You’re a dummy if you really think it’s no big deal to ask these guys to give up the fanfare of a night they worked their entire lives for.
We’re talking about your fantasy scenario where the NFL tells Ben Roethlisberger, Jerome Harrison, et al to just go away. Of course, this won’t happen, because the NFL owners aren’t internet tough guys.
No, they’re businessmen. You know and I know it won’t happen that way, but there is precedent for such an action, and when labor will not negotiate there comes a time when the labor should be replaced. Negotiations do not take place in courtrooms.
Nobody needs to have that much cash lying around. They could get loans from pretty much any major bank seeing as they have a demonstrably successful business plan. The NFL makes most of its money from TV. Just organizing the players and televising their games would ensure they’d have access to several billion. They could also play in college stadiums, which would provide a venue of comparable size for nearly every NFL team.
No, I think they work together to put a product on the field that people will pay top dollar to see.
And at the risk of being the REALLY bad guy, I’ll add the fans to this. Jesus Christ, you’d think the NFL and the players were exercising Droit de seigneur. I post at a team board and some of these people are acting the like the world is going to come to a fucking end if they can’t sit their fat ass down in front of the TV come September.
Isn’t it generally just first rounders who show up anyway?
Scabs playing real games that count would draw orders of magnitude higher ratings than pros playing exhibition games.
I disagree 100%. Has there ever been any sport ever that has successfully used scabs?
Usually, after the 1st quarter, it’s marginal players in preseason games anyway. IMO, I’d rather watch scabs play regular season games than the real player in preseason, but just barely.
Just look how well all those rivals to the NFL have worked throughout history. Who wouldn’t want to loan money to the next USFL, AFL, WFL. Heck why not even apply globally, like NFL Europe. What could possibly go wrong?
Yup…and, even then, not all of the first rounders.
When Aaron Rodgers was in the draft (2005), it was expected that he’d be drafted early in the first round (possibly even the first pick), and so, he was invited to be there. He slid all the way to the Packers at the 24th pick; by then, he had been the only guy left in the “green room” for some time.
Or the XFL. And, it’s not like Arena Football hasn’t had financial issues, either.
The two leagues which have tried to take on the NFL head-on in the past 40 years, including luring NFL players away (WFL and USFL) failed utterly. Granted, it’d be a different situation if the NFL were in the middle of an extended lockout, but “demonstrably successful business plan” may be a serious stretch.
Didn’t Brady Quinn do basically a repeat of that?
Bill Simmons talks about this phenomenon whenever he discusses the draft.
Did any of those leagues have all actual NFL players? The hypothetical here is the current NFL players starting a league. What sunk those leagues is a dearth of talent, and competition from a dominant NFL. This hypothetical new league would not have either of those problems.
The USFL only had Hershel Walker and Anthony Carter to name a couple.
While the WFL and USFL certainly were not 100% composed of NFL players, they spent quite a bit to both lure players away from NFL teams, and lure college players to sign with them instead of the NFL.
I don’t think that what sunk either team was a dearth of talent (at least, not directly); both teams ran into an inability to pay their bills.
Here’s one other obstacle to a rival league: who’s going to televise it? All four major broadcast networks either directly or indirectly have contracts with the NFL (ABC is owned by Disney, which also owns ESPN). The only broadcast network that leaves is CW, which is still only a part-time network. ESPN’s out, though Turner might be interested, and has enough sports experience to maybe pull it off (I don’t think that Turner has any conflicts with the NFL).
But, as you stated, they did not have NFL talent from top to bottom. Plus, their competition did. In our hypothetical, the competition would not have NFL talent.
A lot of things caused their failure, but if people thought they were getting a better product with more talented people, they could have found ways to pay the bills.
I am sure the networks can opt out of their contracts somehow. Even if they can’t, all you would need to do is work with cable companies themselves. Talk to Cox, Comcast, Direct TV, Verizon, et al. They can collectively broadcast to enough people to make the numbers work well enough. Remember, this hypothetical league would only need to bring in a little more than half the previous revenue, and would have lower overhead. Hell, they could play all their games in a handful of stadiums if they wanted to. Regardless, its not going to happen. The point is to underscore how the players are far more integral to the NFL product than the owners are.
You’re going to a lot of trouble to prove a point that’s just flat-out wrong. If the owners permanently exiled all the current players, threw out the CBA entirely and started new with permanent scabs, the NFL would go along without any more issue than MLB did after their lockout. (Some trouble for a few years but eventually overcome.) And if all the current players formed a new league, people might watch out of curiosity for a while but they’d crumble within a few years tops for any number of reasons.
Also, having the best players does not automatically create the best play. The Patriots proved the importance of coaching during the 2000s, where all three of their Superbowl wins were with mostly above-average player talent.
By your logic, the 2000s should have been the decade of the Chargers, who every year people agree have one of the most talent-rich player pools in the league. Not only don’t they win championships, they get blacked out for lack of fan interest.
Yeah, the USFL attracted some good talent but just couldn’t compete with the NFL.