1 – For the umpteenth time Kevin Mawae and Richie Incognito have ADMITTED that the owners were tricked in that last CBA. You leave out that there were warning signs that the deal would drive the cost of doing business too high. It was not signed as a favor to Tags or Upshaw (who contrary to myth did not just roll over for the owners) it was signed because the owners NEVER WANTED A LABOR CONFLICT. You also need to stop with the myth of “preparing the lockout fund” because that is not what they did.

2 – DeMaurice Smith is NOT doing what the players want – he has taken over this dispuite as a trial lawyer (what he in fact is) would do and has turned it from an economic reality vs. the game issue into players vs. owners. Nowhere has he made any effort to actually solve the dispute.

3 – There have been NO concessions from the players – just a disinformation campaign headlined by the 18% pay cut lie disproven by PFW.

4 – Your argument here is based on the myth that owners want to line their pockets, when economic reality dictates they have to invest in the teams and the stadiums – if they don’t they not going to be able to stay in business. This is the economic reality that makes the real world work, and is why players ALWAYS see their salaries increase in real cash; making a comparison with Andre Johnson as you did is just economic ignorance.

5 – The fact it is the owners who have to spend money to make money is a key point – they are why the teams and the game go. Players change; owners have to keep spending money to make money. The players are not exercizing leverage, they are being unreasonable because they are fighting a battle against an economic myth.

6 – The use of replacement players in 1987 proved that it is the game, not the players. It’s why striking players abandoned the faux-proletarian struggle. Belittling the Arena League (now in its 25th season) displays mind-boggling lack of credibility on your part. Again, players change – teams stay the same.

7 – The owners put forth real negotiation long before that two-weel window you want to mock; it was DeMaurice Smith’s group that kept blowing it off. In 2009. In 2010. In 2011. The common demoninator has been DeMaurice Smith refusing to negotiate; instead chosing to fight for a myth. The players are the ones with the burden of proof, and at that they continue to lose the argument. The fact remains the players are not going to lose any money with a new CBA. DeMaurice Smith simply lied to the world in calling the last proposal the worst ever. That is a fact.

You claim the NFL could generate more revenue by abandoning unabandonable markets for mythical ones – Buffalo is a football demographic; LA is not. Jacksonville contrary to the haters myth being perpetuated of recent is a football demographic; San Antonio is part of the Dallas-Houston markets and as such is not entitled to a team of its own. This is not a serious proposal, it is gasbaggery. Attacking the Bidwells when the Cardinals have become an actual team since they got a stadium further proves you a fool.

It was never the owners who weren’t negotiating – it was the players. They could have solved this by signing a new CBA a year ago; they instead stonewalled and blew off negotiating. There is never going to be a scenario where players play for just $75,000 a year – it will always be multiple times higher. That is what the reality of sports economics dictates. Atlantabirds like DeMaurice Smith is too embittered by spite to understand this.

So on facts you lose, atlanta.
Dump DeMaurice Smith and sign the new CBA.

The “pocketing the money” argument is an argument that is economic ignorance personified.

The conversation is over because you lose on facts.

You are speaking like just another guy who wants the players to sign whatever deal the owners give them because you want the players to “know their place.” That is why DeMaurice Smith is the target of such vitriol from you guys, as you see him as the head ape leading the revolt at the zoo. DeMaurice Smith is simply doing what the players want, and if they had hired someone else – someone of a different, er, complextion or political persuasion – he’d be doing exactly the same thing. You guys don’t seem to realize that Smith is only following the blueprint left behind by Gene Upshaw, do you?

Taking your points:

1. The NFL wasn’t tricked. Gene Upshaw was dying of cancer, had been taking a beating from the players and the media for years for giving away too much to the owners, and wanted a strong deal as his legacy. Paul Tagliabue was wanting to retire, was of course very sympathetic to his dying friend, and also wanted the deal as his legacy. The owners didn’t want to play hardball with a dying man who had suffered so much to his reputation to give THEM what THEY wanted so many times in the past, and they didn’t have a commissioner willing to take a hard line. So, they agreed to accept the Upshaw deal only until Upshaw was dead, Tagliabue was gone, and they could strengthen their position (i.e. lockout fund) for negotiating. The owners signed the CBA with the intention of breaking it later.

2. The owners have made concessions? So have the players. It is called NEGOTIATING. You give the owners credit for making concessions, but you give the players NONE for doing the same. The reason is because you believe that the players should play under whatever terms the owners dictate, as if you would do the same on your own job or something, and in particular as if ANYONE who had skills that made them worth hundreds of thousands or millions would. Look, if some business executive who is making a fraction of what Andre Johnson makes is going to try to secure the best deal for himself, why don’t the players have the same right? Also, the owners haven’t made REAL concessions mostly anyway. All they have done is back off from absurdities that they knew that the players would never agree too, such as the 18 game schedule and a 55/45 revenue split AFTER taking $1 billion off the top, AND a rookie salary cap structure that would make it almost impossible for most players – especially tailbacks – to earn back the value that they put into the NFL because their careers are too short.

3. First off, there is no evidence that the money the owners want off the top will be reinvested to make more profits fort the league. They could just put in their pockets. Second, even if they do increase profits, there is nothing that would guarantee the players any piece of it, because the salary cap (the owners’ last proposal would be $141 million per team) would be set for the duration of the CBA. So even were profits to double, the players would get the same amount of money. What are they supposed to do … wait until the next CBA to get more money? What evidence is there that they will get it then? You are asking the NFLPA to give the owners a level of trust that does not exist in the business world.
Also, there is a principle involved. The players believe that they deserve a certain percentage of the revenue. Whether the revenue is $100 million or $100 billion, the players believe that the percentage that they deserve is the same. Look, if you work for a company and the amount of money that the company brings in quadruples because of the work that you put in to generate it, you’d be nuts to accept a 10% payraise and be happy just because your salary went up. The top executives, the top salespeople, the top brokers etc. … their income goes up as the profits go up. The same is true with celebrities in other fields … movie stars get a percentage of box office receipts, musicians get royalties based on record sales. The NFLPA wants the same deal, and there is not a single business reason for denying it to them.

4. Moot point. The reason is that if the players don’t play, the owners don’t make any money either. Quite the contrary, the owners lose money, and lots of it. The players do have leverage, and they are simply using it. It is done in the business world all the time. Why you believe that the players shouldn’t exercise the same prerogatives as other successful, wealthy, talented/skilled folks who generate revenue do all the time needs to be explained.

5. You root for teams, true, but those teams absent the best athletes would have no viewers, and thus generate no revenue. When the NFL used replacement players, it was a fiasco, and that’s why they aren’t going that route again. Further, no one pays attention to the Arena Football League. Other attempts to create competitors to the NFL (USFL, XFL) have failed. The CFL was teetering on bankruptcy a few years ago, and needed cash from the NFL to survive. The players have economic value based on their ability to play football, and some of them have added value because of their celebrity (Manning, Brady et. al.) which increases ratings and sells products. Granted, this wouldn’t happen without the NFL, but the NFL wouldn’t exist without the players. The players have economic value and economic clout, and would be completely absurd not to use it. Why you feel otherwise has to be explained.

6. Yes, the players’ demanding to see the owners’ books is showboating. So are the owners’ claims that they are hemorraghing money, that the CBA means that certain franchises can’t compete (when Buffalo, Cincinnati, Jacksonville etc. weren’t winning squat under the last 2 CBAs either!), and the nonsense about $1 billion off the top and the 18 game season. But please realize that NOTHING that the players did compares to the owners’ refusal to even put a serious proposal on the table, one that even merited a moment’s consideration, UNTIL TWO WEEKS AFTER THE CBA EXPIRRED. And NOTHING that the players did compares to the lockout fund.

7. What is this, a courtroom? Neither side has a burden of proof. Instead, both sides are free to either hold out until they get the best deal for themselves as possible, or work together to get the best deal for both. You’d have to be totally insane to try to cooperate when the other side is looking out for himself first. The owners are not trying to work for the best deal for everyone. Instead, they are trying to get the best deal for themselves, and trying to accomplish it by pitting some groups of players against others (rookies versus veterans, role players versus stars). Incidentally, if it was a courtroom, the onus would be on the owners to prove why they opted out of the CBA that they agreed to.

And your claim that the owners were simply trying to protect themselves is ridiculous. The owners decided TWO YEARS AGO to opt out of the CBA. They didn’t make their first LEGITIMATE offer in negotiations until TWO WEEKS after the CBA expired, and even that offer included a bunch of provisions that they knew that the palyers would never accept.

It is impossible to claim that the players are being unreasonable, because when you opt out of a contract, the baseline for the new contract is the contract that you just opted out of! That is how you do business. Your problem is that you see the players as chattel, and don’ t think that they are worthy of actually conducting business deals with anyone. You want the owners to just set the terms, and the players to say “Yessuh boss, whatevah you say cuz I is sho’ nuff glad to be playin’ me sum futbawl instead o’ pickin’ cotton, and I is sho’ nuff grateful to yo’ kind self!”

The bizarre, out of left field proposals that the owners have been making ARE NOT NEGOTIATIONS. Abandoning – or softening – a position that you knew going in that the other side would never accept IS NOT MAKING CONCESSIONS.

So, you claim that the CBA that just expired was bad. To me that is debatable: the NFL could increase revenue by abandoning certain unviable markets for better ones (i.e. Buffalo for Los Angeles, and Jacksonville for San Antonio), and also by jettisoning some of their longtime bad owners (i.e. Al Davis, Bill Bidwill, Mike Brown, and the Fords … can you IMAGINE how much revenue the Cardinals, Raiders and Lions would generate if they had competent ownership)? That is besides the point. The point is that the initial “offers” that the owners made to the NFLPA were WORSE than the previous CBA (the one prior to 2006) and may have even been worse than the CBA before that one as well! DeMaurice Smith’s claim that it was the worst proposal in the history of pro sports was grandstanding, but it really was just that bad, and the owners knew that the players would never accept it. Since it took two weeks after the CBA expired to make an actual proposal, who knows then the next good offer was going to come. Mid May? Early July? And that’s why Gooddell was doing granstanding of his own when he said “a labor deal will be reached by negotiation, not through the courts.” Yeah, start negotiating after the CBA has expired when the players aren’t making any money! Start negotiating when players aren’t collecting their offseason bonuses, and when 500 players aren’t getting any money at all because they are free agents! That puts ALL the pressure on THE PLAYERS to get a deal done so they can get a paycheck. If the owners were SERIOUS about getting a deal done by negotiation, they would have started negotiating over a year ago.

But all of this is wasted on you, because you have the conviction that these guys should be willing to play for $75,000 a year (plus free medical insurance I guess) simply because it beats pumping gas, which is what most of them would be doing if they weren’t playing football. That is what you really feel. Right? And that is why the very existence of the NFLPA offends you, because you don’t believe that they merit such things. Right?

I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the level of physical and sexual abuse Gilmore suffered througout his childhood, and doubt you know anything about it. And you certainly didn’t read my comment because I made a point of saying he was responsible for his actions. I did not in any way excuse his behavior, but talked only about intervening in homes like that before the damage is done.

What a pathetic, simple-minded man you are. Too bad someone didn’t intervene before evil hardened your heart. This conversation is over.

I won’t scan back to your scholarship arguments because you’ve shown no credibility with which to read them.

So you want us to believe that a bunch of jocks hoodwinked a group of street-smart billionaire businessmen who employ some of the best legal talent in the country into signing a contract unawares? Uh-huh. And you want us to believe those jocks are now manipulating those poor owners out of their profits and into bankruptcy? Uh-huh. And rather than sell their teams, the owners will just keep taking these hits … out of love for the game? Uh-huh.

For your own protection, don’t ever sign a contract without having someone a little savvy take a look at it first. You are liable to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

1 – Kevin Mawae and Richie Incognito have admitted that the players tricked the owners into signing a flawed CBA back in 2006.
2 – For all the rhetoric about the owners “using Gestapo tactics” it’s been the owners who have made concessions again and again, and that they signed the CBA even amid warnings it was raising the cost of doing business too high was because they NEVER WANTED a labor battle in the first place.
3 – Nowhere have the players made any credible case that they would lose any real money if they signed a new CBA that allows more money to go to stadium upkeep and related areas – they actually think that TV “slush fund” loan was stealing money from them?!? On the contrary, as PFW has repeatedly shown (notably in debunking the “18% cut” myth), the players will make real money basically as they are now and will make more of it in the long run. What DeMaurice Smith et al have been raging about is percentages; they seem not to have even paid attention to real payouts.
4 – The players are not the ones who have to spend money to make money in this game. It’s the owners. And the players are the ones staying in denial of the cost of doing business in this game.
5 – The NFLPA*-dictated talking point “fans want to see players, not owners” is a red herring, for what fans want to see is THE GAME and THE TEAMS. I root for the NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS, not Tom Brady or Wes Welker or the increasingly-despicable ingrate Logan Mankins (and I’ve have preferred they brought back Reche Caldwell instead of Deion Branch). I root for the TENNESSEE TITANS, not Vince Young, Kenny Britt, etc. I like the MINNESOTA VIKINGS, not Brett Favre. Players matter; teams and the game matter the most.
6 – The NFLPA* sticks to red herrings about seeing the owners’ books even after blowing off offers to see them in 2009-11 by the Packers, Broncos, and Bears. And just what do they think they’re going to find that somehow shows the owners are stiffing them of money?
7 – The burden of proof is on the players, not the owners, and they players have failed.

Get rid of DeMaurice Smith, grow the hell up, sign the new CBA, and get back to the game.

You misunderstand me. I’ve never said individuals are not responsible for their actions. If you break the law, you pay the penalty. If you screw up your career and wind up out of the league, that’s on you. If you blow your money and wind up broke, that’s on you. But when educated, wealthy, and powerful people make a great deal of money by using people who are not educated or savvy, they have a responsibility to make sure their charges have every opportunity to succeed.

I recently read Mikal Gilmore’s brilliant autobiography Shot in the Heart, about his brother Gary, the first man executed after the death penalty was reinstated. Mikal doesn’t sugarcoat his brother, but he also describes the childhood that creates a killer. Yes, Mikal was responsible for his actions as an adult. That doesn’t absolve the people who abused him as a child. If you want to eliminate the Garys of the world, you don’t wait until they’ve killed several people … you intervene when they’re being dehumanized by a parent or a system.

I agree with you. But what you don’t understand is what realitypolice has been trying to explain on other threads. The CBA is structured so that the players’ cut doesn’t increase until revenues increase.

In other words, revenues do not increase in order to pay the players higher salaries. Revenues increase because the owners determine that the market will support higher ticket prices and higher merchandising prices. The owners increase prices in order to increase their profits. Once they do that, it benefits the players because they receive a share of the revenues. But their salaries are not driving the price of tickets and merchandising. If the players went back to making peanuts, the owners would still charge what they charge for tickets and merchandising–they’d just pocket more of the money.

Because there is no game without the players, I believe they are entitled to be paid according to the revenues they generate. That is a fundamental principle of capitalism. It’s not right that the owners should charge these exorbitant fees to the public, then pay the players as little as possible and pocket the rest. That’s what’s been happening throughout the history of the league. The NCAA makes billions on players and pays them nothing. In some cases, those players don’t make it to the NFL and wind up earning minimum wage while schools continue earning millions on merchandising their names and images and DVDs of their performances years after they’ve left the game. That simply is not right, ravens4life51. Nothing the players have done is increasing prices for the fans. The owners do that all by themselves.

The players walked away from the table as well. I’m not exclusively on the owners’ side. However, I feel that the players are more responsible for the current inflation of salaries than the owners are. How many times in the last three years have you heard some talking head at ESPN say “And he signs the richest contract ever given to a..”?

“Damn, Larry Fitzgerald just got $10M a year, I must have more than he does!” That statement is made much more often than “Well, Bidwell is paying his receiver $10M a year, I better pay mine $11M.”

My overall point is, everyone in the business has money, much more than the fan that keeps this industry going. Take some of the ridiculous money paid to “top end” players (DeAngelo Hall’s $9M for 9 games?!) and give it to the lower guys that’ll only be in the league for 2-3 years. This would drop the overall salaries, bring equality amongst players, and eventually bring down the cost of attending a pro game. Who wins? THE FANS.

Thanks for sharing that story, which I’d never heard. My dad is a self-made man, so I have nothing but respect for Richardson’s accomplishments. Of course, he had the innate intelligence to make the most of his blessings.

You’re incorrect, though, about him not trying to shut down the NFL to make money. He and his fellow owners did just that when they imposed the lockout. This is not a strike by the players. The owners, Richardson among them, shut down the league to gain an advantage against the players. And the majority of players have no interest in destroying the league or changing how it does business. They simply want to reach a new collective bargaining agreement and return to work.

Hope your story was more accurate than your understanding of the labor dispute.

A smart player, he took his NFL money and started a small restaurant in his home state. Now, fifty years later, the man sits in on every labor meeting, knowing both sides of the fence.

That man is Jerry Richardson.

He didn’t make hundreds of millions playing football, like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, etc. He took his meager earnings from football and created multiple billion-dollar industries. He took his gift, used it to launch his life.

He didn’t try to shut down the NFL to make his money. He used the blessings of NFL money to make his own money.

How many of us would be much better off long-term financially if we made $450,000 for three years? How about $7,000,000? Twelve million a year for seven years? Would you bash the person who gave you the opportunity for that capital to start your life? Sue him for more? Threaten to destroy the basis on which that opportunity was given to you?

Why do you expect that kid to be able to connect the dots when you boys can’t?

Sooooo damn easy to pass judgment on the lifestyles of the poor and obscure, isn’t it?

If you’ve never played anything but sandlot football, you cannot possibly walk into an NFL huddle and miraculously start calling the complex schemes of an pro offense. If you have never been prepped for college, you can’t suddenly walk into academia, sit in a classroom and have advanced courses make sense to you. That should be obvious to all the whiners who are so jealous of athletes and their free educations. Some athletes are intellectually and academically prepared to take advantage of that opportunity. But many are not. And the system that exploits their talents bears some of the responsibility for that.

Every comment for the owners is an educated and fact based response!

Every comment for the players is childish playground name calling banter!

Seems very similar to what’s actually going on.

Where do you get the idea that being a professional athlete is not a real job? That’s a child’s perspective. If any fool could be a professional athlete, you and all the other guys who post these whiny comments would be doing it. Being a pro athlete requires natural gifts that have been honed by years and years of dedicated practice.

As for the free education, many athletes come from horrendous backgrounds and have never attended a college prep course in their lives. Throughout their sports careers, they’ve been promoted forward because their schools profited from their athletic skills. They were never encouraged to crack a book.

At college, many of these guys were pushed into token majors and urged to take classes that didn’t interfere with their practice schedules. They were convinced by recruiters and pro scouts that it didn’t matter if they didn’t have a degree because they were going to make millions in the pros. No one bothered to explain that most pro players don’t make millions … and most don’t make the cut.

The publishing industry is taking huge hits and will never be what it once was, my health insurance premiums are almost $20,000 a year, and I’m working seven-day weeks. But I wouldn’t trade growing up with supportive parents and getting a real education for the salary or fab lifestyle of any NFL star. So I guess we just have different world views.

How would you like to be told coming out of high school or college that you’re going to work in Detroit or Cleveland, and if you don’t like it, that’s just too bad? And you’re going to live there for your entire career with no chance to go anywhere else. The company can pay you whatever the company wants and trade you to someone else if they choose, but you have no say in the matter?

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Deb, I would LOVE to be told coming out of college (after to college for free and being given every chance, tutor, and special program available to allow me to succeed) that I would HAVE to go to Detroit or Cleveland to begin my career (if I’m lucky that career could last 10-15 years). First off, I would be playing a game I love for insane amounts of money. Secondly, the fame and fortune if I used it right would only set me up for my next career in broadcasting, other media, sales, etc. Finally, if I really had a huge problem with the team that chose me I COULD refuse to go (it has happened many times before) and force a trade… OR I could follow in the footsteps of the suckers (like me) that graduated from college and get a job making 10X less in the real world.

You see, Deb, the rest of us suckers don’t have the opportunity to experience the hardships and heartache of being drafted by Detroit or Cleveland and have to work real jobs and we would all LOVE to be trapped.

I don’t have a problem with free agency. I think it is great. The teams that don’t invest heavily in it are usually the best teams anyways, the teams that do, usually stink. It has been proven NOT to work both on the field and financially. I just have a problem with short-sighted players (there is life after football) trying to gouge every penny from the owners (which they get from the fans) and get ridiculous raises when 90% of the country hasn’t had a raise in the past 3-5 years.