Latest on the 2011 Lockout

[CLTPanther]

Well if salaries come down some, we'll have more money to sign more players for one. We're going to have a lot of money to spend either way, but JR doesn't want to open the flood gates without knowing what the salary structure will look like.

[Fiz]

How do you know they haven't heard the owners demands? I've only read they are complaining the owners won't show them the balance sheet to prove revenue decline.

At one point in the commissioner’s visit with the Cleveland Browns, linebacker Scott Fujita(notes), a member of the NFL Players Association’s executive committee, asked: “What do the owners want? What’s it going to take to get a deal done?”

“You’re the NFL commissioner,” Fujita shot back. “You’re here as the mouthpiece for the owners, and you can’t even tell us what they want? The CBA [collective bargaining agreement] is up in March. Don’t you think you need to start giving us some answers?”

By the end of his visit with the Browns, players were referring to the league’s chief executive as “Roger the Dodger.” It got worse for Goodell during the final visit of his tour, this stop coming at the Indianapolis Colts’ training camp. According to two sources familiar with the meeting, some Colts players admonished Goodell with swear words, to the point where star quarterback Peyton Manning(notes) was embarrassed by their behavior. Veteran center Jeff Saturday(notes), another executive committee member, cut the meeting short to keep the situation from escalating further.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ms-laborquestions090810

[SOJA]

can someone clarify our benefit to being cheap this year in the situation of a season next year and in the situation of a lockout next year? the more i read the more i am confused

this. Fiz dumb it down for us

[BigCat#1]

so basically we wont be a team that will have a bunch of cap casualties? I still think a team like the jets or pats that have to make a few cuts will be better off than us with a core 2nd year players on a team that won 3-6 games the year prior

[Fiz]

32 white men want to eat at a better cafeteria and they know they can starve the players out to get it done.

[Fiz]

guys stop thinking about this strategically. keeping players and coaches away for over a year (because this is a lockout of coaches as well) will absolutely destroy the league. These guys are mostly animals that are barely contained as is. They've spent their entire lives inside the military like regiments of organized football.

They don't know how to invest their money, or how to exist without football. Every young player will lose a year of development. Every veteran will lose one of their last years of usefulness. With the exception of the players that take it upon themselves, they'll lose all their timing, footwork, agility, size, etc etc.

[BigCat#1]

32 white men want to eat at a better cafeteria and they know they can starve the players out to get it done.

i guess they arent worried about the people cooking the food and washing the dishes(the fans)

[blackcatgrowl]

The players are idiots for voting for him.

Totally agreed.

Demaurice Smith is a fool, and this CBA wrangling is going to cost the members of the NFLPA more money than the little 5% they are bitching about.

Under the guidance of Upshaw, NFL players now make the largest percentage of gross revenues (59) compared to their counterparts in Major League Baseball (53), the National Basketball Association (57) and National Hockey League (55.6), according to figures provided by the NFL, an NFLPA source and an article in Sports Business Journal.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-cbaandowners051908

The NFLPA is trying to use the sale of 50% of the Dolphins to show that the inflation of the club's value justifies the higher pay scale, because the owners can make money on the sale of the club. That's complete bullshit, because while the old owner might bank some loot, the new owner is OUT that cash, and has to run the business with that expense PLUS the player's expense, and the team and stadium expenses.

I say to hell with the players. Hire the entire UFL and the CFL practice squads and let em play as replacements.

[Fiz]

honestly one of the things mawae said he believes the owners want is for players to invest in the construction of new stadiums.

think about that for a second.

- Owners already receive massive public subsidies, tax exemptions, and sweetheart deals from the cities to build these stadiums

- They don't want to give the players any equity in the stadium, insisting instead that the benefits will "trickle down" (absolute horseshit)

- the players don't make any money from concerts or other events which happen constantly in these facilities

- in many cases the city is stuck with the bill for a useless piece of poo. see

[Fiz]

Totally agreed.

Demaurice Smith is a fool, and this CBA wrangling is going to cost the members of the NFLPA more money than the little 5% they are bitching about.

do you have a problem with this? the nfl has the largest active rosters and unlike the NFL, MLB, or NBA, the owners don't have to pay for developmental leagues like the Minor Leagues, developmental leagues in europe and the Caribbean, etc.

They get all that done for free through the Universities. Literally the NFL is the only sports league in the world that doesn't pay for a developmental league.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-cbaandowners051908

The NFLPA is trying to use the sale of 50% of the Dolphins to show that the inflation of the club's value justifies the higher pay scale, because the owners can make money on the sale of the club. That's complete bullshit, because while the old owner might bank some loot, the new owner is OUT that cash, and has to run the business with that expense PLUS the player's expense, and the team and stadium expenses.

lol oh my god someone buying the right to print money, which is what the NFL is, might have to pay a higher overhead pegged to the rising value of what he's purchased.

I say to hell with the players. Hire the entire UFL and the CFL practice squads and let em play as replacements.

boy i can't wait to see jeff garcia throwing bombs to javon walker that's going to be great.

luckily i pay money to watch people own a team.

[Fiz]

here everyone just read this

Which side is forcing the issue?

The owners, particularly a faction of aggressive, entrepreneurial Goodell confidants (Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, Pat Bowlen, Jerry Richardson) who want a CBA that accounts for the high-risk investments they’ve made on new stadiums and other capital expenditures. For the most part, the owners are unified in their belief that they agreed to a lousy deal when the current CBA was extended in 2006, and that the players currently receive too great a share of their adjusted gross revenues. At last March’s NFL owners meeting in Orlando, Fla., the Carolina Panthers’ Richardson gave a fiery speech in which he exhorted his peers to “take back our league” by forcing a more favorable deal down the throats of the players. This is likely to be accomplished in the form of a lockout, though it’s possible that the owners could opt for a milder approach: negotiating to impasse and imposing terms of their choosing, which might compel the players to strike. DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA’s executive director, is convinced that a lockout is coming, and a majority of his constituents – many of whom are more engaged and informed than is commonly perceived – share this belief.

Are the two sides making any progress toward a new deal?

Not really. Though there have been recent reports of an improved atmosphere between the NFL’s management council and the players’ union, there has been no substantial movement toward a new CBA. This may be partly due to the desire of some owners to play hardball and lock out the players until they capitulate; it also may simply be a function of timing. Think of it as akin to negotiations between a team and its first-round draft pick. Though the NFL draft is in late April, talks usually don’t begin to heat up until the approach of training camp, and often the contract isn’t signed until deeper into the offseason. In this case, though the CBA expires after the 2010 season, the real deadline isn’t until a year from now, when there’s a risk that games will be lost.

Why are the owners so upset about the deal they cut in 2006?

Many owners believe that the late Gene Upshaw, who served as the NFLPA’s executive director for a quarter-century, caught then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue in a weak moment and muscled through an extension to the CBA that was, in essence, a resounding victory for the players. Upshaw, they believe, knew that Tagliabue – who was preparing to step away after a 17-year stint as commissioner which included unprecedented labor peace – was loath to tarnish his legacy by ending his tenure with a messy fight between the players and owners. He also understood that several of the league’s most powerful owners, such as the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones, were unwilling to entertain thoughts of a work stoppage because of expensive stadium plans. So Upshaw successfully got Tagliabue to sell a deal that gave the players 59.6 percent of total revenue and implemented a revenue-sharing plan in which the league’s 15 highest-earning franchises subsidized the 17 teams that earned the least. A little more than two years after agreeing to the extension by a 30-2 vote, the owners unanimously voted to opt out of the deal two years early. Upshaw’s sudden death from pancreatic cancer three months later may have given some owners an increased sense that the union is in a vulnerable position this time around.

Why do some owners think the system is broken?

Revenue sharing fails to address the reality that some teams (such as the Cincinnati Bengals and Arizona Cardinals) have favorable stadium deals that call for little or no expenditures from the organization while other owners, such as Jones, Denver’s Pat Bowlen or the Green Bay Packers, took out massive loans for new or renovated stadiums. Thus, someone such as the Panthers’ Richardson might be forced to write an eight-figure check that subsidizes a peer such as the Bengals’ Mike Brown(notes), who is actually making a far greater profit because of his relatively low overhead. Further, there are owners who intentionally keep revenues low to maintain their spot in the NFL’s lower 17 and ensure that they’ll receive money under the current system. All of this is mystifying to the players, who believe the owners who are most averse to revenue sharing greet a potential work stoppage as an opportunity for prevailing in an internal struggle.

Do the owners really want the players to take an 18 percent pay cut?

Yes and no. What the owners have actually proposed is that the players take the same cut (roughly 60 percent) of a smaller pie. Under the current deal, owners receive a credit of slightly more than $1 billion for operating and investment expenses off the top of an annual revenue pool that’s approximately $9 billion before the remainder of the money is divided. The owners are seeking an increase to about $2.4 billion in credits, a number they say reflects the changing economic realities of the era. Whereas stadiums which were partly or wholly subsidized by taxpayers were once the norm, owners are now pouring much more capital into state-of-the-art facilities – essentially saddling them with enormous mortgage payments. The owners believe that the players should account for their risk and the bounty (in the form of increased future revenues) it provides. Players, conversely, argue that they are not in a true partnership absent an ownership stake in franchises whose values have increased exponentially over the past decade and a half.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ms-laborquestions090810

[Catdaddy]

The players tried to extend the deal thats in place already and the owners turned it down. The owners want to be making the 60% of the revenue instead of the players, so you knew this was coming. Unless the players cave, we won't have any football.

[Fiz]

the owners want the players to cover the overhead on new stadium construction

"oh trust us right after we lock you out this money you invest is going to naturally trickle down to you right after the invisible hand is done fisting your ass. trust us"

[Kurb]

I have made the arguement before the owners can/should do this because they have all the finacial risk. But reading what brother Fiz has posted it has come to me that owning an NFL team really ISNT a risk. It's a no lose investment.

So basically the owners want to play less, perhaps force the players to help pay operational costs, and make more money. To do this, they are slashing deals all around the league, and threatening the players with not only loss of $$$ but loss in a chance to make additional money in the future through loss of conditioning, skill building, and the NFL support system in general.

Asking an employee to pay to have a better work place is a bit absurd when the company is one of the most profitable in the work and the owner is making money hand over fist.

some one google: Greed and see if some pictures show up...