There’s a line of thinking that the NFL opted not to tell Cowboys owner Jerry Jones that his video board needs to be lifted in order to keep Jones on the same page with the league office regarding the approach to the unfolding struggles with the NFLPA over a new labor deal.
We’d hate to see what Jones would be saying if the league hadn’t given him his way.
Speaking prior to a preseason game in Minnesota, where Vikings owner Zygi Wilf has been unable to finagle a new stadium, Jones talked tough about the future of revenue sharing.
“Right
now, we are subsidizing this market,” Jones said, according to Sean Jensen of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “It’s
unthinkable to think that you’ve got the market you got here -- 3 ½
million people -- and have teams like Kansas City and Green Bay
subsidizing the market. That will stop.
“That’s going to stop. That’s on its way out.”
Yikes.
The league has done a nice job to date of keeping the labor focus on the fact that the union gets nearly 60 cents of every dollar generated, and not on the simmering acrimony among owners regarding the notion that low-revenue teams can pick the pockets of those who are generating the most money. Jones’ comments prove that the truce is as tenuous as the union suspects it is, and in turn the Cowboys owner has given the NFLPA some ammunition for driving a wedge among the owners.
But there’s good news. If/when the Vikings can get a new stadium subsidized not by the rest of the league but by the taxpayers at large, we’ll get to take the ’69 VW bus to the North Pole for Super Bowl week.