NFLPA chief: 2011 lockout chances "14" on a scale of 1-10

[pats1]

NFLPA leader says lockout almost certain - NFL- nbcsports.msnbc.com

 

[miDeuce]

There goes another lost year in Brady's career...

 

[slash83]

Damn the year to go by will take forever without any football lol

 

[Fball]

An even freakier part of that article is the quote from the players side saying it would be "impossible" to bring a salary cap back into a new CBA if next year is uncapped.

An NFL w/out a cap, not just next year but many years after...doesn't sound good.

 

[Sean Pa Patriot]

This is serious stuff.. I cant believe the owners want to kill this game... But that is the road they are taking... I know its early yet , and people can joke all you want.. Im not sure so many people will be so quick to come back to the best game going right now.. Football is more huge now than it was 20 plus years ago when they almost kill the sport... I guess Kraft will be fine with the Patriot place , but he will have empty stadium and that ticket waiting list will be quickly whitlle down.. a lock out is the death nail, no football in 2011 is bad for everyone involved..


Now will it get to it, I hope not , alot of posturing is going on.. Its gloom now, but the 11th hour is not here yet , and hopefullly cooler heads will pervail... But 2011 and no football is bad, and hope it does not get to it...

 

[BradyFTW!]

If they (collectively) are dumb enough to lock out, then that's their problem. I'm not going to get worked up over a potential year without football: in all likelihood, I'll probably just care that much less about the game when it does come back.

 

[DaBruinz]

It's not the owners who want to "kill the game." It's the players who do because they believe that they should be getting 90% of the money and the owners should only be getting 10%. What these players fail to realize is how much debt some of these owners have incurred to pamper their sorry arses.

Every single one of them should watch the movie "MAJOR LEAGUE" and see what life COULD be like. With sub-standard equipment and stuff..

Personally, the players are taking too much as it is.

Also, the idea that you can't go back to the salary cap after it's gone is BS. They sure can. Just the same way they did when it was introduced.

I'll be honest, if the players insist on keeping the money breakdown the same, then the owners should insist that the medical expenses be shared by the players. That, at the end of the year, the total medical expenses paid out gets tallied and then broken down across each team and that money come out of the player's week 17 paycheck.

I would also charge the players for the security and parking.

The Players have gotten ridiculous in their demands and they need to know that without the owners, there are no stadiums for them to play in. There are not multi-year contracts with the TV stations that pour in more than 50% of the revenue for the league.

Now, I am not saying that the owners are blameless here. They aren't as they gave too much to Upshaw the last time around without the players giving up anything. Well, now it's time to pay the piper. Nothing is free. And that's something the players and owners both need to realize.

 

[Sean Pa Patriot]

It's not the owners who want to "kill the game." It's the players who do because they believe that they should be getting 90% of the money and the owners should only be getting 10%. What these players fail to realize is how much debt some of these owners have incurred to pamper their sorry arses.

Every single one of them should watch the movie "MAJOR LEAGUE" and see what life COULD be like. With sub-standard equipment and stuff..

Personally, the players are taking too much as it is.

Also, the idea that you can't go back to the salary cap after it's gone is BS. They sure can. Just the same way they did when it was introduced.

I'll be honest, if the players insist on keeping the money breakdown the same, then the owners should insist that the medical expenses be shared by the players. That, at the end of the year, the total medical expenses paid out gets tallied and then broken down across each team and that money come out of the player's week 17 paycheck.

I would also charge the players for the security and parking.

The Players have gotten ridiculous in their demands and they need to know that without the owners, there are no stadiums for them to play in. There are not multi-year contracts with the TV stations that pour in more than 50% of the revenue for the league.

Now, I am not saying that the owners are blameless here. They aren't as they gave too much to Upshaw the last time around without the players giving up anything. Well, now it's time to pay the piper. Nothing is free. And that's something the players and owners both need to realize.

I agree about the pampered players part, but part of me is on the side of them , but they need a kick in the ass too... But in this economy I believe fans should strike if the players are locked out...

 

[Tunescribe]

This is serious stuff.. I cant believe the owners want to kill this game... But that is the road they are taking... I know its early yet , and people can joke all you want.. Im not sure so many people will be so quick to come back to the best game going right now.. Football is more huge now than it was 20 plus years ago when they almost kill the sport... I guess Kraft will be fine with the Patriot place , but he will have empty stadium and that ticket waiting list will be quickly whitlle down.. a lock out is the death nail, no football in 2011 is bad for everyone involved..


Now will it get to it, I hope not , alot of posturing is going on.. Its gloom now, but the 11th hour is not here yet , and hopefullly cooler heads will pervail... But 2011 and no football is bad, and hope it does not get to it...

Why are you so quick to blame the owners? Most players are overpaid as it is already. Both sides will have to give a little, but I don't care for the crap the new player union head is saying. A strike or a lockout just hurts everyone.

 

[DaBruinz]

I have an out of the box, off the wall idea that could explain why a lockout might be the owners intent..

1) The owners know everyone loses in a lockout. They lose. They players lose. The fans lose. But the players lose the most.

2) One of the issues that the owners have is the skyrocketing expenses. Not just the players salaries, but other things as well.

3) The owners, while they don't make money, also don't have to pay out hundred of thousands of dollars in utilities, food, beverages, etc...

When things do get rolling again, the same money won't be available, hence any salary cap that goes into place with be significantly less than the one that is there now.. Which is the owners intent.. To force the players to take less of the overall pot..

Now, another thing they could do is agree to a 1 year extension based on the 2009 levels. So the cap would be stagnant, but that probably wouldn't do much..

 

[Metaphors]

I have an out of the box, off the wall idea that could explain why a lockout might be the owners intent..

1) The owners know everyone loses in a lockout. They lose. They players lose. The fans lose. But the players lose the most.

2) One of the issues that the owners have is the skyrocketing expenses. Not just the players salaries, but other things as well.

3) The owners, while they don't make money, also don't have to pay out hundred of thousands of dollars in utilities, food, beverages, etc...

This is the part that people keep forgetting. The DirectTV contract ($1B/year) is paid whether or not any football is played. That runs until 2013 I believe. So a lockout means the owner of the Bills or the Jags gets $30M per year without any meaningful expenses. What motivation do the owners have to end this without getting significant concessions? In fact, the longer a lockout runs the greater the leverage the owners have...meaning the owners are less likely to give the players anything.

Edit: The article says that all the broadcast partners pay during a lockout. I hadn't heard that before. If true, makes it even easier to see that the owners are sitting pretty in this situation.

 

[spacecrime]

This is serious stuff.. I cant believe the owners want to kill this game...

I don't think they do. Why would they kill their investment?

This is the leader of the Union saying that is what the owners want, to try to get the public on their "side." What they need to do is figure out what is best for the players, and go after that, rather than refusing to negotiate because they think the other side isn't serious.

The owners want to protect their investment. They want it to be viable for years.

Thinking that their goal is to have a work stopage is wrong. Their goal is to make their investment stronger. They will do what it takes to get there. If a work stoppage is part of the plan, it might be. But it is not the goal.

Football players make a lot of money only if they are the very best fooball players.

Businessmen make a lot of money only if they are the very best business men. These guys didn't get to be millionaires and billionaires by killing thier investments. They did it by making the investments stronger IN THE LONG RUN.

Something is seriously out of whack with income/outgo if the owners do feel they must give up a year of income. The Union had better start understanding that the ownes do not do things because they are evil, but because they feel it is necessary for them.

The first part of negotiating is finding out what is most important to the other side.

I think part of the problem is that the players see the cap not as a means of maximizing income for both sides, but as a method the owners use to keep salaries down. They seem to believe that once the cap is gone, money will go up and football players will earn basketball and baseball salaries.

Ain't gonna happen, not with bigger rosters and fewer games.

The Union is playing a game of chicken here, banking on the owners paying out big bucks in an uncapped year. If most teams spend less uncapped than capped, the Union will collapse on itself with reciminatins and finger pointing.

 

[jmt57]

Whatever. Get ready for more rhetoric from both sides to be played out in the court of public opinion over the next eleven months. Deals get done at the last hour, not a year before the deadline. It's part of negotiating, trying to get the other side to blink.

 

[Satchboogie3]

If I ran the league and the players refused to go back to a cap, I'd say "Fine, I'll find someone else". There is no reason why they can't have a year of no-names playing for teams while Prima Donas sit on their a**es complaining.

Seriously, who the hell do these players think they are? They work for a BOSS. You don't tell your boss what your going to get paid, he tells you. Don't like the pay he is offer? Fine, find another job, he'll find another employee willing to take the pay he set.

 

[Rob0729]

Didn't Gene Upshaw pass away a few years ago. Oh, didn't realize this was a story about DeMaurice Smith since Upshaw had the same doomsday talk four years ago. It is all posturing. I give a lockout about 0.0005% chance of happening.

We went through this whole thing four years ago. In February, there were talks of the cap going away and never coming back and a strike. Come March a deal was struck. A deal might not be struck this time before March, but there is little chance that a work stoppage will happen. Wait until this free agency starts and more teams take advantage of no cap floor than no cap ceiling and veteran players get dumped and no big free agent deals emerge.

 

[spacecrime]

Didn't Gene Upshaw pass away a few years ago. Oh, didn't realize this was a story about DeMaurice Smith since Upshaw had the same doomsday talk four years ago. It is all posturing. I give a lockout about 0.0005% chance of happening.

We went through this whole thing four years ago. In February, there were talks of the cap going away and never coming back and a strike. Come March a deal was struck. A deal might not be struck this time before March, but there is little chance that a work stoppage will happen. Wait until this free agency starts and more teams take advantage of no cap floor than no cap ceiling and veteran players get dumped and no big free agent deals emerge.

Aw, come on, man. Logic and common sense will KILL this thread.

 

[Rob0729]

Aw, come on, man. Logic and common sense will KILL this thread.

Oh Sorry. Let me try it again:

Oh my God, football is done after this year. 2010 will be the last year of Brady's career. We may never see another professional football game again a year from this Sunday. We're doomed.

Better?!?

 

[Metaphors]

Something is seriously out of whack with income/outgo if the owners do feel they must give up a year of income.

The owners aren't giving up anything. The owners themselves stand to make a significant amount of money if there is no football. At least some owners would make more money without football than with it.

Obviously the owners don't want to go down the lockout path. The impact to their community, local businesses and their staff would be devastating. However, that motivation only goes so far in the negotiations with the players.

 

[Tunescribe]

The article says that all the broadcast partners pay during a lockout. I hadn't heard that before. If true, makes it even easier to see that the owners are sitting pretty in this situation.

Wow, I don't understand that. They'd be paying for nothing? I wonder how they'd swing that without the advertising revenue the games pull in.

 

[Prufrock]

What happens with the Raiders 2011 pick if there is a lockout?