Owners Opt out of Collective Bargaining Agreement
 

......However, there will still be peace for the next couple of years at least till the current contract expires. I guess the owners choked over giving 60% of the revenues to the players.

Yeah the 59.x% was more than the MLB, NBA, and NHL pay.

Here is a good article from NFL.com that explains some of the other things that will be in play if they fail to renegotiat on time.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story;jsessi...o&confirm=true

Personaly I think this is a good thing. It means that they can address some of the bigger money issues, like rookie salaries and benifits, sooner.

If I understand things correctly 2010 would be uncapped season....and Upshaw has said that if the cap goes away the players will not take it back. That's probably just a bargaining tactic but it does put pressure to get something done.

I can't believe that the owners and players are dumb enough to let this come to a work stoppage. Both sides are making money now, and they are without a doubt the number one sports league in the US. I think both sides are smart enough to get it worked out....at least that is what I have been telling myself....if there was a lockout/strike I would be seriously pissed.

Edit: just read the article and he makes it sound like an uncapped season wouldn't be a free for all....either way I hope they get this straightened out. The sooner the better.

I think that is the real intent. It takes a long time to get something like this done and I suspect they wanted to get things moving. A couple of years sounds like a long time, but if you just keep twiddling your thumbs, time slips away and all of a sudden yor trying to cobble something together.

The original deal they opted out of sounds like it was done with the intent of forcing both side to renegotiate early.

It seems that the cap number combined with no structural cap on the rookie salaries really works against older, more experienced players. How many times do we see players cut and out of football because their salary takes too much cap room to allow the team to pay the rookies. Seems as if the players would be all for this.

upshaw...what a lifeless threat. they "won't take back" the cap. yeah...and then watch as the nfl crumbles to the level of enthusiam that baseball has. really, really, unbelievably really strong in some cities and then embarrasingly present in others....

Houston, I guess, is not one of the "unbelievably strong Cities", because the Astros sure don't play like it. Well, then again they DO, and then again they DON'T, and that is the whole problem. Case in point, they finally get to the World Series after 40 years of mushing around. So what do they do, of course they revert to form, and lose 4 straight.

............But back to my original post. The owners are upset that the players are getting too much of the gravy. And the vets are upset that too much of that gravy is going to untested rookies! I hope the Vets and the owners win this tug of war and peace returns to my favorite sport.

no, and no the astros don't play like it. the astros play like they've been trading talented youth away for brand names to put butts in seats for about 15 years straight. one year they actually had enough brand names to make a team of it, and that was neat BUT it was a total farce as they have ultimately proven. i guess we are lucky enough to have an owner willing to spend more than a-rod's yearly rake on the team (i think the marlins still have like 3 mil to go to top a-rod's 26/27 mil) but we are also damned with this owner who spends just enough to keep the masses interested. everyone bends over for him and his $8.25 luke-cold, flat beer presented with an attitude because i only gave you a .75 cent tip because the beer was 8 f'n dollars and i only came with 10 but i quit following them this year....

anyway

i think the rookies do get overpaid. by a lot. but it's not like veteran guys (the typical non-superstar 6-10 year vet) are getting underpaid. i think they just don't like the ever widening gap between them and now matt ryan. if some dudes played 17 years they wouldn't see 34 mil. matt ryan has played exactly squat for 34 mil. steep.

EDIT: i also wanted to say guys like urlacher who signed a HUGE deal (i think 9 yrs, 54 mil?) and now want more because everyone else is getting more are totally bogus. greedy, greedy, greedy. if i were the bears i wouldn't be paying him an extra dime.

I heard this on Sirius NFL this morning and am going to give the jist. They were talking to K- Jay Feeley from Miami.

It was suggested that one of the other reason the owners opted out, besides salaries being 60% of total revenue, was the revenue sharing between the teams. I dont know a whole lot about that issue, but given the business mindset on the owners side it does sound reasonable.

Feeley also said that he believes 90% of the players are for a rookie salary cap.

Upshaw was quoted as saying that rookies are not part of the NFL Players Union until after their contract is signed and it makes it harder to impose caps on their salaries. Which is a big bag of crap to me, wonder why some people dont want him in that position any more.

I really think this is a good thing. What the players are going to have to come to term with is benefits. They cannot sit there and boo hoo about not getting paid enough millions a year and then bitch about the lack of retirement benefits. They will have to come to terms that 60% of total revenue for thier salaries is not going to cut it, and come to term with the fact that they will need to redistribute some of that money to benefits instead of pure salary.

I think the thing that scares about this the most is that there is a definite split between the owners. Houston has no shot at another Super Bowl because the small market teams are mad at McNair for voting against a revenue sharing plan that would have been more beneficial to the small market teams.

If the owners are united and the union is united then the negotiators sit down and work out a plan. If one group is split it makes it that much harder because you are in essence trying to get three sides to agree. It's tough enough making two sides happy.

uuuhhh....

i'm almost sure that the small market teams' owners aren't sitting around holding grudges against a man who put 700 bajillion of his own dollars into buying, building, tearing down, and rebuilding a team. 700 bajillion. they realize that he is quite invested into this venture and while he may take into account all the options, he is most likely to pursue the ones that are more beneficial to him. i'd guess he would be a little ticked if anyone came up to him and questioned his decisions effecting his franchise. he's no al davis!!

The rift between the large market and small market owners is pretty well documented....with McNair being mentioned in just about every report about it as being one of the "haves".

This is an article from 2006 where the talk about the rift.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2354095

I have speculation from various reports that Politics among NFL owners have hurt our bids for another Super Bowl more than anything . It could all be completely untrue, but it has been mentioned many times from multiple sources. I don't know how much it really has to do with us losing out on the Super Bowl. I think the biggest factor is giving them to teams with new stadium....just like we got ours. The split among the owners however, appears to be real.

In any case McNair says he will be back in pursuit of another SB at some point in time.

The owners do seem to be at an impasse. I can see McNair's point of view that after putting out that $700M, which I would assume, was equally shared by the other league owners as a windfall profit. He has to amorttize that debt somehow, and the suite boxes at the stadiom are just one more way of doing so. If every team gets $85M/yr. as their share of the t.v. money, I can't see that any owner is that in need of "welfare"!

In the case of the huge rookie salaries, the union says rookies are not covered by the CBA until they sign their first contracts. If the owners try to control the huge bonuses, the agents howl colusion. The union needs to corral the agents I would say.

well, there has to be some way to do it since the nba seems be able to.

Uhmmmmm............next to baseball salaries (which are absolutly ridiculous), Basketball salaries are second worst, so what was your point?

Here's the NBA's rookie salary scale. Only the first two years are guaranteed. After that it's a team option (although almost no one give up on a high pick after 2 years.)

http://www.mynbadraft.com/NBA-Rookie-Salary-Scale-2007


According to this the first pick from last year will make about 18 million over the first four seasons. Matt Ryan just got 34 million gauranteed. There's a list of NBA guys making 13 to 20 million, but These are vets who are given "max" deals as determined by a percentage of the salary cap....at least I think that is how they coe up with the max numbers.

Compared to the NFL the NBA does a much better job of slotting rookies, and making sure the veterans who have paid there dues....get paid.

not sure what your point is. mine was that rookie caps are used in the NBA, so there has to be a way to do it. also, as noted by papabear, while nba players get paid obscene money, the rookies don't get the crazy money initially.

i think paying the #1 pick 18 million for four years sounds a whole lot better than the 34 million guarenteed, plus the rest of the contract if you hold onto the guy. could just be me though. seems like the negative impact of a bust would be much lower that way.

OK, then I beg your pardon. I thought it was a lot higher than that. Thanks.

really?!?!

wow. i hope mcnair acts like a super snooty rich girl around the small market owners then. it's his money, and his decisions are going to be the most protective/beneficial to his franchise that he bought with his money. who is anyone to question his decisions? unless he fires everyone and renames them the buttflaps nobody should!

about the super bowl-i never really expected us to get another. i mean we had our SB for our new stadium...whoever has a new stadium is going to get theirs...so we have to wait until nobody has a new stadium AND we have the best non-new stadium?

if it really is a split that's keeping a SB out of houston then that is really silly because you're denying a guy who has gone out of his way (to the tune of $700 bajillion;) not to mention how much it costs him to throw a SB and then wanting to do it again a few years later) to make FOOTBALL look good for everyone, not the texans. the league is probably not going to choose a shoddy, run-down stadium to go to over any new stadium for the SB. duh.

case and point: dallas. dallas is getting a new b-fing spectacle for a stadium. dallas will assuredly also be hosting a super bowl within the next 3-5 years. duh. because dallas' stadium is going to be unreal, and the HOLES that some teams play in are built from stone and slave labor.

I see us getting another SB, but not until the new stadiums stop going up every year.

I think there is a reason why players were looking to fire Gene Upshaw. Claiming that rookie contracts cannot fall under the CBA becasue rookies are not part of the Union until after they sign is pure lazy and to me not very good representation.

if rookies weren't part of the cba....

....why in the hell do they make so much money? how would they negotiate contracts at all? that pretty much takes away their leverage doesn't it?

"....why in the hell do they make so much money? how would they negotiate contracts at all? that pretty much takes away their leverage doesn't it?"

__________________
Look no further than the agents for your answer.

damn. i need to get an agent!!! get me some 30 mil for not doing anything. i'm good at not doing anything. i'm really, really good.

so clearly the answer to everyone's problems is to do away with agents? :D

why not make a rule that you aren't allowed to have a representative agent until you are allowed to be a free agent? limit rookie contracts by pick or round? make it so that rookies have representation from people assigned to them from the league (maybe give 5 players per rep.) and that rep. will deal with everything from contracts/terms negotiating to off-field or off-season issues that occur. or is that a bad idea?

KJ3

I dont think league representation would work. It seems like it could be considered a conflict of interests. Players get paid now because they pay their agents. League reps would get paid by the leauge and defiantley wouldnt work for the player the way an indipendent agent would.

The NFLPA would never let that happen. If the NFL tried it they would have lawsuits all over them. They would effectively be barring people from joining a union and since the average length of a career is only like 3.5 years or something this would severely cut down on the unions membership...and thus their power.

i disagree because that's exactly what these hypothetical league reps' job would be. pay them well enough, it's not like the NFL is struggling. 5 guys to check on isn't a lot...how many players do most agents cover?

i guess it would be barring from the union UNTIL they were able to become free agents, but isn't that exactly what would help? taking the power out of the rookies hands, putting it in the owners and vets? and if only vets were allowed into the union wouldn't they still be a majority over the "hypothetical league enforced rookie union" i'm talking about?

There was a CBA Q&A posted on the Jags site that was pretty informative. I've quoted one of the Qs with its respective A below along with the link, probably mostly for my benefit as I try to keep the cap page from being more than just a finger in the wind.
http://www.jaguars.com/news/article.aspx?id=6976

An economist has estimated that the NBA's rookie pay scale results in an additional $200 million per year going to veterans that would otherwise go to rookies. I've wondered if Upshaw is so against that kind of set up just so that he can agree to it in negotiations with the owners, look like he's giving something up, and get a concession in return. But I don't think so -- I think part of his resistance is due to the influence of the agents and the rest is ego and stubborness.

The large-market owners also don't like the small-market owners crying poor and wanting a bigger share while not, in the large-market owners' opinions, aggressively pursuing available revenue streams on their own. For example, wanting a larger piece of naming rights fees shared while playing in Ralph Wilson Stadium, Paul Brown Stadium, etc.

i wonder what the vets would think if they read that. besides the only rookies that get stupidly overpaid are the 1st round guys, so he's only really holding out for like 1/8th of the rookies.