Oh I see what you’re saying. I heard the same thing.,
That reads very badly for the players. They’ve essentially dug in and conceded nothing in the negotiation. They’ve asked for the books, which is a red herring since it’s completely unreasonable for the employees to demand their bosses open their books. Try going into your next employee review and ask your boss to show his P&L statement as justification for what raise and bonus you deserve. The players are trying to characterize the existing deal as some sort of entitlement. As if “operating under the previous agreement” is some sort of concession. The players obviously don’t want to negotiate, they want to sue.
That’s the thing for me that makes the players seem all ate up. They don’t behave, AT ALL, like employees. That’s what they are though, employees. Sure, they are the best at what they do, no doubt there, but you’re kidding yourself if you think there aren’t 1000 other people who will step in and do the same job for 1/2 the pay. Sure, they may not be the best players out there, but once the entitled divas disappear they will be the ONLY players out there. Then maybe you would see more than 1 or 2 WR catching passes for each team. Maybe some creative play calling since they can’t rely on the same caliber superstar players to carry the team. These guys are all employees. Nothing more.
Like I said upstream, if they want to be Billionaires they should save their money and buy a team, then they can decide how much money they keep.
The owners take a billion off the top before they give the players their percentage. They now want to take 2 billion .
I guess CUBSFAN goes to games to watch the owners.
Damn those players for not doing what their told!
Yes. I recommend He Hate Me as someone to build a franchise around.
So you think the OWNERS work for the PLAYERS? :rolleyes:
It clearly not a red herring in any sense. The supposed justification for this negotiation was that the clubs were not making any (enough) money. Asking for proof is completely acceptable in this case. Note that the owners of several different sports teams have often pulled this crying poverty shit on tax payers to con them into paying for stadiums. Nobody in business should take you at your word particularly when you have acted in bad faith in the past. I ask you, if their claims are valid, why don’t they release their information?
Also note that in industries where employees are integral the profitability of a company, they often have the temerity to ask to “see the books”. Do you think bankers don’t know how much money they have made for the bank, and the bank’s profitability when the get their bonus? Do you think when James Cameron, Will Smith, or another entertainment figure negotiates a salary based on a percentage of gross sales, that they don’t demand information regarding those figures? Sandra Bullock has power over her employer that a plumber doesn’t because Sandra Bullock IS the product that her employer is selling. In a labor intensive industry when exceptional employees are rare commodities, they are given latitude a normal person doesn’t get. The NFL is not unique in that way.
Second, another reason NFL players and regular employees are not analogous is because of the nature of this particular business (the NFL). Yes, they both work for someone, but the roles, and rights are completely different. The reason why I can’t demand things of my employer that the NFL union can is because the NFL owners are granted things like anti-trust exemptions (among other things). My employer isn’t allowed to have an effective monopoly, or set work rules that discriminate based on things like age; the NFL is. The owners are allowed to collectively bargain TV contracts unlike other “competing” entities within a given sector. Most importantly, most people can find another, similar job with a different employer. NFL players can’t really do that. As you can imagine, the list of things like this goes on and on. Ultimately, its probably a good thing that they are granted many of these concessions. However, those concessions should come at a price; one of which is more transparency when dealing with employees, and the public at large.
If that were the case, the owners would have found those people already. They tried scabs once before. Ask the owners how that worked out for them. Let’s do a little thought experiment to highlight the idiocy of your comment. The NFL gets the majority of its money from TV rights, so let’s ponder what would be a more compelling viewing experience: the Packers and Steelers players playing a game without their trademark jerseys, or replacement players in the regular jerseys? Which program do you think would get higher ratings?
As far as I’m concerned, the owners can take their wounded pride and shove it up you know where. If anybody in an industry is crying poverty, then they have to prove it, no exceptions. The only reason why owners don’t open up their books is because they are hiding something, because otherwise they stand to make a ton of money by simply letting people know how much they make. Even if you’re paranoid, you’re generally not going to give up tens of millions of dollars due to it
brick-most fans root for TEAMS NOT CITIES!!! Even though they have a special skill set, they STILL WORK for hte owners. I regard to age discrimenation, physical labor peters out LONG before intellectual labor!
My friends and I have decided that if there is no season, we will spend the 20 weeks by going to Home Depot and buying and building sheds. Sure, they’ll be lopsided. Maybe we’ll switch to IKEA bookshelves in the colder weather. 
Seriously, it seems to me like both sides have some insane stubborness, and this will be worked out.
And it damn well better work into a 2011-12 season, because I, a lowly beer-drinking, football worshipping individual simply wants a fricking season. Please don’t take away my weekly sports stress upon which I thrive. That’s all.
The Packers, who won the Super Bowl, made $9.8 million in 2009, and was valued at 1.018 billion dollars. That’s a return of a whopping .9% in profit of value. It’s also roughly what a great player can make in one year. One player. One year.
The owners have offered to make some information available to the players, by giving profitability information to a third party auditor to check. It wouldn’t get into the team by team specifics, but it would provide the amount of profits the teams made year to year and the number of teams that made more or less than the prior year.
That wasn’t good enough for the players’ union. They want to be able to say shit like “Jerry Jones spent 80 million dollars on dinners for other owners!!” or
“they spend too much on marketing and concessions!!” and all of the other thousands of financial decisions that are absolutely none of the players’ business. The union wants to embarrass the owners in an effort to get more of the pie. It’s not about profits, it’s about who decides how the money should/could be spent. And that’s up to the owners, not the players.
I still think the owners should provide a bit more information, but the complete rejection, without counteroffer, by the NFLPA makes me think the profit information wasn’t actually their goal at all.
Muahaha! The Giants will use this secret loophole to ensure they have a championship-winning advantage this year if there is a “this year”…
Know how players and coaches are not allowed to communicate during the lockout? The league had to make an exception in one case – Tom Coughlin and his son-in-law, Chris Snee.
It’s a fool’s game to be picking sides in this dispute and it is nonsensical to try and compare it to a normal business, because it simply is nothing like any other business (except other sports leagues). As for myslef, I am not going to try and suss out who is “right” in this case, because there is no answer. I tend to side with the players, but I am not to strong in my conviction, I just hope they come to an agreement in time for a season, that is really my only cause here.
Wait until Dan Snyder one-ups them and sends Mike Shanahan and Donivan McNabb up to Vermont.
Describing the situation of the two as an awkward coach-qb marriage will only be more apt. 
I would be careful about extrapoolating too much from the Packers. As this table from Frobes demonstrates it is all over the map. For example the Cowboys are at almost 8%, not too bad. But the Cowboys also seem to be outlier in terms of revenue, most teams are in the 3-5% range, fairly low. But keep in mind that the players have offered to go to 50%, down from the effective 53% (after the $1 billion takeout by the owners and then 60% to the players), so that would help the owners bottom line.
Like I said above, though, I am not really into picking sides in this debate. I understand the players side and understand the owners side. If Ilean toward the players it is probably only because the Owners did not act in good faith as evidenced by the illegal war chest they tried to accumulate.
The offer may not have been what it seems.
Like most things, the devil is in the details. I’m with you on not trusting either side to tell me the real truth. The owners are as guilty as the players association at playing the PR game.
The owners not maximizing television revenues to get lockout insurance (taking Doty’s ruling at face value, of course), was a dick move, and the NFLPA should get some payments to cover the loss they suffered. But with the latest offers, the bullshit decertification, and the lawsuits, I’m not sure the players were really committed to negotiations either.
Both sides are still playing chicken. And, like most cases, the union is more likely to collapse when it gets ugly.
Of course, the anti-trust lawsuits could change all that. All the players have to do is not play for 2 or 3 or 7 years while it makes it’s way through the court system to see if they can win an iffy proposition. I don’t see that happening.
Actually that is exactly what I said, it is 53%. The authoir of that article is abit disengenious when he says it is a “smidge” over 50%. To me a smidge would mean it is like 50.2%. Its a weasel word and the author doesn’t include any percentages. Let’s start with the $9 billion:
Players want 50/50 so they get $4.5 billion
Current system is 60/40 after $1 billion is taken away, $4.8 billion or 53%
Owners want to take $2 billion and then go 60/40, which equals $4.2 billion or 47%
So those are the numbers, at a high level of course. Now what is interesting is that if revenues were to make it to $12 billion (a large increase, 33%, of course) then the two proposals work out to be the same at least on that level.
What makes you think that is the case? In '87 when they used replacement players, TV ratings went down. Everyone I know has a favorite team, but they mostly watch to see certain players. That’s why fantasy football is so popular. Again, if you think the team names are so important, you must agree that a group of replacement players in Steelers uniforms would get better TV ratings than the actual Steeler players playing in generic uniforms, right?
Learn how to calculate ROI. You are neglecting to include the fact that the Packers are likely WORTH more than the were last year and the years previous. Just because they “only” made 9.8 MM in profit doesn’t mean the value of the franchise didn’t go up considerably. Consider the Washington Redskins. Dan Snyder bought them for 750 MM in 1999. In 2010, they were worth 1.264 billion. The annual value change has been 9% per year in addition to the profits made each year, whatever those may be. An investment that returns 9% per year, and pays out millions in dividends in the form of operating profits is an excellent investment. Also note that Snyder bought the team after much of the explosive growth in the value of NFL franchises. Someone who has owned a team for a long time like Jerry Jones, who bought the Cowboys in '89 for 140 MM, and now has an asset worth 1.65 billion with annual revenue of 269 MM, have done considerably well.
That doesn’t sound suspicious to you? Even if that were the case, which I doubt it was, what would be lost by giving the union the numbers they asked for? Seriously, assuming they are telling the truth, what would be the downside in your opinion?
That is entirely their business. More importantly, if the Cowboys were less profitable because Jones is spending millions on dinners, throwing lavish cocaine parties, or paying his family huge salaries to basically do nothing, it hardly makes his alleged poverty a defensible position with regard to these negotiations. It makes a difference if the Cowboys are an efficient organization, or if they one being gutted and pillaged for all they are worth by a greedy or indifferent owners. Make no mistake, the extra money the owners are asked is coming out of the players’ collective pockets. If someone is asking me for more money, you can be sure that I want to make sure that are not squandering their own.
They did counter offer several times. They agreed to continue under the old collective bargaining agreement. Seeing as it was the owners who upset the apple cart by opting out, and asking for more money, I don’t see why the union should try to meet them halfway on an issue without an proof that their cries of poverty are valid. They didn’t counter offer the last time because the owners would not submit basic financial information. They wanted 10 years of financial statements. That is only something you’d avoid doing if you have something to hide.
The Packers are community owned and charge less for tickets, parking and concessions. They could gouge like the other owners and increase profits. Then you would be happy?
If the owners want to skim billions of dollars off the top from the players and their only reason is because they’re not making enough money, then they deserve to have the players look through their finances. Why should Jerry Jones be allowed to take more money from the players if he’s wasting 80 million on dinners with other owners?