First cracks showing in NFLPA?

[BennyBledsoe]

I wonder who's missing Gene Upshaw now?

This new guy is an utter clown, who seems determined NOT to be Upshaw (in the eyes of the players). And for the interest of the game, this might be proving to be a bad thing.

 

[TrueBeliever]

Just wanted to add that if there is a strike, the league is prohibited from bringing in replacement players - apparently the NFLPA demanded that in the current CBA after what happened in '87. So at least we don't have to worry about that this time around.

 

[BradyFTW!]

preparing for what? empty stadiums?

the owners caused this mess by agreeing to the deal they could not stomach

you don't think players can prepare the same way?

gonna be interesting what some of you will have to say about brady when he starts to speak up on behalf of the players.........

Learn to read. I never said that the owners were right; just that they're going to win. Frankly, I don't care who's 'right', and it's irrelevant to the point that I'm trying to make. I'm just trying to operate in the reality of the situation: that owners have war chests built up, and they can sustain a prolonged lockout. Even the least well-off of the owners has more resources to draw upon, and more income diversity, than even the best-off players. Players simply don't have the kind of money or, as a group, the kind of discipline to match that. We saw it in the NBA lockout in 2000, and we're going to see it again here, where the PA has a much larger member base playing in a sport with shorter careers and lower average pay.

Bottom line, the players don't have any leverage here. Remember, this would be a lockout, not a strike: the owners opted out of the CBA. All that the players can do is not show up, and they can't maintain that for as long as the owners can. The owners have all of the leverage here, and they know it, and that's why they opted out in the first place.

When Brady speaks out on behalf of the players, I'll say "he's speaking on behalf of his union and his coworkers, fair enough."

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Another reason the NFL isn't rushing to a new CBA is the "American Needle" case, expected to be decided in court this year. The case has the possibility (though low) of strengthening the NFL's antitrust position, eliminating decertification as a viable strategy.



I disagree on your opinion of Upshaw. I think he did a good job, and it was the malignment of him by others leading up to 2006 which actually led to the problems.

For years Upshaw understood the long-term picture which led to steady growth and prosperity for both teams and players from 1993-2006. In 2006 players (mostly agents actually I think) got greedy and decided to go for every last penny they could get, and started threatening Upshaw's position, accusing him of not standing up to the owners enough. So Upshaw did the only possible thing for his personal situation and demanded concessions from the owners. Since Tagliabue had already bought his plane ticket to the retirement village, there was no way the owners could stand firm.

And for the last couple of years the strategy worked for the players, the cap went up at a much higher rate. They traded long-term stability and wealth for immediate profit. Now the time has come to clean up the resulting mess. (Remind you of the economy as a whole?)

Yeah, it does. And I agree Upshaw wasn't as bad for the game as his agent was... He let Condon sell him a bill of goods over the last decade based on trickle down economics becoming the little engine that would drive the train. And it did to some extent. Just some of those rookie deals became insane benchmarks even for veteran players and quite a few of them blew up in owners faces and dragged franchises (as well as aging veterans on lots of cap and cash strapped teams) to the mat in the process. Condon's game has always been playing one side off the other with the goal more money for him and his elite clientele. Gene had a fiduciary responsibility to the rank and file, as well as those who paved the way whom he thoroughly disavowed, and he never paid much more than hollow lip service to the bulk of that constituency. He was too busy playing footsies with the guys who were dissing him behind his back for not doing the impossible (guaranteed salaries) while pushing the league ever closer to providing just that for their top tier clients via bonus and contract structure. Something they almost had to do given the ridiculous 3% limit they allowed the union to impose on their services in part to make the players think it really had their best interests at heart...

I think in the end agent fueled greed is going to cost the union more than Gene would have ever bargained away. Blood testing for HgH, recapture language for signing bonuses, more disciplinary avenues for the league and teams, rookie contract caps, give backs a generation is never going to forgive them for...and renewed determination and unity from a new generation of owners to take back control of the league their predecessors built and essentially controlled for decades. And one they grew, a reality talent seems impervious to. No more tail wagging the dog.

One of the enduring charms of the NFL from a long time fan perspective was that these guys were never handed anything, they had to work for it, and if they stopped working at it it got taken away. I think the atmosphere in this country during this economic downturn plays well to the owners case for returning to that kind of mentality. While the boom now gone bust had fueled a generation of conspicuous comsumers who increasingly empathized with players expectations, lots of them have recently found out there are no guarantees your growing expectations will continue to be met and and you can just live life on your own terms because sometimes there are unanticipated downturns or conequences you hadn't envisioned and you can't talk your way out of either (everyone from Wall Street to Tiger comes to mind...).

 

[crowell33]

Yes. Exactly. They are preparing for a year without statium income. That's what BradyFTW said.

Again, agree. And since they found they cannot stomach the deal, they will do the next deal differently. Learning from past mistakes is one of the reasons why they are business savvy enough to afford teams.

Nope. As BradyFTW said, the owners have multiple sources of income and except for a very few NFL players who have endorsements, the players not only have none, they are famous for not managing money properly.

Not just football players, workers in general are not smart. When conditions are intolerable, when workers are just as well off without their job as they are with it, strikes are powerful things and the united stand of workers is immovable.

Football players don't fit this. They have nothing in common with coal miners, 19th century millworkers, etc.

In 1972 I worked in the auto industry, in the Scout plant of International Harvester in Fort Wayne. The workers went on strike. They planned for it by demanding more overtime, building a strike fund. The owners planned for it by letting workers work all the overtime they wanted, stockpiling Scouts.

I was on salary, working in Engineering, and kept my job through the strike.

When the strike came, the strikers had enough money to last a couple months, some more, most less. The company had vehicles to last three months in stock. The workers struck, the company locked out. When stockpiles of Scouts got low, the company negotiated with the now desperate workers. They all got a raise, about what the company offered to begin with (we basically ended up with what Ford-GM-Chrysler-AMC got).

The company lost nothing, in fact had higher earnings due to no salaries. The workers lost two+ months pay. Some were hit hard with medical bills.

No, workers cannot prepare as well as owners.

Great post. Completely agree.