How can you justify this statement? THE OWNERS OPTED OUT of a deal right after the most successful NFL season ever, not the players. Sure it was their right, but what was the justification?

Why do we always look at the labor and never the management when it comes to issues like this? Why does labor need to sacrifice while owners make more and never sacrifice? When does this perversion of what’s fair end?

As for what these guys make being fair, it’s all relative. Someone thinks what you make is unfair but the market for your skills determines that, not comparisons to regular folk. What the hell did the Hunt son do to deserve inheriting his millions from his father? Is that fair?

Again I ask, what would have happened had they continued under the old deal? Why was it so bad for owners? What teams were losing money? What was the risk?

The answers to those questions would expose the NFL for what it is, a bunch of poorly run businesses that have been lucky to get bailed out by sky high TV ratings and fans willing to pay obscene amounts of money for stuff that was peanuts two decades ago.

For someone who is planning for his career as an announcer he really needs to clean up his act and chose his words more wisely.

The owners share the blame in this fiasco, but the players are the ones that have chosen a path that could jeopardize the game. The “piece of the pie” argument is ridiculous. I think the players are fairly compensated. Their “we just want to play” mantra is as disingenuous as their “open the books” line. If they wanted to play, all they had to do was negotiate rather than agitate. Both sides have acted stupidly.

The real answer is this:

Many owners did the equivalent of taking out a subprime loan on these new stadiums no one really needed. Many are overleveraged to the hilt, even with the taxpayer subsidies and used this as an opportunity to get their own “bailout”. Of course, you could say that this justifies everything the owners are doing now. My response is that they made bad judgments, opened new palaces no one really needed and now want to make the #’s work on the backs of the product(the players) instead of taking their own medicine.

This is why they don’t want to release the financials. They know that any serious examination of their financial position would expose how poorly many of these organizations are run and that only exist because of TV money which covers a lot of bad business decisions. Throw in what is probably an obscene amount of labor costs for top executives(why aren’t their pay/benefit packages ever given any scrutiny?) and they know they’ll quickly lose the PR war if statements were released.

I have no sympathy for these guys. They are doing what all rich greedy people do: make gobs of money, make bad decisions and then want their own form of welfare in the form of taxpayer subsidies and renegotiations of labor contracts. Cheer them on if you wish.

At the end of the day, Nelson is not going to rule in favor of everything that’s listed in that lawsuit.

You have nothing to worry about, because at best, I’m guessing the players get the years lowered to become a UFA and my other guess would be a change in the way franchise and transition tags are used ( maybe where they can’t be used in consecutive years to lock a player down to a team ) .

The players are headed down a precarious road but this is the strategy they had in mind when they hired one of D.C’s power trial lawyers to be their leader. They knew this was probable if the owners demands were unreasonable.

@ puntpasskick
I do see what your point is however the “sane people on the players side” are not the ones running the show (those guys would have negotiated). I don’t think the majority of players want it to play out that way but that is the leverage strategy being executed by Smith & company and since they decertified the union, the sane players have no way to prevent it. If it all actually gets decided by the courts and the players get what they are seeking, the game “as we know it” will be destroyed. Somehow the sane players saying “My bad” is not quite going to fix it.

As for their “fair share”, how are you determining fair? Is it based on a comparison to the owners or is it based on fair/just compensation? I don’t think an objective person can look at an NFL player’s compensation package and say that they are not being paid enough or they are being exploited. It is only when one starts to compare the players’ salary with the ownership profits that it appears unfair. The comparison itself is faulty. Look at what each individual makes and say with a straight face that it is “unfair” compensation. The lowest paid player that makes the team is paid a salary of over $325,000. The highest paid player is over $20M.

I don’t think any fan wants the future that Jeffrey Kessler wants for the league. Nobody wants the salary cap to go away or for the financial landscape to resemble the “wild west”.

Before March 11th, the framework for a rookie cap was agreed upon so that’s not an issue. If you’re concerned that “if the players win, the parity of the NFL will be destroyed”, that won’t happen and that’s not what sane people on the player’s side wants (not Demaurice Smith or Jeffrey Kessler).

What the players want at heart is their fair share of the revenues based on the current and future success of the league. Why are they not entitled to that when the owners bank the TV revenues before the split?

If there’s anything in the lawsuit that the players want and have a shot at winning, it’s the years it takes to become an unrestricted free agent. The rest of the restrictions listed are basically untouchable.

Go do your research and look at the same arguments that were used by the owners against free agency in the early 90′s. Predictions of gloom and doom.

Isn’t this always the case when the rich dont get their way? “Give us what we want, it’s for your own benefit”.

Haven’t we seen how much of a FAIL that is?

Why do people continually root for the guy with a foot on their throat? This is like chickens rooting for Col Sanders. The owners don’t care about you yet they somehow have you convinced that taking their side is in your interest. Meanwhile, the same strategies played out here are being used in your own companies to keep your pay and benefits down. You guys root for your CEO after he lays off 20% of the workforce while he gets a multi million $ bonus he doesn’t need?

This is greed pure and simple. This is rich people not being satisfied with being stupid rich, they want to be obscenely rich. And the fact that they have commoners like you folks taking their side while they have their hands in your pockets is why this country is in a freefall. This would be funny actually if not overwhelmingly sad at the same time.

If the owner’s get their way, the elite players will not be able to make quite as much and the rookies won’t be guaranteed generational wealth before they ever see a playbook or step on the field. The rest of the players would roughly stay the same or maybe a slight increase in pay/benefits. All teams remain viable and the league is sustained in an atmosphere of parity.

If the players get their way, the top 5% of players will make huge money AT THE EXPENSE OF THE REST OF THE PLAYERS. The salary cap would be gone, which also means the floor would be gone as well. Special teamers and back-ups would be lucky to make $60k. All standardization would be gone. There would be no way to enforce “headhunter” type plays. Safety would be less of a priority. Those mega TV contracts would not go to the league, they would go to the big market teams and the rest of the league would only get a split based on who they play and when. Each team would be responsible for their own schedules. Individual rosters would vary. one team could have 100 players while another could only afford 40. There are more examples but you should get the picture…

I DIDNT KNOW DE SMITH WAS A JETS FAN

If they wouldn’t have accepted the recently expired CBA in 2006 that was such a bad deal, we wouldn’t be here today. What a moronic idea, “lets accept this horrible deal…we can always negotiate it down in the future.” I guess when you are playing with inheritances…

It is hard to go back once you have established a certain level of benefits, entitlements, pay grade, etc. That is why certain social entitlement programs will never go away!

It is easy to see why the players aren’t rolling over and why the owners want a new deal, but the owners are idiots for putting themselves in this spot…and the fans.

Millionaires complaining that they have to “feed their kids”.

Really?

What the heck are you feeding your kids? Diamonds?

And that’s not hypocritical?

People who keep blaming the owners for locking the players need to remember that A) The players gave the owners the right to terminate the contract two years early and lock out the players in the last CBA, and B) There was no lockout until the players walked away from the negotiating table and filed their sham decertification.

The owners did what they contractually agree to only after the players walked away.

There percentage of the pie will shrink but they wont lose any money? How is that? Their percentages will decrease every season in the deal and guess what the revenues will keep increasing every year. Im not sure on the exact projections but they say that the nfl will keep getting bigger and generate more money each season for the years to come. So the owners will get more and the players will get less.

Also, the owners aren’t asking the players to take a pay cut. No player will lose any money, their percentage of the pie will shrink but it’s money the players have never seen and were never promised. They will still make millions.

You won’t feel bad for billionaires…but you do feel bad for the millionaires who are currently threatening to change the game for the worst. Makes no sense to me.

LOSERS

I understand what you are saying but my point is that NFL revenues and ratings are at a all time high. The owners aren’t suffering at all I refuse to believe that. There is no reason for them to be trying to take a bigger piece of the pie than they are already getting IMO. I live in the nj area and let me tell you that there are alot of jets and giants fans that no longer have season tickets because of the ridiculos psl’s these owners have screwed everyone with. They did the fans so wrong with that it’s incredible. Not everyone including myself can afford to go nearly as much anymore. My point is that the owners do nothing and could give a crap about the fans. They just want all the money they can get. Why should the players who have on average have a 3-4year playing career all of a sudden take less money for playing the same amount of games . It doesn’t make sense to me, they put alot on the line goin out there every Sunday and as a player they have to try to make as much as possible as they can in their short careers. Both sides are greedy but it just surprises me that everyone sides so much with the billionaire owners. How could anyone feel bad for them?

It’s okay for the owners to take advantage of the fans because you respect them?

The owners planned to use $4 billion dollars in TV contract money to get “their deal” and their position of power BACK from the last deal…

What I am referring to is Paul Tagliabue and the owner contingent conceding revenues to the NFLPA in the last CBA that they never have done before.

Now the players are supposed to automatically give it all back and be thankful just because they are able to play a game and earn a paycheck?

Greed works both ways…

It’s simple why most people are pro-owner:

1) The “average joe” views the owner as a successful businessman that is a responsible and respectable citizen, whereas the player is viewed as irresponsible, spoiled, and sometimes criminal.

2) The “average joe” wishes they could play a game for at least a six-figure amount instead of their regular “9 to 5″ and the hatred stems out of jealousy.

People tend to ignore that the owners willingly opted out of the last CBA and want an extra billion dollars on top of the highest grossing revenues in league history.

The players have the right to seek what’s best for them just like the owners do.

Going into March 11th, the players had a very reasonable position to stand behind. The only problem is that since that date, they have made bad decision after bad decision and it started with more than half the plaintiffs not even showing up to court.

Don’t be shocked if the players lose on Nelson’s ruling.