NFLPA preparing legal action if contract talks stall
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2316888

DETROIT -- The NFL Players Association is preparing to take the league to court if there is no immediate progress on a new contract.

NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw set March 9 as the date he will begin consulting players on legal action if no deal has been reached to extend the collective bargaining agreement. Upshaw said Thursday that the current stalemate is due more to a disagreement among the owners on revenue sharing than conflict between the league and the union.

The current contract expires after the 2007 season, but it calls for an uncapped year in '07. Without a new CBA, negotiations on individual contracts in the free-agent period that begins March 3 will be much more difficult for teams and players.

"The price of poker will go up," Upshaw said at the union's Super Bowl news conference. "We can not stay in the place where we are now."

The league and the owners have been negotiating for more than a year on an extension to the contract first agreed upon in 1993.

But this is the first time there has been a stalemate, primarily because of the dispute between high-revenue teams such as Washington, Dallas, Houston and New England, and teams with less local money available from items ranging from parking to stadium signage.

Upshaw insisted the union is prepared for decertification, which involves disbanding and going to antitrust court to ask for a set of rules under which the NFL would operate. The union did that to end the monthlong 1987 strike and played without a contract until 1992, when the court ruled in its favor -- leading to the current deal negotiated with commissioner Paul Tagliabue and the owners. That deal included free agency for the first time, as well as the salary cap, which took effect in 1993.

"We've demonstrated we are not afraid to decertify," Upshaw said. "We understand the laws and what's available to us."

Upshaw warned if the dispute continues through 2007, then the salary cap is likely to be gone -- for good.

Richard Berthelsen, the union's general counsel, said if the decertification strategy is used, it could keep the owners from locking out the players and allowing games to continue. "If there is no union, the labor laws would not apply, so you wouldn't have a lockout," he said.

Despite Upshaw's strong words Thursday, both sides believe privately that an agreement can be reached fairly soon.

Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney has helped settle NFL labor disputes for three decades. He said last week that while there was little movement in the dispute, he is still optimistic there could be action among the owners fairly soon.

Upshaw pointed out Thursday that the $24 billion television deal reached last year with CBS, NBC, Fox and ESPN gives the networks incentive to help settle the dispute. And he quoted Denver owner Pat Bowlen as saying: "If we can't reach agreement, we should all be shot."

Still, some of the high-revenue owners have suggested they could live with a different system.

"It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we didn't have a salary cap," Dallas' Jerry Jones said last fall.

At one point, Upshaw even joked about the high-revenue owners, notably Washington's Daniel Snyder, who has more than 20 coaches on his payroll, including some of the NFL's highest-paid assistants.

"They are going to have to decide how to spend their money if they're going to reach agreement among themselves," he said. "You might cut back on the coaches on your payroll. I love Dan Snyder because he spends a lot of money on players. But there are others in that high-revenue group who take in $300 million and have just a $66 million payroll."

Upshaw and Tagliabue have always had a good relationship during negotiations and Tagliabue, who turned 65 in November, has delayed his retirement in part to get the labor problems settled.

Negotiations are expected to intensify after the Super Bowl. Rooney, Upshaw and league officials have said they don't think there will be an agreement by the start of free agency next month. However, the issue is likely to be the primary topic among the owners at their annual meeting, which begins March 25 in Orlando, Fla.

That might allow for an agreement by the draft, which will take place a month later.

"Without an agreement after the draft, you would have a lot of unsigned players, a lot of first- and second-round draft picks who would be waiting to see what system we would be using," he said.

Upshaw also reiterated the healthy state of the sport: "We're not talking about a struggling industry here."

I think this may be Tags' toughest negotiation yet. I enjoy the strange bedfellows this has created. Jerry Jones, Dan Snyder and....Robert Kraft?

This will get interesting. If it gets to the point of decertification, the NFL owners may not like the result. The funny part is that that Tagliabue and Upshaw agree, it's just a few rich owners who don't want revenue sharing.

Until something actually happens (not counting the rattling of sabers like this) I'm inclined to keep this filed uner "non-event."

That's what makes me really wonder how "difficult" this is going to be. It's really Snyder and Jones and maybe a couple of other guys in one corner and everybody else in the other. The other owners should have no problem forcing a deal on Jones and Snyder and just make them live with it.

The biggest sticking point of the negotiations is local revenue. The NFLPA wants to put that in the pot for salary cap purposes, and if that happens then other NFL owners want it in revenue sharing too. That would be a huge blow to a few teams and a minor blow to some other teams. There might be a few teams it would help -- some teams may get more money in local revenue sharing than they would pay in a higher salary cap.

I'm with Quik -- I think a lot of this is saber rattling for now. I did hear the Chiefs GM Carl Peterson say yesterday that there is some confusion on this year's cap because the CBA apparently isn't clear on what the cap will be in '06 before the uncapped year in '07. Teams have been given a salary cap "range" but haven't been told what the cap will actually be yet. If it isn't settled in the next few weeks, that could slow down early FA.

Actually I heard on the radio this morning that the group of rich owners is barely more than 1/3rd (or whatever minimum they need), which means they can block any deal.

An update
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2348417

ESPN.com news services


NFL labor talks broke off Tuesday three days before the start of free agency, leaving teams and players in a quandary about negotiating new contracts.

Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Association, spent the last three days meeting in New York and Washington with commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

"We're deadlocked. There's nowhere to go," Upshaw said. "There's no reason to continue meeting."

The NFL acknowledged the talks had broken off and said no further discussions were scheduled. The league said it would not extend Friday's deadline for the start of free agency.

Although the contract does not expire until after the 2007 season, this is a critical period in the negotiations to extend the 12-year-old contract. Talks have been going on for more than a year.


Without an extension, the 2007 season would become a so-called uncapped year with no spending limit and no minimum, and players could potentially face a lockout in 2008.

Team officials and player agents have said that doing business without an extension -- particularly with the free agent signing period set to begin Friday and the draft on April 29-30 -- will prove virtually impossible. Because of the extreme circumstances that would exist with an uncapped year on the horizon, it would be difficult to meet the financial expectations of free agents and high-round draft choices.


"We're too far apart on our economics and too far apart on revenue sharing -- the ball is in their court," Upshaw said. "We'll go to the uncapped year, there won't be an extension."

Free agency is scheduled to start Friday. If the deal is not extended, this would be the last year with a salary cap, so agents and team officials want to know how to structure contracts.

For example, if there is no extension, the salary cap is expected to be about $95 million this season and annual raises after 2006 in a long-term deal would be limited to 30 percent. If the deal is extended the cap could be $10 million or more higher.

The sides have agreed on a number of issues. The biggest one is changing the formula for the amount of money to go to the players from "designated gross revenues" -- primarily television and ticket sales -- to "total gross revenues," which include almost every bit a money a a team generates.

They differ, however, on the percentage of revenues to be allocated to the players -- the union is asking for 60 percent and the league's current offer is 56.2 percent.

But there are also disputes among groups of owners on that issue, too. Tagliabue has called a league meeting in New York for Thursday to explain to NFL clubs why the sides have been unable to come to an agreement.

Teams with lower revenues -- mostly small-market clubs -- say that if the contributions to the players' fund are equally apportioned among 32 franchises, they will have to pay a substantially larger proportion of their nontelevision and ticket money because they have less. Owners of high-revenue teams, like Dallas' Jerry Jones, claim spreading the load equally would force some teams to work harder to generate new sources of money.

Another high-revenue owner, New England's Robert Kraft, says the formula does not take stadium debt into account, as he has on Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.


ESPN.com's Len Pasquarelli reported Monday that league owners were scheduled to meet Tuesday via conference call to discuss the status of negotiations.

Two owners told Pasquarelli on Monday afternoon that they have delayed their departures from Indianapolis, site of the NFL scouting combine since Wednesday, to accommodate the 6 p.m. ET timing of the conference call.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said "internal revenue-sharing issues" would not be discussed at the meeting.

Information from The Associated Press and ESPN.com's Len Pasquarelli was used in this report.

Getting more interesting...

Decalaring an impasse with days to go before a deadline remains a "non event" in my book... though I'm more concerned than before.

Anything that gets baseball back to its preferred state as America's sport is good in my books...

Maybe Gene Upshaw will come back and be Art Shell's Linemen coach.

Fat chance of that happening. Baseball's owners are their own worst enemy.

Yeah, baseball owners will do something dumb. Then, they'll say "it's ok...we're gonna add another wild card." Then all will be forgiven for a few more years because more teams are in the playoffs.

Baseball's central problem is the game itself. But they absolutely do plenty of stupid things to hasten its inevitable decline.

Back to the NFL, the local sports radio show is already talking about the Redkins needing to make salary cap cuts as soon as tomorrow in anticipation of a "stangant" cap situation for the coming year. Is this, as I suspect, just more bluster -- or are we going to see cap-strapped teams actually needing to take firmer and earlier actions due to this anticipated impasse?

You concerned yet? Cause this whole "Armegeddon of cuts" day tomorrow scares the shit out of me. Granted I don't think that my team will have to drastically cut a lot of guys, but I do think that they will lose someone like Jeff Hartings when before they could have had a few more weeks to try to work something out. The fact that the "Cap out" button is essentially gone from use is also a bad thing, a team like Washington will really be screwed. I bet they work out some 11th hour thing tonight, I hope Upshaw isnt this greedy and stupid as to fuck this up.

Heathen! Eh, at least it hasn't become a made for TV sport. :D

On topic, I'll be shocked if the big guns agree to share all their revenue. It is ridiculous that a team that makes no effort to generate funds (a la Paul Brown Stadium) should benefit equally to one that does.

They'll split the difference on the revenue demands and get something done. JMO tho.

Well, they've said there's an emergency owners meeting scheduled for tomorrow, so unless nothing comes out of that I'm not going to get too worked up about this whole thing. It doesn't make sense to make all those cuts an entire day before the deadline until at least after the emergency meeting. I'm sure some people will be cut tomorrow morning, but I suspect mostly guys who would be cut anyway. There's no reason to cut the other guys until after the emergency owners meeting.

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail... but when there's money at stake, that is almost never the case.

Sounds like the owners' emergency meeting is over and nada....

edit: and the deadline for pre-free agency movement has been extended from 4pm today to 10pm today.

Mr. Overpaid finally agreed to renegotiate his contract, yay!

You're like 16 hours late. That was all yesterday, and there is a new emergency meeting going on right now.

and Tags just went on TV and said no CBA will be reached I think

nope. The one that was going on was the one I was reporting on.

Yep, he said the owners voted unanimously to break off talks with the Players union. Looks like "Bloody Thursday" might happen after all.

Ah, okay. I was confused as the deadline extension from 4 until 10 was announced yesterday.

It's going to be an "interesting" offseason it looks like. Oh well, at least my FOF league doesn't have to worry about a CBA

It's a balance and I can see both sides of the equation. Teams that take some risk and take on debt to fund capital improvements and aggressively court new revenue streams and marketing opportunities should get the benefit of their hard work. There is a lot less incentive for an owner to go out and try to sell out his luxury boxes and try to hammer out the best possible deal on naming rights to a stadium when it won't give his team a competitive advantage. So, you assume, the league will make less money as a whole because owners will not be working as hard as they are now to bring in big ticket items.

On the other side, it gives a competitive advantage to teams in large wealthy markets. The more money they have that they don't have to share, the more they can use signing bonuses to spread out cap hits and lure free agents, and the more they can pay coaches and GMs, and the better facilities they can maintain to attract free agents and keep them in prime condition.

As a fan of a small market team with a miserly owner, I am all for sharing all the wealth. As an objective matter concerning what is best for the league as a whole . . . I am not sure.

The fact that Tabliabue managed to get a unanimous vote by whipping Jones and Snyder into formation is a huge signal. The owners are united on this, and there is no chance of the union getting some of the major market owners to break ranks. This can only end badly for the union.

This will be an interesting off season if there's no agreement today (which appears to be the case). Looking at the teams in good shape, I think Seattle and San Diego could come out of this in very good shape if they do some bargain shopping in free agency.

I wonder if Quik is concerned yet ;).

I'm not, but Quiksand might be... ;)

More and more I'm becoming a college football fan.

:eek:

They already launched a three day delay of any meaningful effects resulting from having no deal. Still not concerned.

I see this delay as having more to do with the negotiations between the big market and small market owners than it does with the NFLPA. Mort is reporting that Dan Rooney and Jerry Richardson are the ones responsible for staying behind after the vote today to try and get the talks restarted.

Agree - this ins't about the league and the NFLPA coming to terms, this is about the league coming to terms with itself on revenue sharing. The NFLPA wisely chooses not to sign a contract until the owners actually have come to a consensus on revenue sharing. This is one of those rare times when I side with the union in a labor deal.


-Anxiety

As long as Gene gets Kerry Collins cut for sure, I'm all for this.

That's a very peculiar statement. Care to elaborate on the problem with the game itself? I had thought the central problem was the economics of the game.

The system where the coaches make millions but the kids aren't allowed to make a penny ? The system where everyone makes bucks of the people doing the work ? Great system...

RA, would that affect the age minimum?

Unless you play in the SEC.

Baseball is not especially interesting to watch on television, it is too slow-paced for modern audiences. Massive television audiences are the lifeblood of major sports, and baseball will never have them again.

Those in control of the sport no doubt keep it from reaching its greatest potential, but its central probem is that it's just not sufficiently entertaining to watch.

Hmm, I understand. Maybe they need to change the rules to make it a full-contact sport with a player beating their chest after every pitch (or takedown).

But then again, I rarely watch games anymore. I just prefer to fast-sim them to the next morning when the box scores and standings appear. :)

I fast-sim to the World Series then start rooting for the team that is one out away from winning it all.

Part of the problem with baseball is the lack of passion for the game amongst a lot of its players. There's too many take it or leave it guys for my taste. Maybe its the money or maybe times have just changed but I can't think of many guys that would agree with the greatest sports quote of all time.

"I'd walk through Hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball." - Pete Rose

And you see where that kind of Rose-like competitiveness gets you ;).

Ratings? Fannies in the seats? World Championships? What? ;)

Well, the owners and the union are going to be meeting in NY today to try to hammer out an extension.

Not sure. I cut and pasted that from the espn.com's Q&A on labor issues.

hxxp://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2351462

I would assume that you could sign as a FA when you're 18 years old since the union would decertify.

Why people rich that is talking of billions has more problem to make a deal that normal people talking about hundred of bucks?

Good lord, that's some insane stuff!

How exactly do you determine whether a player has passion for his game or not? I am not trying to be a smartass or anything just asking a question.

A nice critique of capitalism vs. communism ;)

I have always found it strange that although I love the sport, and think the NFL model works well enough to be considered for other sports, it is basically a communist enclave within the most successful capitalist country in the world

Miami Fan: Its actually a problem I have with a lot of athletes. I hear the same general refrain of "If I win that's great and if I don't that's great". Its probably better for the psyche, but I prefer an athlete that wants to win and hurts when they don't. As much as I hate the Steelers, I respect a guy like Bettis because the game matters.

Maybe its because I'm a Reds fan, and I've suffered a lot of guys that want to be happy first and winning isn't as important. Of course you're right that there isn't some scientific measurement, but I think its obvious that fans are drawn to the guys that are desperate to win and I think the current MLB has a shortage of those guys.

I know ESPN The Mag is a rag, but there's a pretty good article on this topic in the current issue (with the fantasy baseball feature inside).

Dola

Jari: The communixt argument doesn't really apply. Read America's Game by Michael MacCambridge. The owners of the various NFL teams decided long ago that it would improve their profits if they raised the level of competition by sharing revenue. It was probably the key decision that has led to the overall success of the league. It isn't a communist system of "each according to their needs" as much as it is a calculated business decision to invest in subsidiaries to increase profits. Its a various capitalist approach, just with a lot more forethought than normal. That's why guys like Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle are so important to the success of modern football.

heh.. one good thing is that if the NFLPA does decertify, EA loses the rights to player names, and that might reopen the door for other companies ;)

I should explain a bit better after looking at the book again.

Early on the balance of teams was so bad that many teams couldn't get crowds becuase they had no chance of winning. This led to apathy for the even the winning teams as many felt the outcome wasn't in doubt. The good teams were so good and the bad teams were so bad that it wasn't uncommon for teams to fold or be near folding. With an unexciting product and with owners having to prop up financially underperforming teams to keep the league viable a new solution was needed.

Enter revenue sharing. I believe rom the beginning of the national tv contracts all of the revenue was shared. It wasn't easy to push this through, but enough owners understood that increased competition meant increased tv and stadium revenues that it passed. In a relatively short time football surpassed baseball as the national pastime.

No. It's a partnership.

From Profootballtalk's rumor mill,

A deal is afoot? *shocked*

Is this the first sports labor situation where the players won't look like the bad guys? I mean what exactly would be the point of the Players' union even being in the room at this point?

80 percent seems plenty damn high for shared revenue already...if owners like Mike Brown and Bill Bidwell are fighting for a larger percentage than 80%, I hope they step off a curb and get hit by a bus.

Good Article
 

This article taught me a few things

Labor peace threatened by rift between ownersBy John Helyar
ESPN.com


As the National Football League and its players try to close their differences, another dueling set of economic interests must also try to close theirs: the NFL owners. The NFL's long era of labor peace is in danger of blowing apart, not just because Gene Upshaw wants a bigger piece of the revenue pie, but because small-market owners like Buffalo's Ralph Wilson and Jacksonville's Wayne Weaver do, too.

The NFL has enjoyed labor harmony like no other league since its 1993 collective bargaining agreement, which created the current salary cap and free-agency rules. The agreement has quietly been renewed four times. This go-around, however, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has been playing a far more difficult game of three-dimensional chess.

Number one is with the NFL Players Association, which wants a bigger piece of the revenue pie. Number two is with his owners, among whom a $100 million-plus gap has grown between the teams with the most revenues and those with the least. Number three, arguably, is with the NFL's stakeholders: Sponsors and broadcasters, fans and municipalities. Tagliabue must convince them that any changes these negotiations produce will preserve the economic and competitive parity that has fueled the league's 13-year growth surge.

"Here is a substantial and growing difference between the high and low revenue teams and it's a significant issue," says Dean Bonham, a sports-business consultant who worked for Jacksonville in its recent renegotiation of the Jaguars' stadium lease. "It has to be resolved or they're headed for the kind of disparity we've seen in Major League Baseball."

The economic backbone of the NFL has been broad-based revenue-sharing ever since 1961, when then-commissioner Pete Rozelle convinced teams to split network TV money equally. Franchises could thus exist in markets as disparate as New York and Green Bay because national broadcast rights provided clubs with a common, equal economic foundation. The national TV deals are still by far the greatest source of income for NFL teams, with each receiving about $85 million last year.

What has changed is the amount of locally generated revenue, which as recently as 1993 was paltry enough that the union didn't press to include it in "designated gross revenue." (That's the pool of money that determines the salary cap.) The stadium-building boom since then, however, has produced facilities which throw off huge sums of cash: from suite leases, naming rights, corporate sponsors and a cornucopia of other income-producing opportunities. Locally generated income has grown from 12 percent of total league revenue to 20 percent, according to league officials.

It's not just the union that wants to tap into these lush revenue streams, but a growing number of owners. This is unshared revenue, and this is what has opened the yawning gap, between the league's haves and have-nots. "The teams in smaller markets, like Jacksonville and Cincinnati, got their stadiums first," says Marc Ganis of Sportscorp Ltd., who has consulted on a number of NFL stadium deals. "Then it was the big markets' turn -- Boston, Houston, Philadelphia, and soon New York and Dallas. The disparities between markets have become magnified."

That's because the teams in bigger cities have more corporate fat cats and can command more for their premium seating. The New England Patriots lease their suites for $100,000 to $300,000 a year, according to a team spokesman. Some of the Indianapolis Colts' suites go for as little as $34,000, according to the sports division of Fitch Ratings, which rates stadium bond issues. Reliant Energy pays $10 million a year to hang its name on the Houston Texans' stadium. RCA has been paying the Colts only $1 million a year for stadium "naming rights," according to Fitch.

A team like the Rams, which ranked among the top six NFL franchises in revenue after its 1995 move from Los Angeles to St. Louis, is now in the bottom half of the league, according to Ganis. Its once-enviable stadium deal has been eclipsed by those of bigger markets. A team like the Jaguars recently had to overhaul its lease with Jacksonville, in an effort to keep within hailing distance of bigger market teams. According to union officials, high-revenue teams like Washington and Dallas spend about 40 percent of their gross on player payroll, while low-revenue teams like Indianapolis spend about 70 percent on payroll.

The last time things seemed this out of whack was back when distressed franchises like the Rams, Cleveland Browns and Houston Oilers were hop-scotching around the country looking for greener pastures in St. Louis, Baltimore and Nashville, respectively. The league initiated some programs that helped settle things down: a supplemental revenue-sharing program, which makes a $40 million pool available to low-end clubs and its G-3 stadium program, which since 1999 has extended nearly $700 million to help clubs finance new facilities. But even with a 53 percent increase in TV rights fees about to kick in, guaranteeing $3.7 billion per year through 2011, the league has lurched out of economic equilibrium again -- all because of the growth of unshared revenue. "The tectonic plates get out of whack and start to grind against each other," says one league official.

In 2004, Commissioner Tagliabue formed an owners' economic study committee, which so far has mostly just laid bare the economic fault lines among the owners. The committee is chaired by Texans owners Bob McNair, who is every bit the new-breed owner. He paid $700 million for his expansion franchise and must run it aggressively to make it pay off. On the other end of the spectrum is the Pittsburgh Steelers' Dan Rooney, whose father founded the team for a fee of $2,500 in 1933. They may play the same game, but it's almost as though they aren't in the same business.

It's not that most high-revenue teams are dead set against broadened revenue sharing. According to a league official, McNair's committee has been kicking around formulas calling for sharing anywhere from 20 percent to 34 percent of now unshared local revenues. But owners who have privately financed new stadiums want their debt and other expenses taken into account, not just their gross.

Bob Kraft vaulted his New England Patriots from dead last in the NFL in revenue, at the time he bought the club in 1994, to near the top of the league after opening Gillette Stadium in 2002. But he also took on $350 million of debt. And high-powered entrepreneurs like the Cowboys' Jerry Jones, who maximize every revenue opportunity extant, say they refuse to subsidize less driven ones. Make the "have nots" meet certain business performance standards, they declare, before being eligible for "welfare." (Yes, that sort of pejorative occasionally gets tossed around in these heated discussions among multi-millionaires.)

The entrepreneurs can neither understand nor abide an old-guarder like Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown, who decided against putting a company's name on his new stadium -- and pocketing big bucks -- and instead named it Paul Brown Stadium, in honor of his father. Says one team executive: "It's a philosophical split, as well as an economic one."

There's another aspect to the debate, too: is the revenue disparity really here to stay, unless owners change the way they divide the pie? Or is this just a transitional period, which doesn't call for structural change? The big-revenue owners point to "poor" clubs like the Indianapolis Colts and Arizona Cardinals, which have new stadiums in the works and which will no longer be laggards. The Green Bay Packers moved onto sold financial footing after revamping Lambeau Field, along with making it more a year-round tourist attraction. The team -- the only one in the NFL to publicly report its financials -- made a net profit of $25 million in its 2005 fiscal year, ended last March 31. But small-market owners don't generally buy the "transitional" argument. Some now openly, bitterly note that they helped finance the cash-spewing big-market stadiums, by approving G-3 financing, and they deserve a return on their investment.

It takes a two-thirds vote of owners (24 of 32) to change the revenue-sharing formula, and that's tough enough. But it's harder still because nearly half of the NFL owners (14) are new since 1993. They bought their pricey franchises and built their costly stadiums under the assumptions and economics of the current system. It's hard to blame the New Guarders for resisting change, especially when the Old Guard's interests seemed so closely aligned with the union's. But the fact is that the NFL's foundation was laid, at key junctures, by owners who put the league's overall interests ahead of their own.

If Wellington Mara hadn't sacrificed his New York Giants' TV rights in order to allow Rozelle to sell a national network package to CBS, the league would never have enjoyed its first great growth spurt in the 1960s. Many billions of dollars later, this may be another key juncture.

"You've got institutional memory butting up against the realities of leveraged debt," says Michael MacCambridge, author of an authoritative NFL history, America's Game. "In the past, the people with institutional memory have held sway, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be that way this time."

John Helyar is a senior writer for ESPN.com

That article is...surprisingly unvitriolic for what I've read from Helyar. Makes you wonder just how badly he was treated when he went to write Lords of the Realm.

The key parts of the market size battle always seemed to be "minimum cap" spending and the debt issue. I'd be more sympathetic to the New Guard (and I'm already pretty damn sympathetic to them) if it weren't going to be SOOOO easy to use loopholes to hide revenue if they get debt factored into the revenue sharing formula.

I didn't realize that shared revenues were still 80% of the league's total take - it makes what someone like Snyder has been able to do in Washington with maximizing revenue streams impressive (in the not-necessarily-good way).

That was a pretty good article. I didn't know a lot of the backstory of the NFL stuff, mainly on the grounds that I've been playing more attention to baseball starting up, but that caught me up pretty quick :)

SI

Don't know if that's the case. Some veterans (who are being cut left and right) are already getting vocal about how the players already get a ton of money, so what are they trying to fool with? Gene Upshaw's "our number must begin with a 6" is the part making them look bad.

They'd have been better off taking the 56 (or 57/58 whatever compromise lower than 60) early on, and then letting the owners duke it out for approval. The only thing that would have stopped that deal would have been the low-revenue owners' threats about voting against any deal that did not include a new revenue sharing formula.

Given that the league already shares 80% of revenues, and that you have situations like the Cincy deal where they want a chunk of naming rights money while refusing to sell naming rights, I think the owners would come out looking really bad.

But right now they both look like awfully selfish groups that simply won't realise they've got a money-making machine set up that they just should not mess with.

Deadline extended to 10 PM eastern now.

Mort is now saying on ESPN News that talks just broke off about 10 minutes ago.

According to Gene Upshaw, the owners actually offered a proprosal less than previously offered. It sounds to me like the owners decided they didn't want a new agreement. So, the NFL shoots itself in the foot. This is going to be a major mess that will mess up the game for the next few years. Once the cap has been overturned, I can't see a cap ever being reinstated.

Talks back on?


[edit]Profootball talk just added the following to the above,



Kessler is the guy that last night said it was 'dead as a doornail'.

The end of the cap may mean the end of my giving a crap about the NFL. Don't f it up guys.

F*in Daniel Snyder.

Dola, I concur.

The deadline has now been delayed from 10PM ET to 11:30PM ET.

The league needed to run to Office Depot to buy some more fax machines for all the cuts that are coming in.

Gee, one would think they'd have more sense in the NFL than to take eight teams' votes and give them all to a ninth owner so that he was the single person holding up a deal.

Translation: Pro Football Talk doesn't know shit and no matter WHAT happens, it's cool to blame the high revenue owner who spends his millions on players instead of giving his money to small market owners to line their pockets.

The owners offered a lower percentage of total revenues, but according to the NFL spokesman it was actually a higher dollar amount than in the past. No indication if this was due to any restructuring of revenues or not. The Union keeps throwing out percentages, the NFL dollar amounts.

Done

I believe that the NFL is counting on continual large annual increases in revenue so that the players would get more total money despite it being a lower percentage, such as 60% of 125 being more than 65% of 100.

Isn't the TV rights contract supposed to go up by 50% or something next year? That would be the bump in revenues Crap's talking about.

wow, raiders cut Kerry Collins. pretty surprising cut.

Sorry for saying the same thing in two threads, but since it is big news and applies to both ...

Start of free agency has been pushed back another 72 hours to 12:01 AM Thursday.

The teams also have until 9:00 PM on Wednesday to get below the cap. Mort is reporting that Tagliabue agreed to take the union's proposals to the owners on Tuesday for more discussion and a possible vote. There won't be any more talks between the union and the owners.

Starting to turn into one long 72 hour groundhog day..

Yup. A system that rewards incompetence, and shockingly, the incompetent are complaining about it. If Paul Brown doesn't want to rename his stadium, that's well and good, but why the hell should Dan Snyder have to pay him for then being a "low revenue" team?

Crap: Paul Brown is dead.

Dola: I can't strongly enoughurge everyone to read America's Game. It clarifies the economic history of the league. The revenue sharing between large/small clubs has been the issue for over forty years.

I was about to post a groundhog day reference. Some of these guys have probably been cut and un-cut twice now.

Woops - I mean Mike Brown. :D

Well, Paul Brown is one of the most significant figures in NFL history, and the only things Dan Snyder has contributed to the NFL is a revolving door of head coaches and QBs, some bad personnel decisions, and a lot of media-whoring and whining. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for him (plus he and Jerry Jones are on the same side, another strike against him).

Indeed. While it is nice to have every owner for himself, at some points, you want to promote the good of the league. And honoring the NFL greats is one thing that is good for the league. I guess we could rename Lambaugh Field to the Johnsonville (of the Brats fame) Stadium, but we'd be losing something in the transition.

Shawn Alexander got himself a new $62 million over 8 year deal from the Seahawks. So, now I believe a deal will get done in the next 72 hours....or the next 72 hours after that...or...

...but of course, since Snyder (as well as Jones and Kraft) is on record as being willing to share revenue as long as there is a guarantee that the smaller teams actually use it on payroll (that is to say, an increase in the minimum cap floor) or other expenses like player benefits, there really isn't a lot of "whining" coming from high market owners on this issue, is there?

As I recall Paul brown Stadium HAS corporate sponsorship from a local business, I can't remember the name currently, but the article I'm remembering said that the sponsor and the team agreed to leave the stadium name as it is.

Then the Paul Brown family can kick in fair market value from their own pockets when they submit their revenues statement to the league. I'd be satisfied with a $10 million per season adjustment. That would cut their panhandling in half.

You know, according to Forbes' 2004 valuation, Washington earned $287 million in revenue while Cincinnati earned $171 million...so in any revenue sharing increase, a lot of money would be floating from Snyder's pocket into Michael Brown's pocket...yet Brown still managed to turn a profit of $43 million in 2004, because he's only paying $25 million per year on his own stadium. The Redskins are shelling out almost 55 million a year of their revenues to pay off debt. The Patriots are at $65-70 million, while the Eagles have $70-75 million just in debt service. Opening the Linc generates about $60 million in revenue to be added to Philly's balance sheet, but because it's put in to pay off the stadium instead of being given to small market teams like the 49ers, THEY'RE the bad guys?

The Raiders and Jets are about the only two teams that I can see are in actual need of greater revenue sharing. Everyone else is just letting the NFL do all their marketing for them and trying to pull down the half-dozen or so owners who are actually trying to grow the business.

EDIT: If what RendeR says is true, then I'll assume that money is counted in the revenue already...which of course means that the Bengal's merchandising and marketing plans are even crappier. :)

Not to nit pik here, but the San Francisco Bay area is not even CLOSE to a small market. The 49er comparison is a VERY bad one.

Ah, but their revenues were about 25th in the league last year, so under greater revenue sharing, they're net takers. San Fran SHOULD be a large market team, and the fact that they're not speaks more about their ownership than their actual ability to support a team...which is pretty much what my opinion is of almost all the so-called small market teams.

Looks like Upshaw has taken your advice. Sounds like his number is 59 1/2 percent.