We’ve been trying to focus primarily if not exclusively on subjects other than the sluggish labor talks, since it’s the postseason and folks are generally happy and upbeat about the greatest sport on the planet.
But we need to press “pause” on the playoff party train for a few minutes, if for no reason other than to remind everyone that a real problem is looming, and it’s closer than anyone realizes.
In this week’s Monday Morning Quarterback column, Peter King of SI.com writes that it will be an “upset” if there isn’t a work stoppage in 2011, based on a “total lack of progress” in the eleven bargaining sessions held to date.
The core dispute is the system for paying players. The owners want to pay a lot less; the players want to keep what they have.
And there’s a lingering sense that the players did too well in 2006, when they successfully expanded the player-salary formula to include all football revenues. By finagling 59.6 cents on virtually every dollar earned, the players have forced the teams to try to run their businesses with the remaining 40.4 cents -- and to carve a fair profit out of that amount.
And so the owners now want to push the pendulum in the other direction, not only evening out the financial playing field but also recapturing some of the losses they believe they experienced under the deal that former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and the late Gene Upshaw brokered.
The players say they won’t stand for it, but the owners realize that the players likely won’t have the will to miss an entire season of football salaries. Few have much money saved, and many live check-to-check, given lifestyles based on the assumption that they’ll earn football money indefinitely.
Indeed, the players have caved every time they’ll staged a strike; it’s hard to imagine them not agreeing to the last best offer the owners make, if the alternative is zero dollars, zero cents, and lost opportunities to play football.
Then there’s the reality that, from the NFL’s perspective, the clock doesn’t strike 12 until the labor agreement expires next year. The union would prefer to do a deal now, in part to avoid the potential mutiny that will arise when guys who thought they would be free agents learn that they aren’t really free agents -- and when the free agents realize that the uncapped year doesn’t entail Pacman Jones in a cherry picker with a Grinch sack full of cash.
So if the union wants to do a deal now, they’ll have to do a bad deal. If they choose to wait, the owners will get more serious about working something out as midnight approaches.
In the end, it’s a battle of wills, and the owners are intent on testing the players’ resolve. It starts first by seeing if they’ll flinch in the face of an uncapped year. Then, the question becomes whether the players will blink as the owners prepare to lock them out.
If the players stand firm, then 2011 could be a huge mess.
We hope it won’t come to that. But if it does, there’s always the CFL. And the UFL.