Of course you don't know the Harvard study I am talking about. If you did, you'd have one less thing to complain about. Also, I used "IT'S" three times in my post and typoed it once by adding the apostrophe. People like yourself who harp on things like that tend to be the ones who don't know what they are talking about otherwise.
Did you accidentally write "your" instead of "you're" as well? You should be careful of those typing accidents. Incidentally, commas go inside quotation marks in this country. Are you British? Great to see the NFL has succeeded in "growing the game" across the pond!
You clearly don't realize how wrong you are so talking with you further on the subject is pointless. And, no, they aren't partners. The union members are still employees. Otherwise, the league couldn't just rip up a player's contract whenever it wanted to.
Yes, the players are employees, and the owners are employers, and yes, the owners have the right to tear up player contracts in certain situations. Great point -- it has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but great point.
No one is saying that the players have or should have a "say" in how contracts are negotiated. But the SSA clearly states that the owners must negotiate to the joint benefit of both players and management when it does its business deals. In other words, the owners don't have to ask the players' permission when they put together their broadcast contracts, but if they do a deal without "good faith" that's not in the players' interests, the players are legally allowed to seek redress in court. Which is exactly what happened.
If this were the old, pre-nineties NFL, and the players were mere employees in a normal corporation, you'd be right. But once the league agreed to share revenue with the players -- which incidentally it was forced to do, after a jury found it guilty of antitrust violations -- it entered into a de facto partnership with the players. That partnership has rules, and these TV deals violated those rules.
You really need to stop making comparisons to Enron because all you are doing is showing that, like this situation, you just don't know what you are talking about... The league did NOT arrange things so it essentially recouped its money via more favorable work stoppage provisions. Only an idiot would believe that.
You're probably not a Bill Simmons fan (or, as you would say, "Your probably not a Bill Simmons fan"), but here's his metaphorical take -- no Enron, but Apple:
"I scramble and swing a deal with Apple: $200 million for five-year rights to sell applications for my site. There's an evil wrinkle: The deal can't kick in until the start of Year 5. If my site goes into hiatus because I locked out my employees, I can still cash that $200 million for myself. How does that windfall help me? Now I don't care if my employees walk: I have my Apple money, my foreign investor money and my PSL money. I can play hardball. I can afford to wait them out."
You'll find the same interpretation in the
New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, Yahoo! sports, the
Globe... I'm not saying everyone had the same view on it, but certainly a large number of people who read the ruling and the complaint came away believing that the owners had manipulated the TV deals to benefit themselves in the labor dispute, taking discounts in 2009 and 2010 in exchange for better provisions down the road.
I get that you disagree with me, but if you want to be rude and call me an idiot, and claim that "only an idiot" would take my side, you should probably explain how it is that there are so many other idiots out there. There are a lot of us, and curiously a lot of us seem to have jobs that involve following this story.
The players are just as much to blame for the work stoppage as the owners. You clearly don't understand that... You really should get with the program because the players are using funny math. 4.76 billion is NOT 41% of 9 billion. It's 52.89%. Yet, the players claim the former.
I think you might have "all revenue" confused with "total revenue," which is a different term from the CBA that defines the pool of money to be shared by the owners and players. "All revenue" is that same pool, plus the expenses the owners take off the top -- two different numbers.
For most of the last ten years, the players have been receiving a little under 60% of "total revenue" and a little over 50% of "all revenue." Their percentage of both cuts has
actually been declining slightly over the course of the last decade (they had about 51% of all revenue in '09 vs. about 56% in 2000; they had 57.1% of total revenue in '09 vs just over 61% in 2000). So when the players talk about 41%, they're talking about what their projected share of "all revenue" would be after the owners' proposed pay cuts are added to the money they'd be losing after an additional billion is taken out for expenses. I think you're thinking (or, as you would say, "your thinking") of their share of "total revenue."
The players also want "Better healthcare" and "Better Pensions", [sic] pro-rated raised [sic] for an 18 game schedule, and the [sic] want a say in how the owners use the $1 billion additional [sic] that the owners want to take off the top.
Damn those typing accidents, huh? Anyway, so your point is, the employees in one of the most physically dangerous workplaces in America want better health care and pensions. That sounds unreasonable! And when asked to play two extra games a year, these employees have the nerve to ask to be
paid for that work. What could they possibly be thinking? Who wouldn't instantly volunteer to increase his workload by 12.5% for free? If your boss asked you, DaBruinz, to work three extra days a month for free, you would, right? And you'd definitely do it if your job involved slamming your head into concrete four or five times an afternoon, right?
