The more ANY player talks about the “fight”, the angrier I get.

Have some respect and take some advice: It’s best to shut up about your “predicament”.
Because, as fans, WE DON’T CARE!!!

I don’t hear Manning or Brady spewing crap…..it’s because their smart……they know they can’t win that battle. Drew…..figure it out…….read the venom in these posts: WE DON’T CARE!!! It doesn’t matter to us if YOU feel the owners are negotiating. We live in the real world with mortgages, rent, expenses, kids, problems, etc…..YOUR “PROBLEM” is NOT close to our problems as fans. So, there is no relative comparison here. Shut up, have some respect by SAYING NOTHING!!!

At most corporations where the chief asset is human capital, 50-60 percent of the budget is devoted to human resources. That’s not atypical. What’s atypical is the owners skimming $1 billion off the top before the funds are meted out.

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It’s not atypical for a company to take money to help the company sustain and grow when there is plenty of funds left to be meted out. When it’s done is symantics. By the way, I asked this on another thread, where did you find the stats supporting the 50-60% of the budget devoted to human resources? The question would still remain – do these companies have nearly the same expendatures that the NFL has? Interesting stat if it’s accurate though.

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Deb says:
Mar 11, 2011 1:13 PM
@coachstram …

It’s the players’ business when the owners want that $1 billion to come out of their salaries and benefits. And if your company suddenly decided to demand you give back a portion of your salary and benefits, you’d think it were your business, too.

&

Deb says:
Mar 11, 2011 12:18 PM

Usually when companies start laying off workers or demanding across the board paycuts, they provide evidence that the company is hurting so they can get some level of buy-in from the employees

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Are you talking about when someone belongs to a union? Because if not, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

In these tough economic times I know of many people personally who have lost or had reduced benefits, experienced paycuts (giving back of salaries) or simply had their jobs eliminated. Not one, not one of them had their employers show them any, not a single shread of proof or evidence the company was hurting. I’ve never heard of a company offering to do so.

The NFL situation is a little different however. What bothers me about the union demanding to see the books is they must have realized the recent CBA was one-sided in their favor. They must have known it was completed in their favor to avoid a work stopage. The union knew there was an op-out clause and that the league would one day come back to “straighten out” what was allowed to go so in favor of the union. They could have guessed it wasn’t a long-term sustainable model for the owners. Their total disregard for how & why the previous CBA played out is disingenuous at best.

Sadly, you guys lost perspective. Perspective is sittin down and thinking that in one weeks time you make more money than the average working stiff will make in his/her liftime.

Football fans aren’t supporting the players.
The owners only had to spend gazillions to purchase their teams, build stadiums and took all the financial chances while you guys just showed up for da moooney.
Its the owners who put the guns to the heads of the networks over the past 20 years that put the NFL on the map.

The city revolves around the Packers. The home games mean survival or demise for a lot of hotels, restaurants and other businesses within a 25-mile radius of Lambeau Field.

I agreed with one poster…people DON’T CARE ABOUT SIDES in this matter. If the NFLPA was going to target the extra $$ to the retired vets, then you might have a more sympathetic audience. If the owners wanted more on their side, they wouldn’t have dragged their feet for this long.

Most privately held companies would laugh at those who would ask for 10 years of audited books. They’d just tell those on the other side, here’s our offer or we’ll move the jobs somewhere else.

Both sides, get a grip and realize the fans are the ones who deserve the respect here. You’ve had over 2 years to get this ironed out and you BOTH let it slip away into this mess.

Congrats, DSmith and Roger. All these histrionics will only end in screwing the fans who are so devoted to this great game.

Imagine Chris Johnson demanding to look at Bud Adams books. “Here you go, son!”

“Ah hell no readin agin!”

I only recognize a few of the names as posters I’ve seen before and only one is openly anti-player. I’d be curious to know how old some of these other accounts are. The Koch brothers attempted to rewrite Wikipedia with sockpuppets. Do you suppose the NFL is now taking a page from their book?

I guess I’ll know the answer if this makes it through moderation.

I don’t agree that the players shouldn’t say anything unless they want to kick part of their salaries. It’s Brian Urlacher’s responsibility to provide for his own family, not to pay for Butkus’s ruined knees or the way he was screwed by the Bears back in the day. But Urlacher can speak out and get the owners to set aside a fund to see that the players who built the league get the care they need. A better option for current players is to agree to a rookie wage scale on the condition that some of the money saved on untested talent goes into funds to care for retired players and to research football-related health issues.

I know it’s taken off the top before percentages are applied. And I think they could easily work this out with a little intelligent bargaining. The owners want a rookie wage scale. The players want better long-term health benefits. And there are concerns over expanding the season.

My feeling is that they don’t have the right people at the table. De Smith strikes me as antagonistic … can you dig it? (It’s difficult for me to take seriously an attorney who speaks in the vernacular of Huggy Bear from the 70s series Starsky & Hutch.) And I wouldn’t trust Roger Goodell if he told me it was raining in a monsoon.

They need to sit down with a couple of the more reasonable owners–guys like Dan Rooney and Bob Kraft–and players with a skilled mediator and a commitment not to leave the table until they’ve hammered out a compromise.

Plus it’s not like any of these players are taking a paycut. Their contracts are still valid. It’s to curb the annual ballooning of their salaries which has gotten out of control. Players salaries have shot up while team profitability appears to have gone down. It’s not rocket science why the owners want a new deal.

This was good.

The players are at fault. They only want to court in front of Judge Doty. They have been grandstanding.

The owner build the infrastructure of the league.

The players get 60% of revenue. What other business give that money away? I don’t see Bree or Manning tossing any endorsement money into a pot and split with anyone.

Any fan that has closely followed the situation knows the owners picked this fight. No one blames the players.
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No. Actually the players picked this fight back in 2006 when they bullied their way into an unsustainable deal that even their leadership has admitted was far more favorable to the players than to the owners. The owners knew at the time that it wouldn’t work over the long run, so they put in the early out clause (that the players agreed to) and signed the extension so we could actually have football until now.
Owners are constantly being bashed as greedy simply because they have lots of money. The players insist on their partnership and collectively take the lion’s share of the profits the league makes as a whole. These seame players have no intention of “sharing” even 1 penny of their “personal” endorsement deals that would never be possible but for the NFL. If not for the NFL, how many endorsement deals (worth more than his substantial NFL earnings) would Peyton Manning have?….ZERO. Brees himself has made a killing on endorsements after his team won the SB. Players have other revenue streams or perks (like selling their autographs, not having to pay for things like everyone else would etc.) that are only possible because of the league. To exclude those revenues yet scream the other side is greedy is quite disingenuous.

Really?

Man, its little wonder the divide between players and fans is growing. Some of you are just determined to be forever miserable.

Thank God its not an air borne virus.

Any fan that has closely followed the situation knows the owners picked this fight. No one blames the players.
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public opinion is interesting

It’s the players’ business when the owners want that $1 billion to come out of their salaries and benefits. And if your company suddenly decided to demand you give back a portion of your salary and benefits, you’d think it were your business, too. It’s my business as a consumer who’s support both sides are trying to woo.

And when is the last time an owner risked paralysis or permanent head injury for the game? They’re not the only ones taking risks.

What they don’t understand is, that for the fans football IS only a game.

What the people with a vested interest in setteling the contract issues need to do is ask the baseball people how bad their “industry” was hurt by the baseball strike years ago … I’m not sure if they ever fully recovered.

We the fans want the game … when the “industry” interferes the fans start to get fed up.

At least in the old days the serfs didn’t sit around pondering how they could further the masters’ causes … “Henrietta, perhaps if we cut our bread allotment in half, the masters could have more money to trickle down to the rest of us and next year we could buy shoes for one of our children.”

@CKL …

One point of contention is health benefits for retired players who continue to experience debilitating health issues because of the game but don’t have the resources to pay for appropriate care. The multi-million-dollar salaries players receive now are a recent development.
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I have always felt that players should have at least NFL SUBSIDIZED health insurance for their lifetimes because their career is the reason for a majority of their health issues and getting health insurance on one’s own when one has preexisting conditions eliminates a lot of one’s options. Regardless of if a player made league minimum or is a millionaire and hence can afford it better, it makes no difference to me. Fair is fair. It has nothing to do with affordability to me.

My main beef with the players on this is the current ones whining about the fact the old timers are not getting what they should while I have yet to hear any current players offering to kick in for it. If there are some, then good for them. If you want it to happen, help. If you care mostly for your own selves, don’t bitch publicly about what the owners are or aren’t doing about the past players as part of your platform.