Though we have every intention of keeping you fully updated regarding every development in the unfolding labor-mama drama between the NFL and the players union, the league has taken the unusual step of launching its own site that will focus solely on the labor issues.
The name of the site is NFLLabor.com. Those of you who don’t feel like typing that address into your browsers can otherwise click here.
The most recent entry is dated February 11 (which for the purposes of building an audience might as well be dated “1965″), and its title quotes Commissioner Roger Goodell’s remarks from his pre-Super Bowl press conference.
That’s encouraging. Of course, the NFLPA would contend that the league has added the following clause to that sentence: “on our own terms, or else.”
We’ll be monitoring the new site and the NFLPA web site and all other sources of information regarding this matter in the hopes of providing you the most unbiased and objective look at the labor situation.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. We have a bias. We want football. And we plan to hold all responsible parties publicly accountable if they take our football away in 2011 because they don’t know how to properly divvy up a pie that is about to explode given the recent gains in the popularity of the sport.
If the former Commissioner whom many believe created this mess by pushing through a bad deal so that he could retire in 2006 (and many people around the league genuinely believe this) is still getting $3.3 million per year, it means that there’s still more than enough money to go around for everyone.
So don’t make us pull a Moe Howard and start clunking heads together, NFL and NFLPA. Work this thing out. Now.
That NFL site sucks. Aside from the obvious bias factor, they are going to dumb down everything to the point of it reading like a childrens book.
Not worth my time.
That’s horrible. They extended Goodell for this? what a joke.
Yeah, you want fair and unbiased.
Give me a break. Florio. We need you. Think!
The propoganda and media hype from the league is going to completely overwhelm the players. Why? League has coordinated its big big big big money. League has better lawyers. League has better public advertising and lobby. League is fat rich men with plenty of power. League’s only talent is how to spend power to make money. Or spend money to make power. That’s not why I’m watching NFL games.
Players and teams are what makes the league tick, and why everyone who watches the league actually watches. Players are the league. Owners? Who gives the arse of a stinkin’ rodent? Most of them are BAD owners. But open your eyes and watch the players get florked. It is going to happen. Your favorite players who have devoted their lives to this are about to get it up the posterior portions of the GI tract and some idiots like the Rams brother and sister owners who inherited this from a dead Mom who inherited it from a dead mobster husband who traded the team from another mobster on the other coast and who won one game out of 16 this year — these folks and their spawn will make gazillion dollars.
Stand with the players.
Give 80% to the players and 20% to the owners, and those fatcat useless owners will still make money hand over fist. Wait, let’s go 96% to 4%. Maybe that won’t allow them to pay the former commissioner several millions of dollars to do nothing.
The owners better get off their asses & come up with some actual facts & figures that explain why the players HAVE to take an 18 % pay cut.
The NFL is one of the few industries doin boffo business right now. No one else is imposing 1/5 pay cuts on labor forces!
These guys are simply the greediest SOBs ever. Do they seriously expect us to believe they can’t make money with a $130 million/year salary cap, with Billions of dollars in TV revenue each year, $10 beers, PSLs, and charging regular season prices for pre-season games??
They’re imbeciles
Good comments Florio…98% of the readers ridicule you daily, me included, but we all have this in common. Let your voice be heard because ours sure don’t matter to the NFL.
Why don’t you launch a fan only labor site? Many old rulers in the ancient world made their decisions with their rich buddies…that hurt the people of their “realm”. When some of them actually got the opportunity to see how the decisions they made affected real people, they changed their policies. It’s worth a shot. I’d do it, but who would look at my dumb site?
I hate the thought of a lockout and I do not believe there will be one but reading these posts make me laugh. One poster call the owners “imbeciles” but they are rich imbeciles and do not spent their time like we do posting. If you want to hurt the owners from making all this money quit buying tickets, NFL Sunday Ticket, Jerseys, Hats etc and quit watching. I love this game and the players are the game and they are not hurting ,but it is the fans that drive the revenue by their spending and watching TV.
Mike, I don’t have time to visit all these sites with any regularity and yours is like a several-times-daily crack fix. Keep sharing your insights on these issues. I know you love the sport as much as I do and want a deal in place.
The league PR machine already benefits from the tendency of fans think players should be happy with their millions. But we’re not talking about mom-and-pop store owners being asked to pay untrained shop clerks exhorbitant wages. We’re talking about billionaires who negotiated a contract and want to throw it out because of greed. Players ARE football. They’ve trained and worked their whole lives to reach the top of their profession and are always one injury from losing everything. Even if they remain healthy, their career window is only a few years. The average player lasts only three to four seasons.
The owners want to slash player salaries claiming hardship, but they don’t want to open their books and provide evidence of hardship. From all external appearances, they’re making money hand over fist and simply don’t want to share it with the people who create those earnings. No matter how they try to spin it on their site, the owners are not the poor victims in this story.
BTW, folks, one thing that I think that the big stars like Peyton Manning can do is put themselves out front and center and get the owners to with the players instead of against them. If you don’t think that this will work then you should see what happened with the NBA.
The owners there went nuts with what they were going to pull on their players and then some idiot executive told CBSSports.com that, “if they don’t like the new max contracts, LeBron can play football, where he will make less than the new max. Wade can be a fashion model or whatever. They won’t make squat and no one will remember who they are in a few years.” Let’s just say that the next thing you know, James, Garnett and Anthony showed up at the next meeting and the owners tore up their proposal and they’re starting all over.
“I think we’ve learned a lot from the past bargaining agreement,” San Antonio’s Tim Duncan said. “That was a big turning point in the last one, when a lot of the big guys stepped up and made their voices heard. That helped the situation. I think everyone will be involved a lot more this time. People will understand what it takes. Everyone understands changes are going to be made. We need to step up and make our voices heard so it’s not an extreme change.”
Story: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4910277
Peyton, time for you and the other high priced talent to inject yourselves into the talks for the good of ALL the players.