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I don't see a thread on this yet and it is easily the biggest story with the NFL this year. On the agenda, by my memory, are the following topics (in parantheses are my opinions):

-How to split up revenue between owners and players. (I side with the players on this one, mainly because the owners don't seem to have any interest in proving their case about losing money.)

-Adding a rookie wage scale. (I side with the owners on this, rookies do not deserve, by any stretch of the imagination, to be paid like they are the best at their position before they play a snap. Even those that actually are that good, like Suh, don't. It is just silly how it works right now.)

-Adding two more regular season games. (I side with the players, two more games will dilute the NFL product, will cause more injuries to key players, and will not improve the game at all. And asking them to play more games while getting paid less is something no one should or will agree to.)

I hope they can get this resolved ASAP. A lockout would be terrible, and if the owners think it won't affect them, they are dead wrong. The MLB, NBA, and NHL have all learned the hard way that people find other things to watch and lose interest when no games are on TV. I think overall the owners are in the wrong here, and are looking to extend these negotiations in hopes that players will accept a lesser deal due to the pressures of not making money. If they do that, one thing will be abundantly clear, none of those old rich guys give the slightest damn about their team's fans.

- rookie wage scale: i agree with that one too. its not fair for a team to pay so much guaranteed money on an unproven product. this would be good for the NFL.

- 2 more regular season games: 100% against it. as a fan you would think i want to watch more football, but 16 regular season games is Perfect. there is no way this should pass. i side with the players.

- split up the revenue: i saw on espn the owners get a $1billion cut and they're trying to get $2billion instead. idk if i saw that right. and i wouldn't be able to give a logical opinion about this so ima leave that one alone.

NO LOCKOUT

The reason the owners want the additional $1B is because of rising debt loads. Just as an example, here in Houston the regional sports authority is about to default on a loan from Texans owner Bob McNair that they used to upgrade the Reliant Stadium area (it's more than just a stadium, there's an arena and a convention hall there too). He will likely never see that money, and that's investment risk that almost every NFL owner has going on right now. Jerry Jones has already had two minority financers of his stadium go away because they lost millions in the declining economy. That means Jones has to front more of his own cash. He might have it, but people like Ralph Wilson of the Bills and Mike Brown of the Bengals cannot possibly afford things like that. Allegedly some teams (the Panthers and Bucs most notably) had to borrow cash from various sources to pay the player bonuses last year. That cannot be verified because the NFL won't release the books, a major point of contention with the NFLPA.

Owners are very frustrated that the players take zero financial risk on the NFL but demand half the revenue of everything, not just ticket and TV revenue.

All the stuff about rookie wage scales, free agency rules, season length, OTAs, percentage of guarantee to the contracts, all that stuff is secondary to the overriding split of revenue between the players and owners. That's where the negotiations are at and why the owners walked this week. For the players to ask for a straight 50/50 split is insulting to a lot of debt-riddled owners.

Honestly I don't think the rookie contracts, the free agency, the player health insurance and retired player care issues are going to be much trouble to solve. Once they agree on the overall split and what revenues go into that split, the stuff that most fans focus on should go pretty quickly. I hope

Icness, I think if the owners were willing to prove their financial distress, it would be easier for them to ask for the extra $1 billion. I don't have many doubts that some owners are in this mess, but you look at what was revealed about the Florida Marlins last year by Deadspin, article below in case you didn't, and it makes no sense to take them at their word. The players would lose $600 million by giving up the extra $1 billion to the owners. That is a lot of money to give up without getting proof of hardship.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=j ... ials082410

And correct me if I am wrong, but don't the owners make additional money outside of the $9 billion dollar pool? Naming rights to stadiums, etc., isn't that outside the scope of this revenue that is shared?

From what I gather the biggest reason why the teams won't release their books isn't because of the players, but rather they don't want the other owners to know their financials. Daniel Snyder and the Mara family (to name two) make incredible amounts of money and are highly profitable, but a lot of teams are not making that kind of money. It's sort of an embarrassing thing for one owner to see how ineptly his team compares in financial health to another, and they don't want that sort of fractuous tension between them. I don't really blame them for that, but I do agree with the NFLPA's point that they need to see some valid proof as to why the owners need another billion. It's not the players' faults if the teams are losing money because certain owners are having a lousy run at business, both with their teams and in other ventures (see: Tom Benson of the Saints).

That initial billion doesn't really go that far. Take the Lerners in Cleveland. They (along with help from the city) paid $800M for a stadium complex 12 years ago. They financed it through various fronts, but the basic fact is they pay about $25M in interest on the stadium financing every year. Their 1/32 of the $1B is $31.25M, which barely covers the interest. And that stadium is cheap compared to the newer ones in Philly, Dallas, Seattle, and the new one in NYC. They have to continually put money into the stadiums, how much varies wildly from team to team.

Now consider that player salaries total costs go up between 10-15% every single year. The cap in 2004 was $82M, in 2009 it was just under $130M. The salary floor goes up proportional to that as well. They cannot keep up with that escalation in ticket price hikes because people just won't pay them. My brother in law has season tickets for the Browns that cost $880 a seat in 1999 than now cost just $1400 a seat. But most people around his section can't afford those seats anymore and the so-called "waiting lists" for season tickets are pure fabrication from most teams' marketing departments. That's not even a 40% increase while salaries have more than doubled. Of course the teams have gotten substantially more from new TV and marketing deals, but the owners point that their books are declining because of player costs is almost inarguable. That's their position and they think the NFLPA needs to concede that point--and they did just that in the last negotiation, in exchange for some other breaks. DeMaurice Smith has shown no inclination to accept the owner's word on this in these negotiations. The trust factor just isn't there.

Going to respond with a few points, just should note I am not 100% sure on my financial details so correct me if I am wrong.

From what I gather the biggest reason why the teams won't release their books isn't because of the players, but rather they don't want the other owners to know their financials. Daniel Snyder and the Mara family (to name two) make incredible amounts of money and are highly profitable, but a lot of teams are not making that kind of money. It's sort of an embarrassing thing for one owner to see how ineptly his team compares in financial health to another, and they don't want that sort of fractuous tension between them.

If this really is the case, I would think the owners are being quite ridiculous. They can't claim financial distress on one hand, then be too embarrassed by their financial distress to prove it on the other. Let's be honest, everybody knows what teams are not doing very well for the most part, and I guarantee that the owners certainly already do. And owners already quibble with each other on this sort of thing. Bottom-line, it should be unacceptable to the NFLPA to not be shown the books. (Sounds like we agree on this.)

That initial billion doesn't really go that far. Take the Lerners in Cleveland. They (along with help from the city) paid $800M for a stadium complex 12 years ago. They financed it through various fronts, but the basic fact is they pay about $25M in interest on the stadium financing every year. Their 1/32 of the $1B is $31.25M, which barely covers the interest. And that stadium is cheap compared to the newer ones in Philly, Dallas, Seattle, and the new one in NYC. They have to continually put money into the stadiums, how much varies wildly from team to team.

This is where I think I would want to see the books to prove distress. For one thing, owners aren't only getting $31.25M to maintain stadiums. They get, exclusively I believe, all revenue generated by selling naming rights to a stadium, holding additional events (such as Super Bowl or concerts) at their stadium, etc., etc. Unless they are going to include players into all these revenue streams, they cannot expect the players to take on risk for their stadiums. It is absolutely ridiculous IMO to act as if stadium costs are exclusively attributable to football games when in almost all cases they are not. Again, correct me if I am wrong here, but I think owners do benefit from having nice stadiums.

And Jerry Jones didn't have to build a $1B state of the art stadium for the Cowboys. The players shouldn't be expected to burden responsibility for his stadium, because he intentionally made it a spectacle hoping to generate more revenue off of it.

Now consider that player salaries total costs go up between 10-15% every single year. The cap in 2004 was $82M, in 2009 it was just under $130M. The salary floor goes up proportional to that as well. They cannot keep up with that escalation in ticket price hikes because people just won't pay them. My brother in law has season tickets for the Browns that cost $880 a seat in 1999 than now cost just $1400 a seat. But most people around his section can't afford those seats anymore and the so-called "waiting lists" for season tickets are pure fabrication from most teams' marketing departments. That's not even a 40% increase while salaries have more than doubled. Of course the teams have gotten substantially more from new TV and marketing deals, but the owners point that their books are declining because of player costs is almost inarguable. That's their position and they think the NFLPA needs to concede that point--and they did just that in the last negotiation, in exchange for some other breaks. DeMaurice Smith has shown no inclination to accept the owner's word on this in these negotiations. The trust factor just isn't there.

The main problem here is that owners agreed to take $1B off the top when the revenue stream was smaller, instead of a certain percentage. Say in 2004, total revenue was $5B. That means back then $1B was 20% of revenue. Today total revenue is $9B and this same cut is only worth around 11%.

To me, this says that the players took on the greater risk for the game growing, and this is why they are seeing the bigger rewards right now. And that makes no sense, because the owners are ultimately responsible for growing the game. You can see why the owners want their extra $1B, but what does this really change? What if in 10 years the revenue total is $20B. Are the owners going to complain and ask for $4B then?

This is why, for me, the model where the owners get a higher percentage of new revenue, over $9B, makes the most sense to me.

Icness wrote:DeMaurice Smith has shown no inclination to accept the owner's word on this in these negotiations. The trust factor just isn't there.

to show how hardcore in negotiation this cat is, commissioner goodell said he was going to go 100bucks salary if negotiations went down, and demaurice countered with somethin like 60somethin bucks. when i heard that, i said wow, NOT AN INCH is gonna be given. each media ploy is met with another media ploy. each sound bite vs. each sound bite. each salary decrease is met with another decrease. suddenly, mr. upshaws relationship with tagliabue looks like roses.

yeah i don't see how this is gonna be solved without the players association getting a hold of the owners books. you can't really blame either side. the owners are at a big financial risk. its understandable that they need more money. On the other hand players are the ones breaking their necks on the field, they feel like they earned the money...

but i hope they reach an agreement and the nfl rookie scale would definitely have to be agreed on by then.

some questions...

1) will we possibly see the demise of some of the financially troubled teams?
2) how about he packers? should their ownership be followed by other teams?

2) how about he packers? should their ownership be followed by other teams?

The Packers model, a non-profit public team, isn't possible anymore IMO. The team has such deep ties to its community that the shareholders are loyal enough to hold onto ownership of a non-profit team that offers no real return on investment. They don't get free tickets, or priority on season tickets, to games. All stock sales only occur privately and, as far as I can tell, very infrequently. And if the team is ever sold or dissolved, all the proceeds go to charity.

I mean just think about that model. How many people are going to invest in a non-profit company that offers very little in return? I know fans like to think their entire base is like them, but in truth there are only so many die-hard fans per team who would be willing to spend money to essentially ensure their team can never move and that beer prices don't skyrocket at games.

And if a team was publicly-held for profit, you can bet that shareholders would want the same increases in revenue that the owners want now.

BTW a few other comments.

-About Goodell and Smith taking $100 and $60 salaries. If a lockout happens, that is $100 and $60 too much. Neither of those guys deserves to be making any money if they can't keep the league open for business.

-I doubt any team gets cut. They would probably move a team before they get rid of one...there definitely is enough interest in the NFL to support 32 teams in the USA.

-Apparently at a recent meeting, Jerry Richardson, owner of Panthers, got a bit contemtous with Peyton Manning when Manning broached player safety. All I can say is that if the below is true, there aren't many details so I'm on the fence, the owners are not going to be doing well for their image with the fans or the players by dismissing the face of their league as if he was Albert Haynesworth. Article is below.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_ylt=A ... ning021311

cochiseuofm wrote:-Apparently at a recent meeting, Jerry Richardson, owner of Panthers, got a bit contemtous with Peyton Manning when Manning broached player safety. All I can say is that if the below is true, there aren't many details so I'm on the fence, the owners are not going to be doing well for their image with the fans or the players by dismissing the face of their league as if he was Albert Haynesworth. Article is below.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_ylt=A ... ning021311

I'm on the side of Richardson here. We always here that football players, especially NFL players, all have this sense of being a part of a huge life-long fraternity. For a former player to be so hard in this stance speaks volumes to me, IMO.

Let's face it, the owners are the ones who are making the financial risk out there, not the players. If someone like Richardson, who PLAYED in the NFL at a time when millions were not being handed out as signing bonus...was able to use his money (and other resources, I don't know his full story) to become a millionaire/billionaire and own an NFL team...a prestigious class and privileged group, no doubt , then heck, these players nowadays are more than well compensated for what they are being paid to do.

I'm no economics major, but I don't know of any other business in America (or the world), where the employees are splitting revenue at an advantage (like they did in previous CBA) or even spliet (like they are proposing) when they contribute zero dollars.

The counter-point I hear all the time is...well, the NFL is comprised of elite athletes. You can't compare them to the typical employees of other businesses. Well, what's more in demand? The number of people who can play football? Or the number of people who have the resources to own, run, AND maintain an NFL team?

NFL players need to smell the coffee and wake the F* up.

You think these owners need you? Hell no. They're freakin' billionaires for a reason, dumb f***s. With or without the NFL, these guys will be raking in cash regardless.

So go play ball, or get ready to start bagging my f***** groceries.....

I'm on the side of Richardson here. We always here that football players, especially NFL players, all have this sense of being a part of a huge life-long fraternity. For a former player to be so hard in this stance speaks volumes to me, IMO.

Give me a break, Richardson played for 1 year as a part-time player in the late 1950s. He has absolutely no idea what it is like to be a pro athlete today. And he has to be as disconnected to that life as anyone who has over fifty years and a career making millions of dollars in between their playing career and now would.

All he cares about now is making money. To claim his former playing days makes his stance on the owners not making enough money more valid is laughable. For him to imply he knows more about player safety than Manning or Brees, both of whom have played long careers in the current league where players are chiseled freaks who launch themselves like missiles, is ridiculous.

I'm no economics major, but I don't know of any other business in America (or the world), where the employees are splitting revenue at an advantage (like they did in previous CBA) or even spliet (like they are proposing) when they contribute zero dollars.

The counter-point I hear all the time is...well, the NFL is comprised of elite athletes. You can't compare them to the typical employees of other businesses. Well, what's more in demand? The number of people who can play football? Or the number of people who have the resources to own, run, AND maintain an NFL team?

The NFL is unlike most other businesses. Saying it and tossing it aside as if it doesn't matter doesn't change the fact that it is true. Yes there are many football players in the country, but not many that can play as well as it takes to captivate American viewers.

You want to know why US soccer leagues fail? Because all of the best players don't play in the MLS and American viewers have no interest in watching second-best. You think people would pay to see replacement players in the present like they do for the union players? You're crazy. The owners need the players just as much as the players need the owners. It is a symbiotic relationship, which allows the players to demand more leverage than most employees can ask for.

Do you think fans care who owns a team? Do they buy jerseys with Jerry Richardson's name on it? Do they pay $5000 to fly to Dallas and wait in line for hours to see Jerry Jones peer out of his luxury suite at the Super Bowl? They care about the players because the players are the faces of the league.

You think these owners need you? Hell no. They're freakin' billionaires for a reason, dumb f***s. With or without the NFL, these guys will be raking in cash regardless.

Ask the owners who can't sell out games if they need players, if they need wins. No matter how much money someone has, they don't go into business to lose it. Teams that can't attract fans leak money, and that comes out of the owner's pocket. And as Icness has pointed out, while some of them can afford this, not all of them can long-term.

Lockouts can have and have had a very real effect on a game's popularity. The NFL is growing more than any sport, a prolonged lockout could disrupt that and hurt both parties. Could the game recover long-term from an ugly dispute? Sure. But short-term it will hurt business, there is no doubt in my mind about that.

So go play ball, or get ready to start bagging my f***** groceries.....

There's no doubt that both sides are being greedy, I'm not arguing that. BUT...the NFL owners are specifically that...OWNERS. Every single business out there exists for one reason...to make as much profit as they can make. Now, it's also true that every employee out there is also out to get paid.

Now, the owners don't have anyone but themselves to blame for this, especially for the way they've let it get out of hand. But don't kid yourself...as a product, yes the NFL is a relationship of players/owners/fans, and the product won't survive without any of the other two.

But my point was, the players need this more than the owners. These guys are billionaires already for a reason. Before the NFL, and after the NFL...they'll still be rich.

But these players? Go and take a poll and ask these guys, if football wasn't king in America, what would they be doing? Would they even be able to go to college, much less have a career?

You hear the stories all the time. Most kids come from rough up-bringing. They use their football skills to get out of those situations just to get to college, so they can get to the NFL and get paid. While there are some who did do their school work and would have had the grades to get in to a University, how many of them would have been limited financially?

They're getting paid...A LOT already. The part they are getting from the revenue sharing is just an added bonus to that.

My solution to the exempt revenue issue is for the owners to keep their current pre-cut $1B and then use a sliding scale based on total gross revenue. If it's $8B then the owners keep an additional 15% pre-cut, if it's $9B then they keep 12%, $10B they keep 10%, $12B they keep 8% pre-cut. The more money they make, the more money they give away to employees and the less they need to horde for reinvestment--that's a pretty basic business model. The players would have to accept that less revenue money means the owners aren't as financially able to give as much to them, which is common sense. Those numbers should be negotiable.

As for the Goodell/Smith salaries, you think they won't get multi-million dollar bonuses once a deal gets worked out

One big reason why the NFLPA doesn't trust ownership claims of hardship: the sale of the Rams last year. A team that was valued at around $600M in 2007 sold for almost $800M in 2009. In a plummeting economy the team went up in value $200M or 33% just by existing in the NFL. They're one of the least-valuable franchises and didn't win more than 5 games during that time frame, and they still sold for such a premium. That is going to take some explaining by Goodell. Part of the inflated price is that the league really wanted Kroenke to get the team and not Sammy Khan and made Kroenke fork over more $$ than needed to make that happen, but it wasn't inflated that much.

Most stadiums don't make enough money on concerts and other non-sports events to make much money, it's why they don't use them very often. Jerry Jones essentially bought the Arkansas/Texas A&M game for his stadium and there's no way he made money on the deal, same thing with when Ohio State played a game at Cleveland Stadium. The payoffs to the schools and the operating costs make the profit slim at best. Heinz Field gets torn up with all those HS games and the Rooney's don't make a dime, which is true of most stadiums where the public funding levels are more than token. Stadium concert tours have been money losers for years now, that's why almost nobody does them anymore except U2 and the Rolling Stones because they have more money than God to begin with.

SpeedyG - I wholly agree that players need to get paid more than the owners do, and that the owners can survive for longer. Especially since their TV deals still pay out even without games being played. And yes, many of them probably would be much worse off without football.

I do not, however, agree that players are less important to the game than owners, which is what your first post indicated strongly.

Icness, your deal doesn't make much sense to the players. Right now the owners are demanding $2B up-front. Under your plan, they would get $1B + $1.2B (15% of $8B) if total revenue is $8B. That comes out to $2.2B. If revenue is $9B, owners get $2.08B, which is still over the original $2B asked for by the owners. What you're doing by decreasing the percentage is basically just ensuring the owners always get $2B up-front...which if you ask me is pointlessly complicated when we can just say, ownership cut isn't based off of a percentage, it is always $2B. If the players were willing to accept that, there wouldn't be much of a fight right now.

Thanks for the info on stadiums, I'll stop harping on them making additional money from them if it isn't true.

The point with my sliding scale is that if the league isn't making as much, the owners need more of a cut of the money to expand the revenue and to handle their own business. It's incentive for the players to do more to grow the league as well because the more $$ the league earns, the higher cut they earn. The players need to assume some risk that if the league isn't doing as well, they cannot expect to do as well either. That is a fundamental driving point for ownership in these negotiations. How that extra money is used by the owners is a problem between ownership factions; some demand guarantees that the extra cash gets put into reinvestment (stadium & facilities upgrades, coaching salaries, better marketing) while some just want the cash with no strings. I would assume that the NFLPA will not agree to give anything back without assurances that the money is in fact used for football purposes. They don't want the money they're giving up to help pay for the owner's baseball team or pay off his ex-wife or former business partners.

The percentage idea you laid out works too, but I don't think there is any way ownership will take that without a pre-percentage cut. That's what the NFLPA came to them with last week and it went nowhere fast.

Some stadiums do make money on non-football events, like Ford Field hosting the Michigan HS football stuff (it's artifical turf and the timing works out so the stadium was being climate-controlled anyway) or when places host CFB and CBB conference championship games (the conferences pay them and they get a gate cut). Domes with field turf in mild winter climates (Houston, Arizona, Atlanta) pretty much all fit the bill of money-makers. Places like Buffalo, Cincinnati, Chicago don't get that kind of benefit.

what demaurice had said was that the owners do not have to move an inch. lockout. and rake in 5 BILLION!! heck, if i was an owner, i'd walk out of negotiations too!

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=6132690

Looks like a good first step to me, at least now they have someone impartial in between to help them get to an agreement.

Went the full time with the federal mediator, which is both good and bad.

Owners meeting tonight in Indy, where Goodell lays out what he took from mediation. NFLPA conference call is tomorrow to serve the same purpose for the players. Now is when both sides figure out what they will give on and what lines cannot be moved.

All this CBA stuff is annoying...all i no is that we nee football this year and the owners and every one else need to get this deal done bc if not there is gonna be alot of unhappy ppl in the U.S including me haha