However, at the hearing, the NFLPA’s witness and counsel characterized the Report Cards as “union speech” and admitted that (1) the union reviewed player responses and cherry-picked which topics and responses to include (or not) in the Team Report Cards; (2) players had no role in drafting the commentary included in the Report Cards which was written entirely by union staffers; (3) the union selected which anyonmous individual player quotations to include (or excluse entirely) to support its chosen narrative; and (4) the union determined the weight to give each topic and resulting impact on the alphabetical grades it assigned. In essence, the record established that the Report Cards were designed by the union to advance its interests under the guise of a scientific exercise.
