Why not go straight to the lawsuits, if you're simply going to ignore arbitration if it goes against you?

The first one's in reply #2 - it's part of a union's job to protect its members, even in really distasteful situations like this one at times, so to a point that's their duty.

The other one in this case is that they're questioning how independent the arbitrator is in the first place, since there was a dispute over who should handle the situation. If the arbitrator's appointed by one side in a dispute, and decides in their favor, there's all kinds of grounds to question the legitimacy of the whole process.

The second's worth challenging in general, since a lot of institutions abuse the crap out of arbitration. A lot of the time - probably most of the time - it actually is meaningless, because it's easy to put together a situation that looks a whole lot like one side deciding in advance what the outcome should be and telling the arbitrator to reach that conclusion. Most companies that stick you-can't-sue-us clauses into their products are fond of that one, and lots of employers stick similar things into contracts as well. "If you have a problem with what we're doing, you can bring it up to the guy we appoint who will decide whether you're right or not" is an inherently untrustworthy situation; the association in this case is trying to argue that that's what's going on.

I'm actually okay with courts taking a good, long, hard look at how arbitration is handled these days. Properly done, with processes agreed on without duress by both sides and using actual independent parties, it can satisfy both sides (or at least resolve things in a somewhat collegial manner). It can keep a lot of issues out of courts where they'd be orders of magnitude more costly, hostile, and drawn-out. But as it is binding arbitration generally isn't properly handled.

If a few cases land in the right positions to better define the expectations and limits of the whole process, everyone benefits.

Because they have to. They are a union. They stick up for their members. It's what they do. Good or bad, they wouldn't be much of a union if they just took this laying down. I don't agree with what he did, but I agree with his right to appeal the sentence.

of Peterson's whining. He is no more "entitled" to play than any other idiot. He's about to find out, I suspect, that he's poison.....no team will want him, no matter how good he is, because he'll be poison to the fans. Hitting your 4 year old kid with a switch until you raise welts and bruises and draw blood is just not very popular with most folks, no matter what they may think about spanking.

I'm having copy/paste issues with my tablet but ABC seems to have audio recording of NFL exec promissing Peterson two games. Sounds like the NFL really botched this one. Seems like Peterson has a pretty good case, unfortunately.

Peterson, he's a scum bag. NFL commissioner Goodell needs to go though, he has been an incompetent idiot in his handling of just about everything.

Research: spanking or other forms of corporal punishment can alter children's brains

For starters, the victims were literally too young to properly process mentally concepts of "right" and "wrong"...

Secondly, Peterson has (disturbingly) hinted at the messages to the mothers that the switchings were much more about "toughening his kids up", since he also went through the same cruel, misguided rite of passage at that age...