only the parties to the collective bargaining relationship, that the challenged term concerned a mandatory subject of collective bargaining, and that the restraint was the product of bona fide arms-length negotiation.The Court ultimately found the Rozelle Rule invalid. While the restraint affected only the parties to the collective bargaining agreement, and the restricted mobility of players constituted a mandatory subject of bargaining, the court felt that the League had imposed this restraint on a weak and inexperienced union and that vigorous and intensive arms-length negotiation had not taken place. Shortly after the Mackey case, the Sixth Circuit addressed this same question, but concerning hockey. In McCourt v. California Sports, Inc. the NHL faced an antitrust challenge against its free agency indemnity rule. The Court applied the Mackey test and discovered that the hockey players association did not bargain from a position of weakness and that the union vigorously opposed the inclusion of this restraint in their collective bargaining agreement. This case was the opposite of Mackey and so much so that the court signaled a new direction in the application of the Mackey test allowing management to meet the third prong simply by showing that the union fully participated in the negotiations leading up to the collective bargaining agreement.The first important legal case challenging the owners control over player actually occurred twenty years earlier in Radovich v. NFL. Radovich, a guard for the Detroit Lions, contended that he had been blacklisted by the NFL and prevented from earning a living in his profession. He charged the league with a conspiracy to monopolize and control professional football in violation of the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court did not award damages to Radovich but it did establish the principle that professional football comes under the coverage of the antitrust laws because of the volume of interstat...
