The CBA Madness- Which Side Are You On?

although I grow to expect it more and more in today’s entitlement mentality.

I agree that many players don’t use their money wisely, but how is that anyone’s fault but their own? Their health is their responsibility and if they can’t invest in their own health, why should anyone else invest for them? They’re adults who make hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per year, and owners are supposed to figure out how to pay their bills for them? I think it’s ridiculous that a unionized group of millionaires wants fans—most of whom can’t afford a ticket to a single NFL game now—to support them as they threaten to take games away for a season.

What’s funny is how the NFLPA uses the heart string-tugging angle that it’s all about the poor retired players and the injuries they have suffered. How is the responsibility of Zygi Wilf and others like him to pay medical bills and retirements for players who retired when they were in junior high?

Give me $285,000 for ONE YEAR (that’s currently just under 10 year’s salary for me), and I will invest it in a way that I’ll be set for life. And I darn sure wouldn’t be expecting someone else to pay for my meals, medical, or anything else the way NFL players do. I realize these guys have never had real jobs before but it’s still their responsibility to take care of themselves.

Just to show I’m open to criticism to both sides, the owners are (many times) using taxpayer money to build stadiums, which I don’t like either. If you can’t build your own stadium, don’t buy the team imo. But the owners have made big investments over the past few decades to make the league more popular and yes, profitable. Good for them. I realize the players are a big part of it too but it’s not the same kind of investment for players.

I don’t see how the players can really hold a hard line here. The owners can play NFL games without current players on their roster,but the superstar players can’t set up their own games. I think it’s a goodwill gesture that the owners aren’t really threatening to use replacement players. I read somewhere that the league had told the owners that their stadiums will be able to withstand a work stoppage. I don’t think the owners will sweat this too much.

for current players, I think the best thing to do is use a sliding-scale scenario. I don’t really care if Bryant McKinnie goes broke 3 years after retiring- and it’s not just because I really don’t care for him as a player, it’s entirely because he uses his money like a moron. When you are his age, and facing a potential lockout (and therefore no salary next year), and drop six figures in a club- well, you won’t ever get sympathy from me for any financial situation you end up in.

On the flip side, look at Carson Palmer. He recently claimed to have $80 million put away in the bank. And he’s ready to retire just to get his family out of Cinncinati (and after hearing what all they’ve gone through there, I don’t blame him one bit). Obviously, he is the shining example of a players’ fiscal responsiblity, and with that amount of money, I don’t think he’ll ever be hurting. (And good on him for it.)

But I still stand by the fact that the majority of NFL players, the scores of rank and file who aren’t highly paid QBs and LTs, can easily find themselves in bad financial situations even today. And to keep things fair and realistic, you can’t expect a single, young 20-something guy to show the greatest fiscal responsibility in the world- especially those who have families who end up needing large chunks of those first big paychecks. If we’re all honest with ourselves, an extremely small perecentage of us can say that honestly, we would have been any more responsible than them.

In a nutshell, again, a sliding scale form of health benefits should be utilized for the future- based off of your playing time, your total salary made, and also taking into account what kind of health bills you’ve racked up destroying your body simply to entertain millions of Americans.

“Forever taint the history of the sport”!? That’s a tad over-dramatic, don’t you think? No doubt a suicide is tragic, but laying that on the heads of current owners and players is ludicrous.

Once again, how is it the responsibility of current owners and players to pay medical bills for players who retired decades ago? Just as in society as a whole now, the opinion is that those with the money should pay for things for those without money. However well-meaning it is, it’s still baseless and faulty logic.

But it also seems the hard-line group of Owners (like Jerry Richardson, whose at the heart of this fiasco) are going to hold off the appeal until after the deadline to milk things out even longer.

I don’t see the Richardson gang as willing to negotiate ‘at all.’ He’s the one who stood up and told the Owners they signed a crap deal in the last CBA, laying the groundwork for withdrawing from it.

And there’s still the issue of owners like Richardson and the Browns, who are trying to maximize Revenue Sharing profits, and that of Jerry Jones—who is against revenue sharing between the teams in ANY form.

There are some smart owners and some stupid owners and honestly, the stupid ones are making it difficult for the smart ones to operate. Over time, the first round picks’ first contracts have gone up and up and up. They are getting out of control and it makes it hard for an owner to put his foot down when you draft a QB #1 overal(sam bradford) and not pay him AT LEAST Jamarcus Russell money. What argument could the owner possibly have? At the same time, you’re trying to start your franchise off and you don’t want to be disputing a contract when you expect that rookie to start for you and you need him in OTAs and not in a meeting arguing about his contract. This has gotten progressively worse over the years and they don’t really see an end to it. The obvious solution is a rookie wage scale. That way, there’s no disputing their contracts and everyone’s at work on time and the fans don’t have to hear(and take sides again) when there’s someone holding out. Think if it as a probationary period. You play well, or at least show your worth, you get your contract extension. I say all rookies start w/ a 3-year contract. The third year is the first year they can restructure. So, now if you’re an owner, you don’t feel so bad about drafting a QB in the top 5 every four years if you keep drafting busts because it won’t be so financially damning.

I imagine most owner’s don’t want to pay these rookies exorbitant amounts- that’s why they’re pushing for the rookie wage scale. I blame two groups for that whole problem- a.) the one idiot owner who messes everything up by going overboard (see- Davis, Al), and forcing other owners to follow suit, and b.) the agents, who are the driving force behind the other owners being forced to follow suit.

When I mentioned growing globally I put it in the context of marketing rather than actually moving teams out of the U.S. I agree with you that teams in Europe and Mexico don’t make much sense other than for the odd “special” game that promotes the league and helps to grow merchandising and TV revenue. To be honest I’m not even sure that an NFL team would work in Toronto full time as there have been mixed results with the Buffalo games that have been played there so far. The global growth of the NFL in TV contracts and merchandise is a lot of potential revenue though, and shouldn’t be ignored. The popularity of the game in Canada has dramatically jumped over the last 10 years and our market is relatively small compared to many countries in the world. Think about how China has embraced NBA merchandise and how Japan has embraced MLB for an idea of the extra money that’s available for the NFL without actually moving their teams.

Stadium issues are pretty complicated and I’m not going to deny that owner’s try and get the public to pay as much as they can because it’s obvious that that’s true. Guess what, it’s the same thing states, provinces, and countries do with subsidies, favorable taxes, or lower wages to attract new factories and businesses. It sucks in most cases but people who run large profitable businesses will look for and take the best deal they can get. Putting aside whether it’s right or wrong that the public bears the brunt of stadium costs, my point is that if the NFL reinvests a portion of that 1 billion dollars into new stadiums than both the owners and public costs of financing a new stadium will be reduced. Take the Vikings for example. Currently a new stadium is supposed to cost between 750-900 million and the Wilf’s have agreed to kick in 1/3 of the cost which is between 250-300 million while leaving the rest to be publicly financed. If the NFL has that extra billion to work with than maybe that public portion gets knocked down by 50-100 million because the NFL now has more money to help the stadium process along. Definitely not a perfect solution but it’d be better than nothing.

My point with the blackouts is not about whether it’s a fair practice or not but that these blackouts indicate that revenues are starting to plateau or decline in some regions. This means either new stadiums need to be built to increase revenue, the team needs to be managed better, the market is bad, or some combination of all these things. The Vikings for example, were only profitable in 2009-2010 because they hosted two playoff games. One of the teams best seasons in a long time in a good market but their revenue was still near the bottom of the league. New super-expensive stadiums suck for the taxpayer and ticket buyer but unfortunately that’s how business works. If you struggle to make profits in one area and you can make more in another than the choice to move is made much easier. It’s not right or fair but sports are big business and money driven.

heard anything from the NFLPA indicating that the rookie wage scale is a big issue. I think the agents are the only force against that.

If the Commissioner’s Office was a legitimately independent branch, rather than a toady of the Owners. That’s why the M:B strike under Peter Ueberroth ended so quickly. He acted in the best interest of MLB and made what was, at the time, an equitable deal. The small market owners like Selig despised that, and first ran him off, and then Conflict of Interest notwithstanding, ran MLB himself…nearly right into the ground.

None of us want a work-stoppage. That doesn’t mean both sides are equally at fault for it. And in this case, it’s demonstrably false to say they are.

The players are entirely willing to play under the old CBA.

It’s the OWNERS who are divided into the Richardson camp-who are wanting to force the players to take significant wage reductions, with more games and less safe conditions, so THEY can amass more profits from the large market teams…

and the Jones camp- which doesn’t want to give a PENNY in revenue sharing to the small-market teams anymore. Because they feel teams in those markets are gaming the system.