If Teddy Bruschi is right, this won't ever get done

[Gazi]

The players are overpaid EMPLOYEES. What point are you player lovers going to get, NO employees should be getting the % of operating revenue they are getting?

They aren't opening the books because legally they dont have to. American Airlines didn't have to open books to the TWU when they made them take cuts or else. No company has to and the Courts nor Congress will make the NFL.

apples and oranges.

I'm sure if they brought in replacements, like a civilian corporation would do, you would watch. I didn't think so

[Guild]

Yeah these economic times sure must be hard for the NFL... wait what?

[thunderraiden]

http://www.packers.com/news-and-events/article-1/Finances-Show-Profit-But-Troubling-Trends-Remain/131dac2e-ce57-4798-aade-384c565d01fb

thats all the books the NFL needs to show. The "open the books" is nothing more than a ploy by the NFLPA to argue on, even if the NFL opened their books the NFLPA would just ignore it like all the other player associations for other sports do when their owners open the books. The NFLPA has already said they know the owners are losing money.

[Happy Panther]

Everything Ive heard from third party perspective says that the union has everything there is about the books ands the "opening the books" thing is bs.

I haven't heard this once.

The whole books thing is a pretty big sticking point. Jerry draws some dumbass pie chart which is supposed to convince everyone that the owners are in bad shape. Yet forbes estimates every franchise is doing well.

If you aren't going to open the books then make an effort at some sort of intelligent analysis.

Some of these owners are not very good businessmen it seems

[Happy Panther]

http://www.packers.com/news-and-events/article-1/Finances-Show-Profit-But-Troubling-Trends-Remain/131dac2e-ce57-4798-aade-384c565d01fb

thats all the books the NFL needs to show. The "open the books" is nothing more than a ploy by the NFLPA to argue on, even if the NFL opened their books the NFLPA would just ignore it like all the other player associations for other sports do when their owners open the books. The NFLPA has already said they know the owners are losing money.

You're article shows that the smallest market team is making money. Which we knew already. If the packers are making money then how are the owners losing $200M a year??

When did the NFLPA state that the owners were losing money? please provide a link.

[Happy Panther]

Either the owners are lying or Forbes has some really bad information

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/30/football-valuations-10_NFL-Team-Valuations_Income.html

[CatMan72]

The problem with this whole "show us your books" idea is that when the NBA owners did that the players decided their books were phony...

If you know anything about accounting, you know that you can "cook the books" within the law to say just about anything you want them to, so I'm not sure why the players are that interested in seeing them anyways?

I think the idea of a 50/50 split of total revenue is absurd, the owners of these teams incur all the financial risk, so they should get a much bigger chunk of the reward than the players.

Truth is, the owners are holding all the chips right now. According to Sports Illustrated, 78% of NFL players are bankrupt or in financial distress within 2 years of retirement. This is because most of these guys live lifestyles that are at or close to their max income. The owners know they can starve the players rather quickly by locking them out, that's why the player reps made a big deal of telling everyone to save their money towards the end of last year.

I'm not necessarily taking sides here, but at the end of the day the NFLPA is in MUCH weaker position than the owners... and they will eventually have to start negotiating in good faith. The owners can survive a lockout, the players can't... that's why the owners were willing to play this card in the first place. The fans are the real losers in this, but the owners know the majority of the fan base will be back in droves once this is resolved.

[lymelizzard]

The article I read stated that, as with most negotiations, one side offers up a starting point and they negotiate from there... So, for the owners to get up and walk out on a 50/50 proposal shows what jackasses they are.

Again, they aren't even opening the books to the players to justify their "losses." Which suggests, there are no losses.

WHY should they?

[Gazi]

50-50 was a good compromise by NFLPA. Do you know what the split used to be? And really, it's a proposal. You sit down and you start somewhere. Owners just don't want anything done. Bunch of billionaire assholes

[Happy Panther]

The problem with this whole "show us your books" idea is that when the NBA owners did that the players decided their books were phony...

If you know anything about accounting, you know that you can "cook the books" within the law to say just about anything you want them to, so I'm not sure why the players are that interested in seeing them anyways?

If you know anything about accounting you can spot cooked books and adjust. The NFLPA has good accountants. A truly cooked booked means they would still be hiding something.

[thunderraiden]

I haven't heard this once.

The whole books thing is a pretty big sticking point. Jerry draws some dumbass pie chart which is supposed to convince everyone that the owners are in bad shape. Yet forbes estimates every franchise is doing well.

If you aren't going to open the books then make an effort at some sort of intelligent analysis.

Some of these owners are not very good businessmen it seems

what are you talking about they made 20 mill in 2009 then 10 mill in 2010. Plz tell me what the graph shows their debt to be in 2013.

[mav1234]

50-50 was a good compromise by NFLPA. Do you know what the split used to be? And really, it's a proposal. You sit down and you start somewhere. Owners just don't want anything done. Bunch of billionaire assholes

The split right now amounts to 50/50 of all revenue, which is exactly what they offered. So it wasn't really much of a compromise.

[Delhommey]

Remember how teams like the Pirates were bemoaning how broke they were?

http://deadspin.com/#!5615096/mlb-confidential-the-financial-documents-baseball-doesnt-want-you-to-see-part-1

[Urrymonster]

From what I saw of the NFLPA conference last week the owners have shown the books to some degree, but the NFLPA wanted to know all their financial workings. Seems to me that the NFLPA are just clutching at straws as the bits they did see they don't agree with.

Currently they get 50% of total revenue, when they are supposed to get 60% of the total revenue. Essentially there are deductions before that 60% is processed, which pushes their take to 50%.

If they have offered 50% of total revenue, then that's exactly the same deal as they are currently on. If not more.