Cite as: 518 U. S. 231 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
makes the league more like a single bargaining employer, which analogy seems irrelevant to the legal issue before us.
We also concede that football players often have special individual talents, and, unlike many unionized workers, they often negotiate their pay individually with their employers. See post, at 255 (Stevens, J., dissenting). But this characteristic seems simply a feature, like so many others, that might give employees (or employers) more (or less) bargaining power, that might lead some (or all) of them to favor a particular kind of bargaining, or that might lead to certain demands at the bargaining table. We do not see how it could make a critical legal difference in determining the underlying framework in which bargaining is to take place. See generally Jacobs & Winter, Antitrust Principles and Collective Bargaining by Athletes: Of Superstars in Peonage, 81 Yale L. J. 1 (1971). Indeed, it would be odd to fashion an antitrust exemption that gave additional advantages to professional football players (by virtue of their superior bargaining power) that transport workers, coal miners, or meat packers would not enjoy.
The dissent points to other "unique features" of the parties' collective-bargaining relationship, which, in the dissent's view, make the case "atypical." Post, at 255. It says, for example, that the employers imposed the restraint simply to enforce compliance with league-wide rules, and that the bargaining consisted of nothing more than the sending of a "notice," and therefore amounted only to "so-called" bargaining. Post, at 256-257. Insofar as these features underlie an argument for looking to the employers' true purpose, we have already discussed them. See supra, at 247-248. Insofar as they suggest that there was not a genuine impasse, they fight the basic assumption upon which the District Court, the Court of Appeals, petitioners, and this Court rest the case. See 782 F. Supp. 125, 134 (DC 1991); 50 F. 3d, at 1056-1057; Pet. for Cert. i. Ultimately, we cannot find a satisfactory basis for distinguishing football players from
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