Whose side should we take?
Now that the NFL season is over, the only story out there is the labor situation. The CBA between the owners and the players expires in March, and unless a new deal is struck by then we cold be in for a real mess. There will be a draft, but free agency, training camps, and the 2011 season are all in jeopardy if the owners follow through on their threat to lock the players out. (And in the event that does happen, let’s try to remember that a lockout is not the same as a strike. OK?) And the owners are going to do everything in their power to convince us that the players are to blame. They’ve already put out the talking points that the league’s current financial model isn’t working and that it must change in order to insure the viability of the product for years to come. All of that is hogwash; they just want to take home more of the money. Period.
So when we’re inundated with press releases from Roger Goddell and the owners about how the players are being unreasonable or unwilling to tighten their belts for the good of the league, are you going to buy it? If any of the players has a Kenny Anderson/Patrick Ewing moment, are you going to trash them? Will you take the word of billionaires over that of the men who helped them get there? When the owners cry poormouth, will you buy it? Will reports of how blackouts have been increasing, and how some teams may need to move convince you that the players need to come up off of some of that cash? What about when the players tell you that the owners aren’t being honest about their finances? Will you accept that?
I think the best thing to do is take it issue by issue, and then add everything up. What are the issues, you ask? Well let’s see:
18 game schedule: The owners want this bad, and have been doing everything to portray it as a done deal. The players, not so much. The owners have been trying to sell us on the idea that the schedule is already 20 games long (4 preseason, 16 regular season) and that swapping two preseason games for two more games that count won’t change anything from a player safety standpoint. Riiiggghhhhtttt. Take a nine year veteran; two more games per year is like adding another 16 game season to his career. If that’s not working for you, think of player for the San Diego Chargers. Going into this season they’d made the playoffs four straight seasons, playing a total of seven extra games. Had they been playing a 18 game schedule that would have been like adding an extra 16 game season in just four years time. Does anyone honestly think that extra wear and tear like that, in such a concentrated amount of time, won’t affect anyone’s health or career longevity? And does anyone think that the owners don’t know what they’re doing by ordering up such an acceleration to the player’s careers? You shave a season or two off of a Peyton Manning and you could save as much as $40 million. Now spread that around the league and you’re talking billions of dollars saved from not having to pay top players for as many years. I think it’s obvious where I think you should stand on this one. No on 18!
Rookie Wage Scale: The owners, along with a lot of the veteran players want this to happen. The owners are claiming that $30 to $50 million every season in guaranteed money to a guy who has maybe a 50/50 chance at panning out is too much of a risk to keep taking, while the older players are saying that unproven players are eating money that could be going to guys who have already proven they deserve it. The only real dispute here is over what to do with the money that would be saved by slotting guys into predetermined salaries based on when they got picked. The players want assurances that it will be paid to more deserving guys, and the owners want to pocket it. Both sides are being misleading in their complaints; there are about 15 guys out of the 224-plus draftees who get these huge guarantees. The players drafted after the first half of the first round get reasonable signing bonuses that don’t endanger anyone’s livelihood. The real villains here are the agents; they’re the ones who threaten to keep their clients out of training camp knowing good and well that the ghosts of holdouts past haunt every team that’s worried about their prize pick being ruined by missing part of his first training camp. The owners could easily solve this problem in one summer by refusing to budge on the bonus money for all of the first fifteen guys. Yes, that’s collusion but let’s not pretend that they don’t do that already. On this matter, I say a pox on both their houses!
The money split: Here’s where the owners are being really slimy. What you’ve been hearing is that the players get 60 percent of the league’s revenues. That is not entirely accurate. The owners get the first $1 billion, and then the players get 60 percent of what’s left. The league reportedly brings in $9 billion in revenue, so that the players get 60 percent of $8 billion which is $4.8 billion. That’s only 53 percent. But wait a minute, that’s not accurate either. The players get 60 percent of all football related revenue after the owners get that first $1 billion. Now how much of the remaining $8 billion is football related revenue? We have no idea, because the owners aren’t opening their books. We do know that there’s no way the players are actually getting $4.8 billion. That averages out to $160 million per team; and when you consider that you have teams that are notoriously cheap like the Bengals who usually do not come anywhere close to that number you’d have to have to teams with payrolls approaching $200 million in order to meet that kind of average, of which there are none. The league owners are lying, plain and simple.
Conclusion
I think it’s pretty obvious here who we should be supporting. The owners want more money and are willing to lock out the players to get it. Period. End of story. The players were happy with the deal as it was and are not asking for more. Don’t get fooled by the propaganda!