I see AZ is one of those who believes if he shouts it it must be true.
I believe what the PATS want is a better CBA with a cap. In effect, the old status quo plus a couple of guaranteed money give backs. The uncapped season wasn't something they just came up with, it was the opt out in any final CBA year absent an extension. The PATS actually brokered the crappy deal that landed everyone in this predicament just to avoid 2006 being the last capped season and 2007 being an uncapped season...
The PATS didn't find a loophole they could exploit in 2010, the final 8 plan is a poison pill provision of this expiring CBA crafted after those contracts you cite that expire in 2010 were negotiated...All those contracts you think they preplanned for 2010 were negotiated at a time when they either thought either 2007 would be the uncapped year or the CBA would be extended through 2012 (like the TV deal).
Expanding the regular season won't net players a thing. The wear and tear over time will cost them a season per career and the extra revenue generated per season will be gobbled up by the expanded rosters it would take to play ...Owners still want to renegotiate the sharing of the pie %.
The owners in agreeing to share expanded revenue with each other found themselves stuck sharing it with the players too. And they were so focused on their own internal dispute the NFLPA picked up a few more plums and didn't give back a damn thing - it was a one sided negotiation. Tagliabue was more concerned about retiring without a work stoppage on his epitaph than saving ownership from themselves and Upshaw took that opportunity to re-write his own soon to be epitaph. That's the problem... In order to mollify the have nots and avert an uncaped year and a potential work stoppage they opened pandora's box in front of the NFLPA and now they are pulling out all the stops to present a united front in an effort to get the damn thing closed again...
Bob Kraft wants a league with fixed costs and profitability. And he doesn't want to be punished for being a superior marketer or bound to underwrite those unwilling to make similar efforts on their own behalf. He wants to be able to own a winning franchise that is a financially stable and successful business venture based on the quality of his product and his management. He doesn't believe that investments outside the collective in which his capital is all that is at risk should automatically benefit either Ralph Wilson or Mike Vrabel...
If there is a lockout in 2011 he'll be eating all the bonus money he paid out to frontload contracts as you perceive him doing in 2010 at a time when his revenue stream drops from in excess of $250M to around $30M (along with every one else, the new Direct TV deal that will pay even if games aren't played - while the debt service on his stadium and construction of Patriot Place still has to be accounted for with no broadcast TV revenue or gate receipts or anscillary revenue from marketing or his own programming.
Yeah, he's positively gleeful about an uncapped 2010... Couldn't have planned it any better...
Some of you are easier to spin than a cheap plastic top.
Actually I agree with all your historical points. We are in unison. Wilson was right and Kraft was wrong in the last CBA negiotiations. I said so, did I not? I only take exception to your conclusions.
in lockout 2011, as long as it lasts, probably a game or three, the Pats have NO player payments to make. The Lockout merely pushes all contracts out by the length of a lockout. Say it lasted the entire season; then the players get zilch in 2011 and the signed contracts have just been extended another year. As most existing contracts are currently back-loaded, they will more likely never see those years as their careers end before their contracts do.
You are correct that Kraft is out the money he fronted to the player in uncapped 2010, but every player that he would have signed in capped 2010 has the exact same same deal anyways in uncpped 2010 and no difference. His only increased outlay is for front-loaded roster bonuses paid in 2010, for all the stars that he wouldn't have been able to keep in the capped 2010 year. But he apys no salaries in locked out 2011. Meanwhile he would have a great oportunity for another prfitable Super bowl appearance, not havingbeen decimated by defections.
I tried to make a distinction between what the league of Owners are doing and want. And what the Patriots and Kraft individually are doing. You don't. The owners collectively have decided to accept an Uncapped year in 2010 and force a work stoppage as early as possible to force a re-negotiation of the present CBA, via a Lockout in 2011. Given that that is going to happen; and Kraft and Belichick can't stop it, they have chosen a strategy that is best for a good club like the Patriots in such a circumstance.
They know that they can't sign anybody else's UFAs by the restrictions. They never wanted to do much there, and hisitorically never have, Rosey and AD are the only big UFA deals in a decade. Their strategy is merely to want to preventand minimize others from poaching their own good players.
They know now that they can sign ALL their own, without let or hindrance, especially if they are new contracts, in an Uncapped year. And the CBA restrictions will help by making much less of a market for their good players, (fewer clubs can play) to go elsewhere. And it also reduces the number of players (Six years of credited service in the league are needed) that can even consider doing so.
By the way your observation about the cash flow in 2011 are true in either case. But not quite what you decry. Having lots of ways to make additional money & now being forced to share, in the last preparations for the current CBA, Bob Kraft has found another money maker.
Patriot Place is that money maker, and he doesn't share it with any other team. He merely trades on the Patriots name and uses the property and parking spaces for additional income even in Lockout 2011. Patriot Place more than pays the taxes on the theoretically unused land of Gillette Stadium and environs everyday, and will continue in Lockout 2011. Building shopping centers makes a lot of people wealthy as long as they are rented and Patriots Place is. So Kraft earns lots more than the $30 million from Direct TV.
Long term, beyond the cash flow problems of an inevitable Lockout 2011, the Patriots will be a money maker as long as they are a winner. Finding a mechanism to lockup all his stars long term with minimal defections, almost guarantees that the Patriots remain a contender and extremely profitable, for another 6-10 years, as the major cash outlays were made in 2010. Don't forget athletic enterprises depreciate their players like machine tools. He will have lots of depreciation offsets to minimize his taxes in 2010 and prepare for 2011.
