teams across the league have begun taking precautions in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and across the globe. The virus had already caused disruptions in multiple sports, including the cancellation of conference college basketball tournaments. The NBA also suspended its season indefinitely after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the virus, and the NHL and MLS have followed suit.

New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton became the first person affiliated with the league to be diagnosed with the virus. On March 19, he announced that he had been diagnosed with the virus.

How much it will directly affect the NFL’s offseason schedule is an ongoing question. For now, most of the major events will go on as planned. NFL players passed a new CBA after voting ended on March 14. The NFL’s free agency period will start on March 18 at 4 p.m. ET. The NFL Draft begins on April 23 from Las Vegas.

However, the NFL’s annual meeting, which was scheduled for March 29-April 1 in Palm Beach, Florida, has been cancelled. Additionally there are some changes that have been made with most of them relating to the pre-draft process. The league has also encouraged team staff members to work from home until further notice, further announcing changes relating to team facilities on March 24.

Let’s run through how teams and various league events have been affected by Covid-19.

Free agency is still on

Though there was some discussion about potentially delaying the start of the new league year and free agency, that’s didn’t happen. The NFL sent a memo to teams informing them that the regular negotiation window and league year dates would be adhered to, and they were.

The deadline for teams to franchise tag players was Monday, March 16, at 11:59:59 a.m. ET, which was extended due to the ongoing CBA negotiations. Transactions could become official at the start of the new league year, at 4 p.m. ET on March 18.

With the knowledge that most of the negotiations between free agents and their 2020 destinations could take place remotely via phone or video chats, a ton of players got signed, though physicals were an issue the league needed to address:

We do understand the NFL can conduct free agency via the phones? You'd still need to do the physical, which can be done when the contract is officially signed in person. The framework of most deals are done even before the player arrives at the facility.

— Geoff Schwartz (@geoffschwartz) March 12, 2020

A few hours into the NFL’s legal tampering period on March 16, the league released guidelines for free agency. Notably, they did not allowing teams or players to travel for workouts or physicals and closed team facilities through the end of March. Instead, physicals had to be completed at a neutral site, preferably in the player’s home city.

Joint statement from the NFL and NFLPA pic.twitter.com/JjzNqGQi9M

— Brian McCarthy (@NFLprguy) March 17, 2020

That went on for several days, but the policy regarding physicals again changed on March 23, when the league announced that all NFL-related physicals had been indefinitely discontinued. Signings and trades still require a physical, but that physical can simply be conducted in the future.

The league previously amended rules regarding when a team can announce an official transaction, which used to require a completed physical. Now teams are allowed to announce deals when the terms have been agreed on and the written contract has been sent a player and his agent.

The ban on NFL-related physicals extends to all free agent and trade deals, NFL Combine rechecks, and non-Combine player evaluations “until the health crisis has passed.”

Some pro days have been affected

Every year, pro days have been held at universities in early March ahead of the draft in April.

On March 11, some NFL teams were already taking travel precautions ahead of the NFL’s free agency and the draft. NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported that the Pittsburgh Steelers were limiting commercial flights for coaches and scouts, and a couple other teams were responding to Covid-19. Another report from Yahoo Sports added that the Eagles had also pulled their coaches off the road from the pro-day circuit temporarily.

Some schools announced cancellations for their pro days, including Illinois, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, and USC. Alabama has postponed its pro day to April 9. Penn State postponed its pro day as well. Clemson still held its on March 12.

However, schools that moved their pro days to next month might not be able to hold them either. The NCAA is prohibiting recruiting for all sports on and off campus until mid-April:

This would put a wrench in the plans of those schools trying to reschedule their March pro days for early April. https://t.co/lZDTOh9csv

— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) March 13, 2020

In addition the NFL has also canceled its regional and HBCU combine dates:

A statement regarding the HBCU and Regional Combine Invitational: pic.twitter.com/viEGIjKDMs

— NFL Football Operations (@NFLFootballOps) March 12, 2020

As a potential solution, prospects could hold virtual pro days, as several Michigan players did on March 13.

Pre-draft visits have also been cancelled

NFL teams are permitted to schedule 30 pre-draft visits every year, which allow them to meet with prospects and have them undergo medical evaluations. The league has suspended those:

I’ve been notified that the @NFL has cancelled all draftee facility visits. •Jordyn Brooks (LB- Tx Tech)- had 15 scheduled. •Brandon Jones (DB- Texas)- had 8 scheduled. •Devin Duvernay (WR- Texas)- had 6 + 7 private workouts.

— Erik Burkhardt (@ErikBurkhardt) March 12, 2020

The NFL sent a memo to clubs saying "we have decided to prohibit all in-person pre-Draft visits involving draft-eligible players effective at the end of this business day, until further notice." More fallout from COVID-19.

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 13, 2020

One NFL agent encouraged players to avoid traveling for team visits before the league announced their cancellations. Teams can still conduct one-hour interviews with draft prospects via phone or video call, though they are limited to three per week.

NFL scouting and team evaluations are on hold, too

Most teams have officially announced they are suspending travel for their scouts and coaches including:

Atlanta Falcons

Arizona Cardinals

Baltimore Ravens

Buffalo Bills

Cleveland Browns

Carolina Panthers

Chicago Bears

Detroit Lions

Green Bay Packers

Indianapolis Colts

Jacksonville Jaguars

Kansas City Chiefs

Las Vegas Raiders

Los Angeles Rams

Miami Dolphins

Minnesota Vikings

New England Patriots

New York Giants

New York Jets

Philadelphia Eagles

San Francisco 49ers

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Washington

Teams have also reportedly considered shutting down their workout facilities for the time being. Teams like the Eagles and Falcons announced theirs will be closed. Several other teams made such announcements at the same time they announced scouting changes. Some teams, like the Bears, have also canceled their April draft parties.

The annual league meeting has been cancelled

Every March, NFL owners and coaches gather to discuss the season that was, and the year ahead. Various conversations take place regarding rule changes and tweaks that can improve the game overall. Here’s the NFL’s statement on the cancellation:

New: pic.twitter.com/Jme2W77RYy

— Brian McCarthy (@NFLprguy) March 12, 2020

The meeting also serves the backdrop for several votes on new rules that affect the on-field product of the NFL. Last year’s controversial decision to make pass interference reviewable started with a yes vote at the annual event.

Instead of meeting in March, there will be calls with team owners and execs for the same days the annual meeting was scheduled instead of an in-person meeting. There might be votes on some of the discussions planned, too.

NFL owners, head coaches, and general managers will also all gather during the spring meeting on May 19-20. There, they will discuss the proposed rules and put them up for a vote. Those include rules about blindside blocking, the onside kick, automatic replay, and more:

Here’s a look at the 2020 rules change proposals submitted by the clubs: https://t.co/Wkwst9sraf pic.twitter.com/mTm5YTk86P

— NFL Football Operations (@NFLFootballOps) March 10, 2020

See the NFL’s full list of proposals here.

The 2020 NFL Draft is still on, but it won’t include public events

The NFL Draft is scheduled for April 23-25 in Las Vegas, the first time the city has hosted. On March 16, the NFL announced that the draft will still happen in Vegas, but the public events usually held alongside it will be cancelled. The league is also “exploring options” for how the draft process will happen:

NFL announcement on its draft plans: pic.twitter.com/ynRG3Bw6fw

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 16, 2020

That means there likely won’t be any fans present at the actual draft. The Buccaneers have also cancelled their annual draft party, and the 49ers canceled draft events they had planned with fans.

The CDC has also recommended that for the next eight weeks, any gatherings of 50 or more people be cancelled or postponed.

The league’s general manager subcommittee unanimously recommended to Roger Goodell that the NFL Draft be pushed back due to the Covid-19 pandemic on March 24. Despite this recommendation, the league said they are sticking to its original April 23-25 schedule, per ESPN. The concern from general managers is that there won’t be enough time to get player physicals, psychological testing, and other information about players who aren’t allowed to visit their facilities. Another concern is that it could give an advantage to teams in places impacted less by the pandemic.

The NFL subsequently began making plans for a virtual draft that will include top prospects, although they won’t be on a stage per usual:

While they won't be together on a stage, NFL will reach out to top prospects this week to participate in the Draft set for Apr 23-25. In a letter to agents, the NFL said it is working on a virtual solution that will incorporate prospects in the broadcast from their own locations.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 25, 2020

Offseason activities are being postponed

In addition to announcing guidelines for how to handle free agency, the NFL and NFLPA also announced on March 16 that offseason team activities will be delayed “indefinitely.” They are still considering an appropriate start date for OTAs, which would include most coaches and players on the team in close proximity.

“During this period, the league and union, through their respective medical consultants, will develop a standard set of protocols for clubs to implement regarding facility cleaning and maintenance, equipment preparation, steps to identify players and staff who may be at an elevated risk for the coronavirus and other preventative measures,” the league said in a release.

In addition to that, players are not allowed to enter any NFL facility for a period of two weeks, beginning on March 17 and extended through March 31, except for those players who need access for ongoing medical treatment from the team’s staff.

Organized team activities were set to begin on April 4 for some teams and April 20 for others.

The league is moving forward with a “virtual offseason”

The league has approved a “virtual offseason” through the beginning of training camp, after negotiating with the NFL Players’ Association. Players can have virtual workouts to earn workout bonuses, with each individual team coming to their own agreements in terms of what counts toward offseason bonuses, per Charles Robinson of Yahoo.

Teams cannot resume specific types of work until all 50 states remove the lockdowns currently in place:

2. The NFL's offseason will remain virtual as long as all 50 states are under some kind of lockdown. This means NFL franchises cannot resume in-house work, OTAs or any form of camps until all 50 states have removed lockdown restrictions. This includes states without NFL teams.

— Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) April 13, 2020

The union’s executive committee voted unanimously to accept the terms of this virtual offseason, per Robinson. Further information came from Adam Schefter of ESPN:

Virtual off-season now officially approved, and this went to all teams after players approved it to lay out new off-season guidelines. pic.twitter.com/R4Fm1L5jCn

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) April 13, 2020

We’ll see how this plays out in the coming weeks, especially as high profile players set out to earn their workout bonuses.

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