NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell paints a picture of the new National Football League that would emerge if the players have their way in the current labor dispute.
Goodell makes his case in his story Football’s Future if the Players Win published in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. Goodell asserts that the new, player-driven NFL would be one that has:
No minimum team payroll. Some teams could have $200 million payrolls while others spend $50 million or less.
No minimum player salary. Many players could earn substantially less than today’s minimums.
No standard guarantee to compensate players who suffer season- or career-ending injuries.Players would instead negotiate whatever compensation they could.
No league-wide agreements on benefits. The generous benefit programs now available to players throughout the league would become a matter of individual club choice and individual player negotiation.
No limits on free agency. Players and agents would team up to direct top players to a handful of elite teams. Other teams, perpetually out of the running for the playoffs, would serve essentially as farm teams for the elites.
No league-wide rule limiting the length of training camp or required off-season workout obligations. Each club would have its own policies.
No league-wide testing program for drugs of abuse or performance enhancing substances.Each club could have its own program—or not.
“Is this the NFL that fans want?” pleads Goodell. “A league where carefully constructed rules proven to generate competitive balance—close and exciting games every Sunday and close and exciting divisional and championship contests—are cast aside? Do the players and their lawyers have so little regard for the fans that they think this really serves their interests?”
Goodell works for the owners. He is partisan on the issue. His representation of the players’ desires could be is slanted. There is little doubt, though, that this generation of players would like to see a lot of these things come to pass.
Full disclosure: I am a management guy who gets off on the business strategy of football teams, the Washington Redskins in particular. I want to sympathize with the owners, but those guys are bleeping idiots.
In 2006 when the CBA was expiring, the owners spent the better part of the critical owners meeting in-fighting big market-small market issues rather than working the labor issue.
With time running out, the owners agreed to the CBA extension knowing that the bump in the player’s share of broadcast revenue was unacceptable to them. The extension included language to opt out of the deal, and a whole set rules to continue business in the event of an opt out. This was brilliant.
The rules included a Lockout, a contract version of a neutron bomb. As we learned from the Cold War, neutron bombs are an effective tool for peace when you threaten to use it, but a catastrophe if you actually do. The owners invoked the lockout, the dumb shirts, instead of continuing operation under opt out rules while talking to players (who didn’t want to talk to them).
The lockout destroyed all trust the players had in the owners. They fled to the protection of the court. That’s just what the owners do not want, but that where the matter will stay.
The worst blunder of all was to extend the agreement in 2006 rather than fight it out. Then, they would have dealt with player’s union executive director Gene Upshaw. Upshaw was unique among labor leaders. The Hall of Famer understood pro football before the Super Bowl era and clearly understood how players benefited by the orderly growth and financial health of the league. What’s more, he saw the union as a player in building the game even as he sought better working conditions for players. The union was very much the owners partner and was as much responsible for making pro football America’s game as Paul Tagliabue or any owner. No other union does that. (They should.) The owners came to see Upshaw as “just a guy” on the other side of the table.
Upshaw saw the danger of runaway salaries that plagues pro basketball and baseball. Upshaw understood that player conduct could damage the flow of revenue to the game. Upshaw is the reason Maurice Clarett could not enter the league as a freshman out of Ohio State, because some dumb team somewhere would have signed him flaws and all (Oh, wait.). Upshaw is the reason the football commissioner has near unfettered power to discipline players (kiss that one good-bye) and a rigorous drug testing policy. Upshaw as much as anyone was the reason the NFL is the model–and envy–of every other pro sport.
Gene Upshaw was under increasing criticism from 21st century players who saw him as too cozy with the owners. The players replaced Upshaw with a litigator, DeMaurice Smith. Lawyers represent clients. They defend the client’s every benefit. It’s what they do. That’s what Smith did. The good of the game was neither his interest nor his world view.
It’s worrisome that Upshaw said before he died, that if the CBA went away, the players would not again agree to a salary cap. The cap forced teams to make astute choices to build their roster. Those that did, became perennial contenders. It kept a lid on competitive owners otherwise unable discipline their spending habits.
Goodell is on target that the game will change in ways that fans will not like. Fans who think past the start of training camp will see the danger and agree. Dumb shirt owners brought most of this upon themselves.
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