For weeks, we’ve been explaining the potential financial consequences of a forfeited game in the 2020 season. For weeks, we’ve continued to see media members insist that players won’t get paid if there’s a forfeit, arguing that the CBA provides players only get paid for games played.
That’s not what the CBA or the separate agreement struck between the NFL and NFL Players Association provides.
A letter written by NFL deputy general counsel Lawrence P. Ferazani, Jr., addressed to NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, and signed by both men on August 3, 2020 “reflects the parties’ agreement and amendment to our Collective Bargaining Agreement . . . in light of the expected significant shortfall in [revenue] . . . resulting from disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Section 7 is titled, “Payment Obligations to Players for Cancelled Games During the 2020 or 2021 seasons.” Part (b) of Section 7 is named “Pay Following Suspension or Cancellation of Play.” Here’s what it provides, in relevant part: "[P]layers shall not be entitled to any Paragraph 5 Salary, per-game roster bonuses, or other incentives . . . for any regular season games that are not played . . . as a result of a cancellation of games by the Commissioner related to COVID-19.”
Players don’t get paid for games that aren’t played, but only if those games aren’t played because the Commissioner cancelled the games. The word “forfeit” isn’t mentioned. And there’s a fundamental difference between a game being canceled and a game being forfeited.
A forfeited game, as provided by 2020 Official Playing Rules of the National Football League, results in a winner and a loser. “If a team forfeits a game, the opponent will be declared the winner by a score of 2-0,” provides the official rules at the note to Rule 11, Section 1, Article 1.
Although a forfeited game isn’t played, the outcome goes into the standings, with a loss for the team that forfeits and a win for the other team. More importantly for the purposes of the agreement reached by the NFL and NFLPA and reduced to writing by the league, a forfeited game does not constitute a game “not played . . . as a result of a cancellation of games by the Commissioner related to COVID-19.” (Emphasis added.)
The league privately has told multiple media members that, if games aren’t played for any reason including forfeit, players from both teams don’t get paid. Some of those media members have been parroting that talking point without reading the agreement or otherwise scrutinizing the self-serving contention players only get paid for games actually played.
But a forfeited game isn’t a cancelled game. That’s the argument the NFLPA would make, and any lawyer with the option of representing either side of this potential dispute to an arbitrator should want the union’s side, because the union’s side seems to be far more likely to prevail.
The agreement regarding the unique terms of pro football in a pandemic does not cover pay in the event of a forfeiture. No one ever has argued, and nowhere does the broader CBA provide, that a forfeited game also forfeits the paychecks of all players for either team. If the league wanted to change the status quo for the purposes of the 2020 adjustment to the CBA, the league needed to ask the union to agree to extend the no-play, no-pay provision to forfeited games, and the union needed to agree to it.
Absent any such agreement, the players should be paid for a forfeited game. Which likely is one of the main reasons why the league will not declare a forfeit.
Whether a team chooses to declare a forfeit is a different issue. Even so, nothing in the CBA or the August 3 letter agreement excuses the league from paying the players in the event of a forfeit.
