TruthSeeker

I think your post confuses the issue. The players have full access to the income information from which the salary cap is set. Profits have nothing to do with the salary cap; it is based on gross revenues not on profits.

Since the players aren't involved in profits (i.e. whether an owner shows a profit of $1 or $100 million is irrelevant to what money the players get), there is no necessary reason for the player to have access to that information. Of course, the owners claim that they're not making enough profit so the players want to see the evidence of that claim. But the players don't really want the evidence of that claim nearly as much as they want to see all the data as shown by their refusal to accept an independent auditor's tracking of profit through the past 5 years for each of the 32 teams. And the bickering goes on...

lamafist

The ~$1 billion in deductible credits off the top of gross revenue means the players are contributing ~$560 million toward league expenses. They're being asked to double that commitment. I can't think of any other situation in which a party is being asked to contribute north of one billion dollars without being allowed to look at the books to see how it will be spent.

lamafist

As I see the privacy argument against financial disclosure to be absurd on its face, I don't really see much of a connection to the CBA.

As for privacy concerns of the players over the occasional blood test as part of the league's PED policy, I think the league has plenty of solid arguments that blood testing is actually necessary for both the continued success of the league as well as for maintaining safety conditions for the players.

The league has only to point to baseball to illustrate how inadequate policing of PED's can cause fans to question a sports' legitimacy and hurt the bottom line.

Furthermore, since the NFL creates a strong financial incentive for players to take performance enhancing drugs, if they don't actively attempt to police them, they are tacitly encouraging their use. On the NFL's side, this means potential liability. For the players, this means being potentially being put in a bind where those that choose not to harm themselves with performance enhancers are at a competitive disadvantage.

Of course, what makes the whole issue of HGH testing unfortunate and absurd is the fact that HGH doesn't work either as a performance enhancer or in accelerating heating. So far, all evidence suggests that what benefits it does convey, it does so only in HGH-deficient patients, and not at all in young men under 50 with no hormonal disorder.

AndyJohnson

There is no debate over verifying the revenue.
The NFL and NFLPA have an agreed upon process to verify the revenues and how they are calculated.
THERE IS NO DISPUTE ABOUT THAT.
The dispute is that after the revenue is split, the players want to see, analyze, comment upon, argue over, and make central to the negoatiations, what the owners do with their share.
Frankly, it is really none of their business, and the most surprising part of this entire process is that people do not see through this ploy as a way for the union to publicize the profit level as one big lump sum and make the owners look greedy.
If revenues are 9billion, and the players receive 4.5 billion of it as payroll, and the owners make a combined 1 billion in profit (including any form of pay to ownership) that would mean that the players receive 4 1/2 times what the owners do, after the owners pay all of the expenses, or about 80% of the after expense money. If that were the real true case, the NFLPA would shout from the rooftops that the owners MADE A BILLION DOLLARS AND THOSE GREEDY BASTARDS WANT MORE.
Of course, on top of that, they will identify expenses that they can spin as illegitimate, further driving public opinion against the owners, without full disclosure of all the facts.
Would many fans even pay attention to the fact that this is only 11% of the revenue and that the players make 4 1/2 times more? Nope, they would criticize the greed of 'the billionaires'. Its already happening here, without even knowing the numbers.
I don't know how people cannot see through this tactic.
It is simply ridiculous for owners to turn over such information so that their adversary can go tell a story that only includes facts it wants to include.

Gwedd

Well said, Andy. Thank you.

Joker

I think the entire running back corps of the Minnesota Vikings should be screened for LSD...

TruthSeeker

It's a reasonable point. But they did just a few years back. Why? Because it's just another way of dividing the money. They could easily have made the formula 50% of all revenues (or whatever number would have worked out to about the same split between owners and players) and then this argument is no longer valid.

As I said before, both sides want to maximize their money. The owners providing more expense information will lead to more specific complaints and PR spin by the players but is unlikely to make much difference in a final settlement.

Making opening the books a non-negotiable element of the negotiations was the players way of telling the owners to either give the players leverage (from financial information) or negotiations would stop. On the flip side, the owners demands have been high and are still high (although I think there's been significant movement; you may disagree).

This is the way negotiations sometimes go. When I first heard Smith about a month after he was hired, I thought to myself that he was not a good hire from a football fans perspective who are simply hoping that NFL football would be played. I'm not surprised at all that he's been a give no quarter type of negotiator and has pushed this into the courts. That's exactly what he sound like a few years ago.

lamafist

The players waived any claim to see demand financial statements during the last CBA because they knew for a fact the deal they were getting was better for them than any previous - for the first time, the NFL was recognizing the players' claim to proceeds of local revenue streams. There was no need to rock the boat with insistence on financial disclosure.

This time around, the players stand to lose ground in this CBA for the first time since before '93. The owners want to double the players' contribution to expenses; in return the players are asking for financial disclosure. Neither of these requests are per se unreasonable. I think there is a fair bit of misunderstanding about the players' motives in demanding financial disclosure.

First off, any documents will certainly come with a non-disclosure agreement barring the player reps from making public statements about their contents. Second, the players voicing specific complaints to the owners would be, in and of itself, huge progress. Specific complaints can be negotiated over - at the present state of indeterminacy, there's an impasse. Lastly, I think the owners underestimate the earnestness of the players' stated distrust of the owners. The union can't sell even a very reasonable deal to their constituents if they can't say they know for sure it's a fair deal.

Several owners have already come forward and said they're willing to show they're books -- one saying he'd do so with pride over his business dealings. I believe Kraft feels the same way, but is too disciplined to break ranks like that.