It’s the FANS’ love of the game that counts. Today, tomorrow, and the next day. Both sides have somewhat lost site of that.

It’s the same ongoing argument, only a different day

I’m sure everyone here read the Owner’s final offer that was published on PFT by FLorio. It seemed to be the best offer by any owner of any business in America.

As a business owner, I can not understand splitting revenue before expenses. It is absolutely crazy and a terrible business model. The Owner’s got themselves into this mess by agreeing to the last Lopsided CBA, and now they want to correct their mistake, in a down economy. I can’t fault them for that given the financial risk they take.

It is not in any Union’s charter to give ground. Unions always want more, always ask for more, and only take less when a business is in trouble, with the guarantee that they get it all back after a return to profitability. There was a time that Unions were good for this country, but that time is long since gone.

To the average Joe, like me, how is it that a person making $2,3,5,10Million per year is not making enough money, or yet how they couldn’t make 10% less and share in expenses and still not be making enough?

I think the NFLPA is about 80% wrong here and took advantage in the first place. Their greed and misrepresentation will not allow them to see that. The players want every single dollar earned by owners on the table, yet the players (top tier) don’t want to put their $Millions in endorsements on the table. Fair is fair, the NFLPA is not fair, and the fans lose, and lose, and lose.

Go Lightning!!!

To Joe’s knowledge, the only two NFL owners that went broke were Leonard Tose and Art Modell and in both cases it had nothing to do with their NFL teams not making money.

Tose had a gambling addiction so severe he was finally banned from Atlantic City. He had to sell the team because of his debts and he died a penniless man, living in a modest studio apartment in downtown Philly that was paid for by former Eagles employees who pitied him.

Modell made horrible investments in his non-football business ventures and sucked all the money out of his football team to keep him afloat before he too had to sell the club or face financial ruin.

To lose money with an NFL team is nearly impossible. Look at Bill Bidwill and Mike Brown as Exhibits-A and 1A. Drunks in a bar could run a team just as well as those two clowns and they are swimming in cash.

A clarification from a previous post: the late Art Rooney didn’t buy the Steelers. He seized control of the team in a poker bet. (That’s a fact).

One, the owners want an additional 1 billion taken off the table (for a total of 2 billion) before revenue sharing can take place. It is the owners, not the players who want this change to take place. It is not status quo. One billion dollars less is a pretty big pill to swallow and it’s not any easier when the owners are saying “trust us” when it comes to their rationale for why they want the additional money. In other words, they haven’t given any cause for a NEED to request it, they just want that extra money. Good for them, but there’s a problem…

Two, it’s fine for the owners to lock out the players. The owners can do as they did in 1982 and 1987 and hire replacement players. Great. Except despite these tactics, the owners eventually AGREED to a deal with the players in both cases. This gets to the bigger point about bargaining and yes, about leverage. If the players are just “employees” and should take what the owners give them, then why hasn’t the replacement player thing worked yet for the NFL? Oh that’s right, the funny thing called supply and demand. People pay to see the best athletes play a certain sport, not scrubs. And if the NFL loses all of their best athletes to the UFL…then your buddies the owners become the Not For Long League….funny how a free market economy works. It’s worth a look up on the ole google or wiki’s.

Bottom line, the leverage between both sides are more even than some of the owner-huggers here want to believe it is.

And I’m not saying they’re going broke, just that it’s cutting into their profits and (as owners) they are the ones that should dictate what the profit margin is… not the people hired to do the work. If the people doing the work (whether employee, sub-contractor, whatever…) dictated to business owners what the profit margin should be and what percentage the workers get, not a single person with money would be stupid enough to invest in a business and most businesses would shut down or go bankrupt. I’m also not saying we should let the owners go crazy and pay minimum wage to guys that put their health on the line for very short careers. The players get paid very well, and should continue to get paid very well. But for the good of the game, both sides need to negotiate, not get further apart on the issues. The draft and free agency weren’t even issues when this began. If they were, it would have been the players that opted out of the CBA instead of the owners. But now, all of a sudden, since this is in the courts, the players are widening the gap between themselves and the owners, taking football even further from the fans.

I get what he is saying. Players do normally play for the love of the game, at least initially. I played a little college basketball, and that is certainly why I played it. However, one thing I disagree with him on is that as a player becomes a pro-caliber player, that focus shifts from love of the game to how much he can get paid for it. There is nothing wrong with that in my opinion, especially when there are so many people (family, agents, coaches, fans, etc.) hanging all over them encouraging them to make their money. I am a firm believer that if you are gifted at a particular skill set, you should be rewarded for it. A great lawyer gets paid for that skill set, a great doctor for his skill set, etc. etc. Athletes generate a tremendous amount of income, and as long as that is the case, I have no problem with however much they get paid. The day I want them to get paid less is the day I stop watching sports, which will be never.

As for the owners, I don’t have a problem with them wanting more money. As a business owner myself (although a far less successful one), I understand and accept that. No matter what the business, you will always have employees and outsiders saying the owner makes too much money; it’s just the way it is. Bottom line is that it is their business, and they have that right.

As for where I stand on this lockout, I really don’t care who is to blame. I just want the damn thing over. My biggest gripe is not that there is a lockout, but that the two sides can’t even get together and work out a deal. They should be meeting every single day. It seems to me this is a business deal that has gotten way too personal. That is never a good thing. I have always said to stick them in a non air-conditioned room with no food or water and tell them they can’t come out until a deal is signed. Or you could just stick them in a room with Thomas, forcing them to listen to him talk about football, unless they can come to a deal.

The owners are the ones that invested money in buying a team. They took the risk that they could run the team in such a way as to be the most profitable.

None of the breathing members of the McCaskey/Bidwill/Mara/Rooney/Ford/Brown/York families put forth any risk to obtain their teams; it was handed to them. Same could be said for Team Glazer. Yeah, NFL owners who purchased teams put up mountains of cash, but not sure what sort of risk they had.

Going broke with an NFL team is worse than Donald Trump owning casinos that go bankrupt… which until recently never imagined would be possible.

Both sides planned this, prepared for this, and it came down to exactly what was expected. A lockout and no football. Both sides waiting for the other to flinch. Both digging in their heels for the long battle ahead.

So, the question is whether one side is right and the other is wrong? I wouldn’t quite put it that way. But I do think the owners of the teams and the operators of the NFL know how to run a league, keep things competitive and exciting, and increase the fanbase (thereby increasing revenue). That’s in the best interest of BOTH sides. More money to split between them, more to bicker about next CBA…

It takes two to TANGO and it takes two to TANGLE.

You can either make the dance appealing or ugly it is their choice.

For those too slow to comprehend let me try break it down for you:

1. McNulty writes = “I’m rooting hard for the owners.” Players get “greedy, arrogant and stupid. They get drunk with power.” “I’m rooting for the owners — because they care more about the game, because the players care only about themselves.”

2. Carlson combats this with examples where owners are “greedy arrogant and stupid.” Points out times when the owners did not and do not care about the game along with times Players did care about the game. Thus Carlson states his disagreement with McNulty’s points.

Now idiots on message boards call out Carlson for siding with the players.

Here is a newsflash people, when you disagree with an argument, it does not automatically mean you believe the strict opposite point. Often times it can be due to lack of merit a person makes in their own statements that calls for a response and critique.

An example would be if someone said that welfare should not exist because everyone that uses it is a drunk/retarded bucs message board poster that deserves to die. Just because I argue that their statement is incorrect on merit does not believe that I believe in welfare should exist for all drunk/retarded bucs message board posters like the first commenter on this article.

Get it?

But, what about the owners? Just for the money? Well, that’s not entirely incorrect, because even their love for the game and desire to improve the game and the fans experience of the game is driven by greater revenue. Make the game better, more competitive, a better fan experience and you will make more money. The owners are the ones that invested money in buying a team. They took the risk that they could run the team in such a way as to be the most profitable. The players never made that risk, they never invested a dime of their own money to make the NFL work. The owners care about the game because the game makes them money. It’s a business and the better you run your business the more profitable it is. Sometimes that includes more expenses (in this case because ticket prices are maxed out for the economy and voters are not approving tax increases for stadium improvements, yet demand a better game experience), so the owners are spending that money making improvements and expect a return on investment. The players aren’t paying for stadium improvements, it’s not coming out of their pocket.

Until now, when the economy has slowed down and the owners are experiencing higher expenses without increased revenue. So, the owners are looking to cut expenses, namely the revenue going to the players. In return, they’re offering better retirement benefits and a safer work environment.

Face it, they’re both in it for the money. The owners have even dropped the amount they’d like to see come their way. The players? They’ve been adamant about the current revenue being shared not changing, meanwhile looking to increase their demands with changes to the draft, free agency, etc. The players don’t run the business and are looking to maximize what they can get…. even if it damages the game for the future. That’s just sad.

I agree with Admin Joe, life time benefits and pension plans have not done so well for the auto industry or the airlines. If you want to see your prices go through the roof, those are sure fire ways to do it. The fan will pay the bill for sure. The UFL may be licking their chops at the players not under contract…I think Joe wrote about that a few weeks ago.