Interesting story out of SI dot com today, that the spur in negotiating from the owners corresponded with the players saying “Oh yeah, we have a lockout insurance fund that guarantees every player 200K if there’s no football in 2011″. Combined with the Sword of Damocles that is

Judge Doty’s TV Damages (where the owners took less revenue to guarantee payments even during lockouts, when the CBA mandated they do the most to maximize revenue), the “starve the players” tactic lost its juice behind it. Not surprising, the NFL owners had hoped the NFLPA would collapse once money started to be lost.. with the NFLPA/TV ruling mitigating most of the impact there, it became a paper tiger.

If I were one of the owners I guarantee you the players would blink or their eyes would shrivel and fall from there dry sockets before I budged again. Sign the agreements or I’m headed on vacation for an extended period! Why? Because I can and you will blow through your money, with no paycheck forthcoming, and come begging me to let you sign it!!

It’s MY business, I am the owner, and I will run my business in the manner I feel benefits ME the most! Go play in the UFL for pennies! SEE YA!”

I could not agree more with your post. In fact, I’ve been saying the exact same thing for months now. You have the highest paid professional employees in the United States of America claiming they’re being unfairly treated because they’re not making ENOUGH of the bosses’ money. They’re demanding to see the books, demanding to have a larger slice of the pie, demanding to have better retirement benefits, demanding to have less (not more) work, blah, blah, blah.

I’ll tell you something – if anyone on this board right now who is an employee in any other occupation in the world (other than professional sports) would walk into their boss’s office and demand to see his earnings for the last 10 years, and demand an equal share percentage of that company’s income, they’d be thrown out on their ass faster than they could finish their sentence. Difference is most of us work for companies who are making thousands of times what we’re earning weekly/monthly/yearly.

So why the hell should they (the NFL players) be allowed to hold their employers hostage for all this money when they have only earned a small piece of it? They haven’t been there since 1960. They don’t have to worry about the bills, the payroll, the accounting, the taxes, the merch sales, the promotions, the stadium and it’s upkeep, the league fees & politics, the advertising, etc. etc.

This is a perfect example of why unions have gotten such a bad name over the last several decades. They used to be in place to protect employees from being taken advantage of by corporations. They’ve since become a legal way for employees to extort companies for more money.

These “I dont care people make me laugh.” Who you trying to fool?

My celebration will come first when I hear it is at least a ten year deal with no out clause. It will be controlled celebration until I get to analyse the opinions on how the deal will effect player movement and competitive balance.
Baseball as well run teams that cannont compete because of lack of money, and poorly run teams that can compete because they have money.
Football has managed to, for the most part, have money be far down the list of why a team is successful or not. I’ll celebrate when I see this deal keeps it that way.

The absense of the out clause will mean both sides agree its a deal that can work, and neither side is wanting to say “fine we will try it your way, b ut if it doesn’t work….”

1) Why does that Smith guy wear a stupid hat everywhere? It looks 2 sizes too small. Was that one of the concessions? The owners said, “look, if we do this, you’ve got to wear a stupid hat for every photo or no deal?”

2) Why the hell are they flying to Atlanta to conduct the vote? Couldn’t they either stay in Minneapolis or vote via an online conference?!?

Seems to me, you’ve got 2 sides “negotiating” all the while spending bunches of money to travel, lodge, eat, entertainment, not to mention lawyer fees and they are still spending money right up to the end?!? Almost as bad as the gov’t wastefully spending our money!

Especially with all of the major issues put to bed, it would be beyond insane to miss out on that cash over some of the lesser issues.

And this is EXACTLY why there’s no deal yet! In a negotiation, both parties should concede on points and “blink” a little.

To me, the players will be the one’s I hold animosity against, but in 5-10 years it won’t matter because these players will be retired so I can let go of my player hate then.

Also, I hope they turn down helping retired players in this CBA so that in 20-30 years when they’re crying about their health issues and lack of help we can point out 2 things to them:

1) you chose not to help retired players and
2) you chose to not want the safety rules implemented by Goodell

NNNAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

If the NFL waits long enough, we may have no financial system to work with in this country anymore

Big difference between 14:52 and 15:00.

If I were one of the owners I guarantee you the players would blink or their eyes would shrivel and fall from there dry sockets before I budged again. Sign the agreements or I’m headed on vacation for an extended period! Why? Because I can and you will blow through your money, with no paycheck forthcoming, and come begging me to let you sign it!!

It’s MY business, I am the owner, and I will run my business in the manner I feel benefits ME the most! Go play in the UFL for pennies! SEE YA!

I’m curious as to the chances of compromise on the other issues, as I’m sure many others are as well. Instead of simply trying to paint the owners in a bad light…. perhaps explaining those issues and how far apart they may be would have been more informative?