The owners have officially approved a new Collective Bargaining Agreement today. The onus is now on the players to re-certify their union and ratify the deal. The players need to approve it by a simple majority of 50% and the pundits all seem to think this is a foregone conclusion. Vincent Jackson is said to still be unhappy with his circumstance, but no one believes that he’ll be able to stop this deal.
The path is laid to begin the league year on Wednesday July 27th with camps opening August 1st.
So, I’m sure there’s going to be a deluge of new facts, complaints and potential road blocks popping up in the coming days but everything looks good. What do you all think of the new deal? Any reason for concern? Any snarky remarks about the Raiders being the only team to abstain from the approval vote?
I started a NFL Preseason thread here to discuss actual NFL team news regarding players, coaches and anything that might happen on the field. Hopefully this thread will give us a place to discuss the business side of the deal without distracting too much from the actual on-the-field excitement. Please post any links to newly reported news as they come along in this thread.
Sports Illustrated’s Jim Trotter believes the players will not ratify it. He’s not leaving a lot of wiggle room in his prediction: "you can take it to the bank that the players are not going to ratify this proposal as currently presented. " http://twitter.com/SI_JimTrotter/status/94191844933644288
Well, not a snarky comment per se, more of a GQ: WTF?
OK, that might be a little snarky, but seriously, has anyone heard any details as to why they abstained? The closest I have seen is this snippet from an nfl.com article on my 'pod:
So, anybody know what [del]Crazy ol’ Al[/del] CEO Amy Trask is on about?
It seems like a real underhanded move by the owners. Why would you take a vote before everyone had signed off on it? They are trying to force the hands of the players and make the players look bad in the eyes of the public.
99% of the way there and they are trying to fuck them on the last 1%.
I hope the owners left enough leeway in the hands of their negotiators to make some small concessions, or if it was me, I’d vote no just out of principle.
I think it’s probably Al just being pig headed about something. I’m sure he thinks he deserves the world and that any revenue sharing agreement should treat the Raiders like the most valuable brand in the league. Amy Trask sounds like she’s just PR polishing a response that says nothing of merit to keep the other owners from freaking out and to avoid Al looking like more of a loon than usual. Maybe we’ll hear more later, but I suspect that PFT was pretty close to the mark when they speculated that it has a lot to do with the prospect of them adding a team to LA which Al considers to be his domain.
I think that’s a silly point of view. This was negotiated with DeMaurice Smith. This deal wouldn’t have been put up for a vote is the NFLPA’s negotiators hadn’t indicated that he would be able to sell it to his constituency. The owners are making a very public show of the fact that they’ve agreed with De Smith and within their own group, in effect putting the pressure on the players. Considering this is 100% true and valid it’s perfectly acceptable. If the players submarine this they will be undermining their own negotiator and will be justifiably to blame for any further delays.
Or, it contains provisions not negotiated with DeMaurice Smith (which is what he is saying), and it is an attempt by the owners to pressure the players and swing the court of public opinion. Which seems to be working, at least in your case.
I can’t believe they’re trying stupid ploys this late in the game. We’re at risk of missing real games here and there’s a very real chance the damage this causes with their fans will end up costing the league more revenue than they’re squabbling over.
I took your OP and the current reporting and made my statements without establishing any background.
It seems that currently ESPN is reporting that the negotiators never arrived on a deal. All that time and all that work establishing trust, jumping all the major hurdles, and then, when deciding the last little things, the owners took a quick vote on a deal and ran for the Kraft funeral, saying “if you sign, you can report this weekend”.
They effectively stoles the last negotiations, ran away, and left the NFLPA holding a pen.
It feels to me like to much of an “all or nothing” tactic to use when the major points of the deal had already been agreed on.
The only provision negotiated in this is the revenue sharing agreement. That has nothing to do with the players and doesn’t effect their share of the earnings. Obviously they wouldn’t be involved in that. Smith has said that numerous times and used it as a PR tactic to blame the owners for not having their house in order. Now he’s trying to use it the other way.
As for the other open issues, workers compensation, disciple and such, those cannot be negotiated until the union re-certifies. I’m not seeing the big “gotcha” that the players are claiming here. Smith negotiated this deal, why exactly are the players crying foul? Because they don’t get a say in revenue sharing? As if they should.
I’m not sure how you think revenue sharing has nothing to do with the players. It will certainly affects the amount and distribution of their salaries. As a general rule revenue sharing is bad for players, particularly the stars, since it limits the bidding wars of top teams that drive everyone’s salaries up and lessens the incentives of small market teams to spend since they can make money without winning. In other sports, like baseball, revenue sharing is a big part of the negotiations. Granted in football the effect will be culled since there isn’t much flexibility in team salary, but it is a stretch to call it not a player issue.
All I’m asking is, was there ever a deal between the players and owners. If D Smith and the negotiators for the owners ever shook hands, I’m OK with it. As it is, it looks as if there was never a deal and the owners used the public’s anxiety to try and hammer in a deal. Fuck Them!
I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it doesn’t jibe with what I’m hearing this morning. Are you saying those issues cannot be negotiated, or the owners are saying they will not negotiate them until the union recertifies? Big difference.
It seems that regardless of last night’s drama, we’re still really close to a deal. Seems like the parties got close (agreed on the big stuff but a few issues remained unresolved), the owners went ahead and passed their proposal and presented it as the final agreement, which the players took offense to. Apparently, the players didn’t even have a copy of what the owners had passed at the time of the conference call last night. They took it as a power play by the owners.
Now, everyone on ESPN (and elsewhere) seems to be reporting that now that the players have seen what the owners actually passed and have taken a step back and breathed, that this is going to get done. The owners still either made a bit of a power play or a labor relations blunder, but it’s not going to matter in the end.
I’ve decided to trust nobody. Both sides lie, both sides manipulate the truth, both sides send out misinformation and propoganda.
It’s helped me become very Zen about the whole issue, because I now don’t care who is screwing who, who gets blamed in the court of public opinion, or whose feelings get hurt.
I just want football.
Once this whole thing is done and we finally start getting some real information, I may give a shit, but for now, I think it’s folly to speculate. Neither side is a winner.
This is simply wrong. Totally and completely. The players salaries are determined solely by the hard salary cap which is determined as a fraction of the 48% of the total league earnings agreed upon. How the owners distribute their 52% share has no impact on the salary cap or player salaries.
What are you basing that assumption on? De Smith negotiated this deal with the owners. If there was a handshake or not is probably meaningless, there was a conference call to all the player reps prior to the announcement and it was ostensibly approved before the NFL announced it. The players seem to be going back on that after seeing the owners public statement which makes them look like the heroes here. There are 2000+ players and I’m sure many weren’t aware of the terms, those players are the ones tweeting idiotically. The 32 player reps and their lead negotiator De Smith signed off on this deal already knowing that some of the details that require the union to reform are still up in the air.