Pete Rozelle Quotes

It is time for everyone to sit down - the NCAA, the NBA, the players union and the coaching fraternity - and come up with suitable solutions to these problems.

Baseball and the players association have rules. If you stay within the rules - which say that you can play while you're appealing - I don't see what anyone would be in arms about.

It's kind of tough as you're playing you kind of wonder what is going to happen to you as you go through arbitration or as you go through free agency.

As I learn more and more about the six-year extension of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it's obvious to me that NFL owners understood that they were going to get a new deal done at all costs.

A lot of players know I've been around 13 years and this is my second lockout. I got a lot of respect. I know what's going on both for the league and the union.

If a franchise wants me, they'll take me.

I can't speak on anybody else's free agencies, how that's going, but for myself, it helps to kind of be patient and let it happen.

The league, is doing well. It is just a matter of trying to sort some things out with my contract.

Free agency screws everybody's allegiances up. Whether it be football, baseball, hockey, basketball, whatever it may be. It's really hard.

The two major things that changed the makeup of all professional sports are money generated by television and courts that players went to in order to win their freedom as free agents.

The owners said that they wanted the salary cap and refused to promise that they would abide by the rules of the just-expired contract after the season ended. Believing we had no choice, the players went on strike in August of 1994.

My contract with my teachers is fair, and is two pages. The union contract is 200 pages. You cannot manage your business when you cannot make any decision without going back to 200 pages worth of stuff.

And historically the owners have used loyalty to a team or a city to hold players as opposed to always paying their worth.

to supplement the local government in protecting his property when he enters into a contest with his employees.

I'll argue with the owners all day long when they do not allow the players to get the best.

I think people have to realize that - and basketball fans do, Lakers fans do - that we have to operate under the rules of the collective bargaining agreement, which means you can't just go and grab every player that you want.

The only way we protect ourselves, the only way a player gets what he wants is by holding out.

There is a lot going on with negotiations in the football business, and I appreciate some people think that it's a crazy, absurd amount of money.

I've never seen the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Pro basketball is a very mercenary endeavor.

Hey, I'm a former union president myself and also an attorney that represented a lot of unions.

And my rookie contract, my first rookie contract was for $5,000.

Many people do not realize that where unions have bargaining rights employers cannot raise wages or improve benefit plans any more than they can reduce them without of the consent of the union.

The only sound approach to collective bargaining is to work out an agreement that clarifies the rights and responsibilities of the parties, establishes principles and operates to the advantage of all concerned.

Give me a highly successful unionized industry.