AndyJohnson

Here is how I would handle the CBA issue if I could speak for all owners.

I have 53 job openings for the position of football player.
I am offering a salary of $300,000 per year for these positions.
That means my employees earn in the top 1% of all Americans.
This position has many benefits as well, medical, dental, 401k, and an aggressive profit sharing plan. At the end of each year, based on job performance and and the profitiability of my company I will designate a percentage of my profit to be distributed to my employees.
These profit sharing contributions vest at 20% per year (i.e fully in 5 years). If you quit and take a different job you lose the unvested portion. (An employee retention incentive)
The fringe benefits are excellent, including travel, 6 months of paid vacation, many free meals, hotel accomodations when travelling, and a generous expense account.
Employment is at will.
I require a no-compete clause that says if you resign your position you may not work in this industry for 2 years.


I am accepting applications.

Most of the qualified candidates will find that this compensation package is substantially more than what could be earned in any other field. (Mr Sapp, this is much better than the next best offer your qualificiations would earn you, which is about minimum wage)


Memo to accounting:

I have just slashed payroll expense 75%. Please initiated a marketing initiative to inform our customers that we have just reduced the price of our product (tickets) to 1/3 of what they used to be. Inform the family of 4 that instead of $225 for tickets to attend a game, it will now cost $75.




Anyone think there TRULY is a loser in this? Owners continue to maintain profit levels consistent with their investment. The 1696 players on NFL rosters earn income in the top 1% of all Americans, when for 90% there next best job opportunity earns them about $50,000.

When we comment on how the fans are treated in the current NFL, I dont think we should be looking at the profits the owners are earning on their vast investment, but instead at how much WE pay to make players earn an average income of about 1.8 million a year. Cut that to a reasonable amount and the cost of being a fan would never have become what it is.

Quite frankly, this type of an approach would lead to the following:

A labor strike
Scab players
The disollution of the NFLPA
All players coming back to their jobs
One miserable year as an NFL fan

Then an NFL that is identical to the one we see today with the sole exception of the fans paying a REASONABLE price for the employee expense of the company they choose to buy a product from.

I'd be fine with that.

PatsSteve1

If fans don't like the price of an NFL game they should do something else. There's no right to NFL football the way fans would like it. IMO, this is just fan whining. If you don't like a product or the price of a product, buy something else

AndyJohnson

So, you are fine with paying more for football so that a player can make 60 times what he would in his next best choice of a job instead of just 6 times? That doesnt make any sense to me.

By the way, I live in an area that precludes me from going to many NFL games, so I am not footing the bill. I hardly think I am whining about the cost.

What I am saying is that pro sports have grown out of control in what a player is paid, and the primary result is that an NFL player makes enormously more than he NEEDS TO BE PAID TO ACCEPT THE JOB and the fans are funding it.

Do you really think that many NFL players would choose not to be football players if the salary was $300,000? I dont.
If the going price to get them to accpet the job is $300,000, why pay them $3,000,000?

Here is an analogy.
Supermarket cashiers unionize nationwide. The union is so strong that it can prevent any non union cashier from working in a grocery store.
The cashiers demand a raise to $1,000,000 per year salary.
The supermarket owners will go out of business if they don't accept those terms.

Guess what happens? Your food bills goes from $400 a month to $4000 a month, and the grocery owner doesnt make an extra penny of profit.

I suppose that would just be whining about the price of food? I guess I should not eat if I dont like it?

It truly is the same thing. But we have gotten to a point (mostly due to George Steinbrenner, by the way) where athletes can get overpaid by enormous amounts, and the owners truly dont care because they will make the same profit whether payroll expense is 16,000,000 or 160,000,000 simply by passing the cost on to fans.

BelichickFan

Me too, I pay my $159, or whatever, for the DirecTV season ticket and that's it. I pay less for that than Patriots fans pay just for parking at the 8 home games. The money involved is shameful.

PatsSteve1

[QUOTE=AndyJohnson]So, you are fine with paying more for football so that a player can make 60 times what he would in his next best choice of a job instead of just 6 times? That doesnt make any sense to me.

* Yes I am actually. Just like I'm fine with paying $100 sometimes to see a concert I'd like to see. Get over it. Some people are in a position to make more money than you. They have talent in a profession where they can get millions to play football. Reese Witherspoon just signed to do a flic for $29 million. Should that bother me, too? Life isn't fair and us talentless slobs don't get to make millions. I go to 4 to 6 Patriot games a year. I live in the SF Bay area so I have to travel to each one and usually stay in a hotel and get a rental car. I am not wealthy. It's pretty much what I do with my vacation time. That's my choice. I don't have a problem if some make another choice. I wonder if the waiting list for Pats season tickets will disapear now -

PatsWickedPissah

Obviously AJ is against the capitalist free market system and wants owners to collude to force potential employees to risk their current bodily health and middle aged health for below market wages.

Miguel

PWP, excellent analysis.

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kurtinelson

I have to agree. Its the fans that ultimately set the market value for tickets and ultimately player salary. Unfortunatley, there are many fans willing to spend large sums of money on sports like the NFL/MLB/NHL and they've set the bar for ticket prices higher than what a lot of people are willing to spend.

Supply and demand.

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"Tonight a dynasty is born" - Ricky Proehl before the start of Super Bowl XXXVI


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smg93

What if I as a player feel that my contribution is greater than what the owner has determined? I will have no choice but to accept it even if another owner is willing to give me a bigger bonus for the type of job I do because the no complete clause will cut 2 years off my career. Btw, a no compete clause for employees is very hard to enforce and if I'm not mistaken has been declared illegal by the Supreme Court. What still is in effect is a non disclosure agreement. No compete's however have a propensity to create lawsuits for an organization. It'll be tough to run an efficient business when your legal department is as large as the number of football players you have on the field! (then again you would be creating more jobs for Lawyers so that's good for those guys. Haha.)

Regarding the 1696 players earning in the top 1% tier: Unfortunately, pay scales in the real world are based on the amount of income a particular employee can bring to the company and not on what percentage tier his salary would take him too. The players get the salaries they get not just because of ticket prices but because of the TV revenue that the teams earn because they put players out on the field. In the present form of the CBA the primary income number is derived from 60% of Total Revenue, the bulk of which comes from TV deals. The TV revenues are that high because of the number of people who tune in to the NFL. The greater the number of viewers, the more they can charge for advertising and the networks get their money back that way, obviously. That's why players salaries are this high because their performance on the field is tied directly to the number of viewers, which is again tied directly to the amount the networks can charge for advertising space. An arbitrary number that puts them at the top 1% wage earners in the country would not be a clear representation of their value to the NFL. If we followed that, we might as well change our way of life to the communist economic model.

Lastly, a strike of the players followed by the disbanding of the NFLPA would probably be classified as Union Busting. Again, something that's against the law. But maybe that's ok, since under this structure you would have a full complement of in house lawyers for each team. I guess they have to have something to do when they're not battling players in court on the legality of non compete agreements.