Tag: 2011 NFL lockout (Page 12 of 16)

      Goodell wants NFLPA to return to the bargaining table

      March 17, 2011 /
      Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League (NFL), makes a statement after negotiations collapsed between the NFL and National Football League Players’ Association (NFLPA) in Washington March 11, 2011. The last real hope for a quick end to the dispute ended when the union representing the players (NFLPA) filed a court application to dissolve itself after failing to reach an agreement with league and owners over a range of issues. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL EMPLOYMENT BUSINESS)

      According to a report by NBCSports.com, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has sent a letter to all players encouraging them to return the bargaining table to conclude a new bargaining agreement.

      “We want you to understand the offer that we made to the NFLPA,” Goodell wrote. “The proposal was made to avoid a work stoppage. Each passing day puts our game and our shared economics further at risk. We believe the offer presented a strong and fair basis for continuing negotiations, allowing the new league year and free agency to begin, and growing our game in the years to come.”

      Goodell then summarizes the key elements of the proposal: maximum salary and benefits per team of $141 million per club in 2011, with maximum salary and benefits per team of $161 million in 2014; free agency for players with four or more accrued season; reduced draft-choice compensation for restricted free agents; extensive changes in offseason workouts; reduction of preseason and regular-season padded practices; increased days off; retention of the 16-game season through 2012 with no change to 18 games without the players’ agreement; expanded injury guarantees, with up to $1 million in the year after an injury occurs; continuing medical coverage for life; immediate increases in pension for pre-1993 players; a new rookie wage scale that would make $300 million per draft class available for veteran pay and player benefits; abd external arbitration of all drug and steroids appeals.

      If the players were smart, they would return to the bargaining table because going through the courts will only make the situation messier than it already is. The two sides need to keep the lines of communication open, learn how to compromise, agree to a new deal and go back to gauging the fans for billions of dollars.

      That said, Goodell’s words will probably fall on deaf ears. Chargers’ linebacker Kevin Burnett recently called Goodell a “blatant liar” on a San Diego radio station and questioned what the commissioner has done to improve the league. I would imagine that other players share Burnett’s point of view and thus, the NFLPA will stay the course (which means going through the court system instead of heading back to the bargaining table).

      External Sports, NFL

      You’re not living the High Life if you can’t figure out how to share $9 billion

      March 17, 2011 /
      The NFL logo is seen on a trailer parked near the New Meadowlands Stadium where the New York Jets and New York Giants NFL football teams play home games in East Rutherford, New Jersey, March 14, 2011. The NFL has officially announced a lockout of players by team owners following the move by the players’ union to dissolve themselves and pursue court action against the league. REUTERS/Mike Segar (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL BUSINESS)

      This series is sponsored by Miller High Life – The Official Beer Of You. Find out how you can get sponsored by Miller High Life.

      If your league grew 7.5% last year and now you can’t figure out a way to best divvy up $9 billion so that fans can enjoy a season next fall, then you automatically aren’t living the High Life.

      As expected, the NFL labor situation has gone from bad to worse as the players have decertified and the owners have locked them out. While there are many factors at play, the root of the bickering is revenue – as in, how to share it. The owners want the players to take a paycut, while the players want to know why when the league’s profits and popularity keep growing.

      Meanwhile, the fans continue to suffer this offseason. This is supposed to be a time for free agent news, draft rumors and a renewed sense of hope that your team will compete next year (even though it won’t…sorry, Buffalo fan). Instead, the draft is the only thing fans have to look forward to and the players and owners are doing their best to ruin that now, too. (The NFLPA has instructed top prospects not to attend Radio City Music Hall, so things could get real awkward when Roger Goodell starts announcing names on stage in New York next month.)

      The worst part about the situation (besides the fact that there may not be a season next year) is that neither side is getting anywhere. Judge David Doty (who has ruled more in favor of the players than the owners when it comes to previous NFL cases) ruled that the owners couldn’t use the $4 billion from renegotiated TV contracts to fund their lockout, so the players seemingly had the upper hand in talks. Thinking they had friendly Judge Doty in their back pocket if they went to court, the players decided to reject a last-second offer by the owners last Friday and decertify. The only problem is that they didn’t have Judge Doty because a different judge has been assigned to their case. Now it appears the playing field has been leveled again.

      The NFL has grown in leaps and bounds because of its fans. Now the league is a victim of its own success because fans are getting more impatient by the day. With no resolution in sight, everyone may have to wait until September to get back to living the High Life.

      External Sports, NFL

      Enjoy it this year NFL fans, because there may not be a draft in 2012

      March 16, 2011 /

      For the past two days, columnist Michael Silver has taken to the pages of Yahoo! Sports and Twitter to rant about the NFL draft.

      No, not because he thinks it’s wrong for the NFLPA to instruct top prospects not to attend Radio City Music Hall next month and no, not to lash out about the fact that players and owners are ruining the Holy Grail of the NFL offseason.

      He’s ranting that the NFL draft should become yet another victim of the current labor dispute.

      Silver offers a cold dose of reality when it comes to the draft: that it’s not as important as 1,7000 players fighting for their financial livelihoods. And as much as I’d like to punch him in the ear and tell him to get on board with the rest of us draftnits, he’s right.

      He’s also right about something that will really make devote draft followers sick to their stomachs: The fact that there may not be a draft in 2012 if the owners and players can’t agree to a new CBA.

      In the absence of a collective bargaining agreement, the draft is kind of … how shall I say this gently? … illegal. The notion that a person trying to ply his trade can be denied the opportunity to negotiate his/her services on the open market – in this case, that he is prohibited from signing with 31 of the NFL’s 32 franchises – isn’t simply un-American; it’s also a violation of federal law.

      In fact, the controversy over the upcoming draft would likely be moot if not for a stipulation in the recently expired CBA that this year’s draft would proceed as scheduled. Otherwise, the players would have had an excellent chance of convincing a judge to disallow it. And if there’s still no CBA a year from April, even if the players are successful in blocking the lockout and the owners merely impose rules while the two sides wage their fight over the antitrust lawsuit, you can forget about a draft happening in 2012.

      Even though the situation looks bleak, I’m willing to bet that most fans believe everything will eventually work out. That there will be a football season next year and the events of these past months will fade away once that ball is placed on the tee in Week 1. But Silver makes a great observation here. If the courts rule against the owners’ lockout, that doesn’t mean that a new CBA will be put in place. The players and owners still have to agree to a new deal and thus, we could be back to square one after next season even though the lockout has ended. How nauseating does that sound?

      In the meantime, we can still enjoy the draft but read Silver’s column in full and then tell me you’re still excited for the end of April to come. Personally, I think Silver’s anti-draft rants can be toned down a notch. He seems to be revealing in the fact that he has solid points and those points suck the life right out of whatever excitement fans still have left about this offseason. As a NFL fan and a diehard draft follower myself I want to say to him, “Are you enjoying all of this, Eyebrows? Are you enjoying the fact that we don’t have free agency and trade rumors to chew on for the next couple of months and now the powers at be are also trying to ruin the draft, too? Because it sure seems like it.”

      But as a realist, I say: “Damn it Silver, right on.”

      External Sports, NFL, NFL Draft

      Were the owners more flexible in negotiations than players?

      March 15, 2011 /
      NFL Executive Vice-President and General Counsel Jeff Pash (C) talks to reporters about negotiations with players association representatives as they seek an agreement as a deadline looms for a player lockout, in Washington, March 4, 2011. The NFL and the players’ union agreed to extend talks on a new collective agreement for another week, the League-owned NFL Network reported Friday. The chief sticking point in the talks is how to distribute the league’s $9 billion in annual revenues. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL BUSINESS)

      Jim Trotter of SI.com wrote a great piece about the breakdown of the NFL labor talks and in the article, he writes that the owners felt they were more flexible in the negotiations than the players were.

      Owners also argue they were more flexible in the negotiations than the players. On Friday the two sides were $640 million apart on the 2011 salary cap number; the NFL offered to split the difference. The union, however, would not move from its best offer of an additional $137.5 million a year for four years without a detailed accounting of each team’s books, a demand it had requested as early as May 2009. Says Pash, “In November ’09 we asked for an 18 percent rollback, and we didn’t get that either. Demands that you make before your first-ever face-to-face bargaining session might not be where you end up two years later.”

      Ultimately, players contend that the owners initiated the standoff, so the burden of proof rests with them. “Not once have the players asked for more money during this negotiation,” Brees said on Friday. “Past players sacrificed a great deal to give us what we have now, and we will not lay down for a second to give that up.”

      It may come down to a court to decide if they have to.

      Because of the media blackout, there’s not a whole lot of information available on this labor dispute. Of course the owners are going to feel like they were more flexible, as I’m sure the players felt like they were more than fair with their demands. We the fans and media can only go off of what certain people tell us because we weren’t in the meeting rooms.

      That said, there’s a real possibility that the union overplayed its hand here. They knew they had an advantage in talks once Judge David Doty ruled that the owners couldn’t use the $4 billion from renegotiated TV contracts to fund their lockout. The players then figured that if they decertified and their case went in front of a judge, they always had Doty (who has ruled often ruled in the players’ favor when it comes to previous NFL cases) in their back pocket.

      Thus, when the owners came to the table with a last-second proposal on Friday before the lockout, the players wouldn’t budge on their offer. But they may have screwed themselves because Judge Susan Nelson will oversee their case, not Doty. So while they still could wind up winning big, they may have bypassed a decent offer and a way to end this charade before the CBA expired last week. Instead, they decided to go to court and now here we are.

      When the dust finally settles on this issue, I wonder which side will have more regret: the owners for not opening their books (even though they did agree to show the players five years worth of aggregated league wide profitability information), or the players for not taking that last-second proposal last Friday.

      External Sports, NFL

      NFLPA trying to get one representative from every team to show up at faux draft party

      March 15, 2011 /

      Peter King writes in his latest edition of MMQB that the NFLPA is trying to get veterans from every team to show up at an undetermined location in New York so that when the college players are drafted next month, they’ll have a future teammate, not commissioner Roger Goodell, greet them. This news comes a day after reports surfaced that the NFLPA has instructed prospects that were invited to Radio City Music Hall to boycott the draft. (A claim they’re now denying.)

      Will it work? One agent with several prospective first-round picks thinks it will, telling me this morning: “What is the first round of the draft for the NFL? It’s a TV show, a show that makes the league a lot of money. They’re going to be asking young men to shake the hand of a commissioner [Roger Goodell] who is trying to lock them out. They’re going to be asking young men to help the league put on this big TV production. And I can tell you this: There’re a few quarterbacks who could get picked high in this draft and the NFL will invite to New York. All those quarterbacks would do by attending the draft for the NFL is giving DeMarcus Ware more incentive to knock their blocks off the first time they line up across the line of scrimmage from him.”

      Forget DeMarcus Ware or any other opposing player: what would a veteran teammate do to a rookie that defied the NFLPA’s instructions not to attend the draft? Could you imagine being a first-year player who attended the draft and then had to answer to Ray Lewis once the football season resumed?

      I feel bad for these college players. Don’t forget that these are just kids and they deserve the opportunity to shake Goodell’s hand and stand up on stage at Radio City Music Hall. They’re now pawns in something that hasn’t concerned them until this moment and they have to go along with it because the labor dispute is much bigger than them. It’s much bigger than shaking Goodell’s hand, standing up on stage with family and snapping that picture holding up that No. 1 jersey. It’s much bigger than the draft.

      But even if they got the opportunity to take part in the normal draft festivities, the moment they shook Goodell’s hand they would enter the land of lawsuits, lockouts and labor disputes. It’s just the misfortune of being the class of 2011.

      External Sports, NFL, NFL Draft

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