Hplarrm

Under what will soon be the old CBA (its great they are going back to work IMHO) NFLPA Gene Upshaw dictated publicly when negotiations started that the new CBA unlike the old one would need to see the salary cap determined from the entire gross receipts of the NFL and not from designated sections of profits as was the case in the late 80s CBA. This first negotiation came on the heels of the NFLPA under the leadership of traditional AFL-CIO style union folk led by a fellow named Ed Garvey. His plan was to have the union strike after the regular season (during which the players collected their weekly paychecks) but before the playoffs which is when the team owners got their biggest bucks from the TV networks. Garvey was demanding 52% of the total receipts be awarded to the players in the form of salary. The owners totally kicked the butt of the union by instead locking out the players early in the regular season and hiring "replacement players" who were simply a bunch of wannabee jocks. Still folks and the networks covered the games even just out of curiousity and in about three weeks the players broke. In the face of being demolished, there was a meeting of the minds between the smartest of the players and some smart lawyers. An idea was hatched that the players were officially represented by s not-for-profit legal association called the NFLPA. Under US labor law and practice, under normal circumstances, the teams were individual legal entities (different owners different management styles, different ways of trying to build a team to win the SB who competed with each other. However, it was clear virtually right from the start in George Halas's day and acelerated under Commissioner Pete Rozelle that the teams needed to compete playing the game but as far as business went they needed to cooperate. The NFL and many major sports developed systems which allowed them to allocate players to each other in an orderly fashion and the game prospered. Rozelle led making it even more socialist by awarding the first draft picks to the worst teams. The problem is that this is flat out anti-American and not the way this country operates. The draft for example not only tells an American where he must live in order to play ball, but it also forced him to negotiate with only one employer. America was based on a free market where workers while clearly not having a right to any specific job did have a right to try to get work in their field anywhere their field operated. This is the thing about how the NFL forces things upon individual workers. They are told without regard to their wishes where they MUST work and who they MUST work for. Our society says this is allowable IF you are part of a democratically elected group certified to be your bargaining agent. This is why the decert strategy is so potent and why the team owners are simply begging for the NFLPA tp be around. If the NFLPA is not around to collude with the owners then this denial of individual rights will not stand in our society. Brady et al. are "merely" seeking a remedy of in the absence of a certified bargaining agent then the US commitment to individual rights, competition producing good, and checks and balances demands that the individual corporations which are NFL teams actually compete financially rather than collude to deny basic individual freedoms. My comments about the team owners being an inefficient economic drag is based on the last CBA. The players got by agreement 60.5% of the total gross take. Thus the team owners got 39.5%. My question is what do the team owners add to the game. My answer is very little that cannot be replaced by better performing, more cost effective alternatives. The team owners deserve tons of credit for taking the risk when it was a big risk to provide capital for the NFL. its great that the original owners like Mr. Ralph have gotten a huge rate of return on their investment. I do not feel at all that they are hosed when they get less than the old days when they got to make up the rules than today when there is more fairness for all. I would not even feel bad if their investments became basically worthless because their business mistakes resulted in the NFL actually being more of a free market and the team owners lost the fair competition for assets. The team owners also use to be the sole source of management, but as the GB Packers (and Mr. Ralph has shown with his series of bad football decisions) there are better management models out there than simple team owners. This is what is behind my rant.

I agree that it is contradictory for the players to claim both that they have not read what the owners voted on but they detected things slipped in. However, it seems just as silly to have the owners demanding that the players vote to ratify a CBA now when one of their prime complaints about the last one was folks like Mr. Ealph claiming he did not have the time to read it. If these complex issues demand a re-opener that the owners had to exercise because the previous non-read agreement was so bad that now the new agreement must be ratified by 32 guys who were not in on the actual negotiation. The players are giving silly reasons for not signing the deal. Yet, the first move was that it was silly for the NFL to call for ratification last night when the NFL made a deal they consider so bad for the specifically stated reason from Ralph that there was no time to understand the document. This also is stupid. As a fan I blame both sides. In terms of solutions, I wish the players had shown the same level of cajones they showed when they first threatened to decert. In the big picture, the team owners really provide little to the game that can not be replaced from other sources. I think the owners simply add a 39.5% drag on the game. Its too bad that the fan interest was not really served by getting in replacement owners and the players divide up the team owner share between giving them what they want (more $) and lowering ticket prices.

I think it is actually clear to most fans that there are at least three sides to this dispute- team owners, labor, and most important from my biased perspective, the fans. Neither the owners or the players have your or my interest as the driver of their decision making. You do not disagree with this do you? Now as far as who is THE problem. As a fan, I would just like my football. Things could be better with the modern NFL since both sides agreed to the last CBA, but from my view I would rather watch football than labor disputes. The CBA was set to expire in a few years BUT the owners decided to exercise their contractual right to force a negotiation early. I have seen some try to stand on their heads and take a twisted view of things to claim that the players created this lockout. That is incorrect. The owners agreed to the old CBA and the owners triggered this lockout. Both sides have been idiots but the owners are primarily to blame for this dance. Perhaps you want to take the side of the billionaires over the millionaires but rumor has it no one is sending you or me a check.

I think you give a reasonable summary which I am sure will provide context for your what happened articles on this. the couple of factoids which I think you might add to your context is: 1. Judgments of the actions of both the owners and of the players in this dispute should be base in the fact that the owners were the ones who used their contractual right to renegotiate the deal. The players are not only on record as not asking for this situation which bothers all fans, but also they are on record not demanding anything in this renegotiation but continuing the old deal. It was the owners right to do what they did, but it should not be ignored that they were the sole party that created this situation. The NFLPA also had the right under the contract to renegotiate once the owners opened the door and ask for fair trades for anything that they gave up. They did not and I think any presentation which judges these actions should be based on this factual context. 2. One of the central complaints of owners (led by Mr. Ralph actually) last time was that the owners were presented with a complex deal with a incredibly limited time to accept or reject it. Is the claim here that the player reps need to do exactly the same thing as the owners found to produce such a bad result for them. This time for a 10 year deal without the re-opener that the owners used this time. Again, I would think presentation of this fact when giving any judgments about whether either side is being reasonable or unreasonable in this should be presented. Overall, I think that it is clear that there are three sides to this dispute team owners, player partners and us fans. As far as it goes, the NFLPA does not represent my fan interests on this at all. However, the owners bear the lionshare of any blame for fan treatment in this debacle. That's my 1 and a half cents

Could be, or if Smith is smart he is playing the same game of theatrics and shooting his mouth off strategically which got folks to rag on and underestimate Johnny Cocchrane and the Anthony attorney. Folks made their judgments but in the end their clients got what they needed. Who knows what will happen but its probably a sign of intelligence to wait before drawing conclusions about whats what but if he is playing the game he is counting on folks making negative conclusions about him if those folks opinions do not matter to the clients he is representing. I think we are all pretty clear on the fact that he players (and the owners for that matter) really do not care what we think as long as we watch the game (which I know I plan to do as soon as they snap the ball).

As I said in a post above, like the debt ceiling negotiations, it ain't over until its over and both sides agree. NFLPA leadership would be committing malpractice if the language sent to them as approved included anything which they had not actually talked about and approved (even if this assumption can from an estimation of lack of interest- if the players are not interested then do not ask them to hinge their ratification on approval of this language). In addition, even with the ratified language there is going to be additional discussion and even negotiation over interpretation of what they reached handshake agreement on or agreed to in non-public discussion. Particularly given their mistrust of the NFL leaving profit on the table for strike insurance from the nets to the team owners unwillingness to be honest and show the books, the NFLPA MUST send a message that the NFL better not try anything because the habit is to question every thing. Finally, I just realized another reason why the NFLPA may want to question new language on issues that are clearly of import to the league owners but not to the players. Since the 80s labor dispute got settled with the team owners running to demand that the NFLPA come back and in the 00s renegotiation where Upshaw dictated the final terms publicly at the start and the NFLPA got exactly what they wanted the players became defacto partners with the first victory and defacto majority partners with the second agreement. Like most owners, the players are acting like partners and throwing their weight around on peripheral issues simply because they can. Making Jerry Jones sweat and wonder what the majority partners are doing and thinking may be exactly what the players leaders want to happen. If a deal is finally made tomorrow but the players are hemming and hawing and making the team owners wait to announce this on the NFLPA's chosen schedule. This game playing may be happening or something tangible may be up that none of us outsiders know. My guess is that from the players perspective, they were quite happy with the old CBA, and we are only having this stupid dispute because the team owners exercised their contractual right to start it. Perhaps the players will want to see this end only when they say it ends. However, there is money on the table now so I suspect they will want it to end quite soon.

Given the level of the rancor between the NFL and the NFLPA, the foolish thing it appears to me to assume would be one that either side was not trying to do everything they could possibly do (and this means both legally they can do and illegally they can get away with. The one thing for sure with this is that it ain't over until its over and my sense is that it not only is reasonable for the players and their leadership to assume bad acts on the part of the NFL team owners, but in fact it is malpractice on the part of NFLPA leadership not to assume good faith until the contract is signed. The second thing that both the player and their reluctant partners the owners can almost certainly assume is that soon after the first snap of a ball that us fans will pretty much ignore who did what to whom in this labor dispute and make our ticket buying, Zubazz pants purchasing (and most important for the NFL collecting cash) TV viewing (also known as commercial watching) to the check cashers in the NFL be they owners or players. It is true that a labor dispute can be so nasty that it impacts the popularity of the game as we saw in baseball, However, all you need is a flat-out willingness to lie from folks like Clemens, Bonds, and McGwire and some at best willful blindness from the MLB and its owners and voila profits are back. Folks are just flat out naive if they really believe the NFL did not put every comma in the aggreement they voted for which is based at best on a handshake agreement and backroom aggreements on some details. My guess is that either the deal is pretty much what was agreed to and the union votes to sign off relatively quickly but it still is a good move to question the team owners character and rationality as a signal that every move they make in the future interpreting the CBA and writing is going to be not trusted until looked at with great scrutiny or the team owners did in fact approve their interpretation of the deal and that differs in some significant way from how the players interpret it. Even in this case my guess is that the players conditional ratify the agreement with specific items set aside for additional negotiation. This ball will then be sent back into the owners court and they can decide whether to let the season begin with these specific placeholder items set asoide for further discussion but these issues will not interfere with money making. Either way is fine by me as I really care most about whether there is football rather than ideological junk. I think this is true of both the team owners and the teammates as well.

However, they both have the money to hire smart lawyers and because the owners developed a system where they got the immediate benefit of having the colleges pay for training and developing their workers, they ended up with the disadvantage of not signing these players until they were adults. While most of these steroid infused behemoths were habitually used to being told exactly what to do by some higher authority, there was what I call the talented tenth of the now adult players like a Gene Upshaw, Drew Brees, Kevin Mawae and others who understood enough of what was going and what could happen that they swept up their beaten fellow players, listened to a bunch of smart lawyers and ran with the decert strategy. If you want to measure the relative stupidity then simply ask yourself whether the NFLPA or the NFL won the labor disputes of the late 90s and the late renegotiation. The demonstrable answer is that the guys with the IQ level of the owners were beaten so badly by the public dictates of Upshaw that they used the contractual reopener on the deal/ While some folks seem to delight in bleating how stupid the players were to hire an idiot like Demaurice Smith, my answer is could be. However, there are examples of smart lawyers (who also happened to be people of color) who part of their sticht was to be showmen or often shot off their mouths saying things perceived by many as stupid. Yet when the smoke cleared idiots like OJ (briefly since he is so morally reprehensible) and the Tot-Mom are walking around free. My sense is that you might want to wait for a little more reality to happen before you draw conclusions about who is smarter here in the battle between billionaires and millionaires.

Maybe!

I got caught by the in the last decade proviso of the original ask myself. The fact that my heart immediately took me to memories like many of the one's cite here (and actually my favorite moment in the beyond a decade memories was the huge crowd in Niagara Sq. after the first lost SB and Scotty Norwood apologizing and the fans saying no apology was needed was a great moment for me. Being a good winner MUST always be the goal, but being a good winner is easy compared to what I saw as the entire family of fans shared being the best loser I had ever been a part of . In the end, nobody gets out of here alive and how one deals with loss is the true measure of a human being (if you do not believe this then merely watch Rupert Murdoch yesterday. I do not think I have seen anything as pathetic as this performance by one of the most powerful men in the world (last month). Dealing with a loss while not being consumed by it was a pretty important life lesson.

Me, the other country stuff is actually peripheral as what leads my thinking on this is football. Do you really think that the NFL is a really based on a free market system? Even folks who definitely oppose my views generally like Mr. Weo was clear in his post up above that the NFL is simply not a free market system. My assumption (perhaps incorrect because it is based upon your apparent adoration of the NFL method of operating with its player-partners)is that if you are consistent in liking the way the NFL operates then you must have some affection for centralized power economic systems over individual rights. This is what the team owners are trying to preserve or even want to return to with their lockout shenanigans. If you really think that the fair way for the NFL to deal with the players is because they offer them some benefit which an individual player takes this then justifies them doing whatever as the player has already ceded any individual rights then you must love other centralized power economic approaches like a place like Cuba. The two are obviously different things but they do share this in common. In both Cuba and in the NFL draft they can tell a person where to live without regard to his personal needs or desires. Perhaps you think this is OK in the NFL case because afterall, the player can go work at Ford if it bothers him to cede this right. Fine, but that does not eliminate the fact that the individual is giving up such a basic thing we all take for granted. He better be well compensated if one values what he is giving up by entering the system. I do not feel sorry at all for this millionaire who is being directed where to live by a billionaire. However, not feeling sorry for him is a lot different than endorsing or embracing this "choice" which you seem to gleefully do. Its your own judgment on this which makes me wonder whether you also like other examples of suspension of individual choice like a Cuba. Its like the writer Noel Coward who once asked a socialite whether she would sleep with him for a million dollars (this was real money back in the day) she laughed and said of course. He then asked her to sleep with him for a dollar. She got all huffy, blanched and then asked him who did she think he was. He replied we have already determined what you are, now we are just arguing over the price. Do you really endorse the fact that NFL players "willfully" give up rights we hold to be basic and that this is OK because they chose to take the money? I do not think that the ceding of abilities I think are basic in our society is simply OK depending upon the price paid for giving up this right.

In the American system, one's right to fair play with a business is not suspended merely because they make you a good financial offer. Do you not agree with that approach? In our system all businesses operate under a system of checks and balances. Normally market forces provide a reasonable check and a corporation which deals with the personnel who provide the service at a level below the industry norm for interaction and management of staff often loses staff to other businesses providing the same service. However, back here in reality though the principle of checks and balances due to market forces is a great theory and principle, US law and systems which values the individual and personal freedom above centralized power be it a king, government, or corporations. In these cases we rely on the three branches of government a check and balance within itself to protect the individual. It simply is not the American way for ones rights or abilities to be simply suspended or ignored because someone pays you a buck for it. In this particular case, a couple of centuries labor law, codified by Congress, implemented by the Executive branch and checked by the courts when someone feels aggrieved enough to file suit have produced an economically successful system where a good product of football is produced and the NFL and NFLPA have reached agreement reflected in the CBA. Under this system the claim that the NFLPA members have ceded all authority to the NFL corporation in exchange for the huge wealth NFL players get for playing a boys game is simply wrong in how things really work here in America and I am pleased to say would simply be a bad, unfair and not sustainable way to operate. The market provides some check and balance but the reality is that pro football skills are so specialized and there really is no rational similar alternative for the football athlete to simply go off an excel at another sport that the additional check and balance is needed. If the NFL chooses to simply opt of the CBA, then individuals (like Brady et al to seek redress in the courts. The court almost certainly if the NFL exercises there right to lock out the players , the players have the ability to seek court relief in forcing the NFK ti actually operate in a free market and is not allowed to dictate the terms of employment to the workers. I for one am glad I live in Anerica which protects individual rights, If folks are more comfortable with a centralized authority dictating things then feel free to head for Cuba where a centralized power dictates everything. Folks maje the mistake of not realizing that our government is not designed to be anti-socialist, it is designed to be pro individual. I am glad the American way works the way it works and not the way you offer.

I agree that in general I prefer commentary about football rather than folks opinions in regard to Greece, Iceland, Germany or wherever. However, the discussion of social compact based businesses versus free market based businesses is right on target and totally relevant to when we get our football back or not. A big part of the problem in terms of the public's understanding of this issue and how the press covers it is based IMHO of a misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the NFL's business model. My belief is that though the NFLPA is clearly a union and that unions are associated in folks minds with socialist approaches, that actually what is going on here is that the owners in fact have done everything they could to stay away from a free market model of operating, because there would be less profit for each owner if there were a freer market where they had to compete economically for individual players personal services rather than operate based on a social compact which is more like what most know as a cartel. Government is involved in this big time. However, mostly its in the forms of the courts protecting individual rights and also trying to assure market competition as a check and balance mechanism to allow for preservation of individual rights. It made perfect sense to me that the Reagan appointed Judge Doty found in favor of the players in his ruling as basically what was going on was that the owners were ignoring the individual rights of the NFLPA in taking less money for the cash to feed the CBA in order to get "insurance" the owners could use as leverage against the players in a lockout. Doty's ruling was classic conservative thinking in that he required the team owners to treat the player-partners like partners and not like mere employees. The players in essence became partners after they threatened to decertify themselves as a recognized bargaining agent for the players after the team owners kicked their butts in the mid-80s labor dispute. Yes by decerting the NFLPA would cease to be able to negotiate the CBA with the team owners. However, just because the NFLPA went away as a certified negotiator, the rights of individual to operate fairly economically in our society did not simply go away. In the absence of the NFLPA as a certified bargaining agent, the default protection for individual abilities and rights in our country is the check and balances provided by the free market. Decert proved to be such a potent tool because the team owners had to legally compete with each rather than collude in a free market system. Thus activities like the draft. In the draft, any chosen player is assigned to one and only one team to negotiate with and play for. Its a very orderly way to allocate talent (and in fact Pete Rozelle led the way to setting up the draft in the ultimate socialist manner in that teams which fail get the first pick- a normal free market approach awards teams which do well by giving them the better players and thus creating a system which encourages one to do well). However, in our society it is simply wrong in almost all cases to restrict an individual to live in one place (without regard to his personal wishes) and only be able to negotiate with one team. The courts do allow the NFL cartel to in fact place these draconian standards on the individual. They courts uphold the free market as the law of the land the NFL must adhere to unless they have negotiated a different deal with a certified agent chosen by the players. This agreement is called the CBA. Within it the players not only reversed the huge defeat they suffered in the mid-80s replacement player kerfluffle but they secured agreement to a deal within which NFLPA was able to dictate the terms when it was renewed. MFLPA leadership (the group I call the talented tenth because

Also an expression of deep sympathy to you and the entire Sarama family and friends.

I am not sure we all realize it in that some folks continuously try to equate what is an example of how wprkers are treated in other jobs which operate in more of a free market system with how NFL players are treated in the non-free market system of the NFL where the players are not only partners with the owners but arguably the majority partners as they rake in a significant majority of the gross receipts. If anyone should give up on an argument it is those who consistently bleat about that other more free market businesses where entry level workers receive something like the minimum wage sets the example that NFL players should only get an entry level salary. This shows little recognition of the fact that the NFL is not a free-market based business, it is a social compact based business. It shows little recognition that in this country, we value highly individual rights and also competition. In our system, given the lack of the checks and balances providing individuals with other true options, the courts have protected individuals by ruling that if your social compact is going to set the rules, then you must negotiate with a recognized real union of the players. This is why the decert threat proved to be so potent. If the players decerted the NFLPA, then the NFL team owners were subject to a suit they would lose which would force them to operate in a free market manner. I think folks blathering on about "name me another business" or pretending that the NFL worker-partners are the same as Ford or Wendy's workers is a pretty strong indication that the poster does not seem to be thinking based on the knowledge that the NFL is not Ford, is not Wendy's, is not a free-market based business. The players are flat out partners and arguably majority partners. The NFL operated a system in which they violated their agreement and the basis of how ownership of for profit business works in our system of maximizing profits for all the owners by instead taking less money for lock-out insurance from the networks. In essence this was the basis of the finding of Reagan appointed judge Doty. The appeals court reversed this finding even though doing so simply reversed the principle to render a decision for a few businessmen. You are absolutely correct when you say above that the NFL is not a free-market. Given this knowledge then why would one want to make the claim that players in this non free-market is set by how workers are treated in a more free-market based system? They are not the same and the analogy falls apart. The contract specifically says that if the NFLPA decerts as the authorized representative of the players, then the players can choose if they want to use the check and balance of the courts to protect their rights as individuals. The courts have ruled that the players can and do give up their rights in a contract between the players and team owners known as he CBA. However, if the NFLPA is decertified as the players rep then the players rights as individuals does not simply go away. It now is subject o protection by the courts which will force the team owners to pursue a free-market type system as a protection of the individual. It is this unwillingness of the team owners to actually compete in a free market and thus individual rights must be protected in an agreement like the CBA, which by agreement delivers a significant majority of the gross receipts to the partner-players which defines this situation. Almost every job comes from companies which are basically free market based. The NFL is not. Anyone who recognizes this would not be foolish enough to equate the salaries and method of operation that a worker in a free market based job gets with the salary and operations of what an NFL player-owner gets. The Ford or Wendy's worker is not a partner in this free market based system in any way shape or form. The NFLPA was essentially recognized as a partner with the CBA forged after the first decert threat and arguably became a majority partner when Upshaw dictated that the revenues would be divided in the new CBA based on total gross receipts and not on designated receipts and that the player-partner take needed to start with a 6. The deal ended up being 60.5%. The reality of the CBA real output was actually less, but still comfortably above a majority and the point was made. Our system so values the individual that either their rights needed to be protected in a negotiation between the team owners and the workers (ala Ford workers in a free market based system where individuals rights are protected by the competition between Ford, GM, etc). I am sure that the NFL would love a cash stream where it could force money from the public by levying a tax as our military, police and firement are funded, but this ain't Cuba and it does not work this way in a free-market based system. You seriously are not equating how military salarys are set and NFL player-partner compensation is set. Maybe you do not seem to understand that the NFL is not free-market based because you seem to want to equate the salary and management of government employees with the salary and treatment of the player-partners. I know I shoud give this up as folks seem to continue in trying to equate how workers are compensated and treated in free-marker based companies with how the player-partners in the NFL are compensated and treated. Use of this argument seems to be a flat-out indicator that the poster does not realize or simply ignores the fact that the NFL is not free market based. In fact, the equating of the treatment of the player-partners with the treatment of government workers like the military seems to double down on this contradictory assertion. i just camnpt resist pointing out reality in this case.

The NFL is an entry level job where you demonstrate you are worth a speculative salary based upon your performance in college. Its actually a less risky proposition than most other major sports leagues such as hockey and baseball where many of the speculative contracts need parental permission to be entered into as these entry level jobs are often paid wildly for without the additional data provided by competition and training in college. Even better the NFL pays virtually nothing for this training and evaluative service as colleges pay for this (including taxpayers like you and me subsidizing this service. The NFL is paying a steep price for this gift right now though as the NFL players are adults before they begin to develop an affinity for a team that owns their rights. As adults a talented tenth of these athletes in the Gene Upshaw mode proved heady enough to organize as a union and today have forced an agreement giving them a significant majority of the gross take of the league. They have proved their worth enough to command the outstanding contract.

I agree that my interest in supporting the abilities of individual to compete in a free market is a fringe view these days. If a person supported a free market approach then they should actually support the free market approach advocated by Brady et al in their lawsuit which demanded that individual NFL teams negotiate personal services contracts with individual players. Though I am generally libertarian (I think the rubric man Americans is fair since our country does have a general free market ethic) I do recognize that there are also some benefits and efficiencies in a more socialistic approach. This I think is what the NFL is. It does amuse though that some seem to want to support the owners with the claim that NFL players are just like workers in a business like a Ford auto employee and object to one of the base demands of the NFLPA which was to look at the books if the NFL was going to make deals which in essence treated the players like "mere" employees rather than as an organized entity which claimed by agreement of all parties a significant majority of the total gross receipts. The folks who simply fail to see that the NFL really only exists in our society which has always valued the individual because they are granted a limited anti-trust exemption which allows this social compact to collude against the individual with the NFLPA. Its great to me that this collusion exists as it makes for a fun game. The thing which I find mostly hilarious but sometimes annoying is the folks who do not seem to realize that the NFL makes such huge profits from its socialistic compact approach and collusion with the union. The folks who were supportive of the owners over the union in this dust-up strike me as showing the same level of thinking as folks who were demanding that the government keep its hands off of their Medicare. I am glad the NFL appears to be headed back. The owners like the GOP idiots who seemed to be hoist on their own brinksmanship over debt ceiling have not gotten what they were demanding because they were gonna kill us all if they did not get it. While neither the NFLPA serves the interest of fans nor does Obama serve the interest of the average person it appears they both are the worse except for their opponent.

I agree that I do not look at any "right" of student athletes as being abridged. This is why I use the word abilities as being infringed upon. Typically it is the American ethic to respect the ability of people to sell their personal services to the highest bidder among employers. I actually flat out say that I do not feel sorry for any college athlete who chooses to enter the social compact known as the NFL as they are going to be paid more than they have ever seen before to get bent over and become a part of this social compact. I only ask folks to recognize that the NFL is nothing like a free market enterprise because it does things like collude with the NFLPA to require that if one makes a choice to enter into this social compact you give up certain things like what most of us Americans take for granted as the right to live where we choose. In certain countries like Cuba they tell you what region of their controlled life you must live in. They claim that the benefits of this planned approach makes their neighborhoods and lifestyle more diverse. That may be true but I am afraid I do not buy the idea of some power telling you where you must live without regard to an individuals personal desires. The benefits of diverse neighborhoods is nice but does not compensate from some power assigning you to some city. Likewise with the NFL, they offer some serious cash benefits for allowing this social compact to assign you to some city. However, just cause they pay you more does not change the fact they are ordering you around. NFL players are simply not allowed to sell their services to the highest individual bidding NFL business. Instead these individual businesses collude with the NFLPA to assign an individual to a specific city in order to get the benefits of their socialistic compact. I understand this though I am not sure you and others do. If folks are fine with the social compact basis of the NFL instead of a free-market approach that is fine by me. I just wish folks would realize it instead of the bizarre insistence that the NFL team are the same as free market businesses like Ford motor company. The NFL is much more like a socialist enterprise than a free market enterprise because the profits are much higher from this socialistic approach. It seems vacuous to me that so many people do not seem to realize this.

I agree with NoSaint that the actual analyses of the raw dollars in and out of many major college football programs actually shows that in terms of the own books looking purely at dollars in from items such as ticket sales and additional cash flow positive cash flow items like advertising and good sales, many of these programs are money losers when you balance that with the costs of travel, training, etc. It is an illusion many folks seem to live in that even when you constrain the analysis to the big programs that football is profitable in and of itself. In fact, as more and more details of things like the number of tickets schools are forced to buy for bowl games there are plenty of opportunities even in major programs to lose money on football. The question then is why do schools do this? The answer is that they actually end up making the money they lose on football and it enormous travel and other costs back in terms of alumni loyalty, donations, and sense of ongoing relationship between slumni and the school. The University at Buffalo is a good example, it was dumping tons of money into moving its programs up to the Division I level. The payoff was that the team spent years as a doormat for other teams to beat up and inflate their records. However, Bill Greiner and the UB muckety mucks simply used this as an excuse to party and build relationships with donors who came out anyway to party with the kids who really did not care whether the product was winning or not. Greiner and UB kept their eye on the prize of using football as a reason to reach out to donors and build their college even if the football program was not very good and ticket sales were not a good source of income at all. Football presents benefits far beyond it as a business model which usually is a money loser and often detracts from the educational experience of many students as it sucked up resources away from other student athletic activities. As more and more women went to college and it was clearly unfair not to devote a level of resources similar to their attendance to women and greater equity was achieved for women sports, we then began to see sports like wrestling take it in the teeth as the investment went into football. However, it is simply an illusion that even most major college football programs are healthy businesses in and of themselves. Football does not pay for itself from the game itself, but from collateral benefits. Do taxpayer dollars subsidize college football. You bet! Does it also pay part of tab for the NFL as a private business? Ask yourself what is the equivalent investment which NFL teams make to MLB drafting dozens of kids each year as young as 16 years old and then assigns them to a huge web of Rookie league, A ball, AA, and AAA teams some owned by the MLB teams and some contracted with. The same is true for hockey. Both the NFL and the NBA instead live off the massive subsidy provided by colleges (often paid for with your and my tax dollars as in the UB example)to train their athletes. If you want a third party analysis of this business, there is a comprehensive examination from PBS at > http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/college-football_home/ < It does not advocate the same subsidy cut I have on this but it does provide access to collected data and examples which illustrate my points.

and while it is impossible for me to feel much sympathy toward a college athlete about to sign a contract for more money than they have ever seen, it does bother me a bit when individuals are not allowed to sell their services to the highest bidder in a free market. Thus, as the new CBA begins to take shape, one of the more troubling parts of it for me is the apparent abridgement of individual rights to participate in a free market which is going on in the NFL. The oddest thing about it is that the co-conspirators in this anti-American abridgement of individual abilities is not only the NFL (they are a corporation after all and due to the consistent taking advantage of the individual I have cone to expect bad behavior from them). However, the NFLPA is joining toe to toe with the NFL in actions that flat out abridge the abilities of individuals to operate in a free market. These include: 1. The it seems to me outrageous agreement of the BFL and NFLPA to bar NFL teams from signing up adults who want to play the game. The NFLPA and the NFL have agreed to rules which not only ban the signing of minors to contracts (even with their parents approval (unlike other pro team sports and individual sports like golf or tennis allow even minors to sign contracts with their parents signed consent) but also bar adults from signing with individual teams until their age group reaches 21. 2. Even the draft itself abridges the ability of normal individuals to choose to live wherever they want to or can make a deal. Many folks falsely try to claim that an NFL worker is the same as a Ford motor company worker as they try to justify the NFL not letting their workers look at the books. This analogy not only falls apart in reality as the NFL worker and Ford worker simply operate under different economic systems, but actually the NFL worker has fewer rights that an auto worker takes for granted. An auto worker can choose to work in any city where he finds a job. If he worships the sun he can try to find a job in a plant in CA or if he likes having more than 2 seasons he can try to work in the midwest. However, an NFL player if he chooses to be an NFL athlete is assigned to negotiate with only one team without regard to where that player wants to live is irrelevant (whether he wants to live near his parents who are ill or always attend his games or he wants to live and raise his kids with a loved one near his hometown). Sure, NFL players get huge compensation to give up this right most Americans take for granted, but it amazes me that folks give up this principle so easily. 3. The worse thing about the draft is actually that it represents a huge taxpayer subsidy to the private business of the NFL. State run and taxpayer funded schools like football lineman mill U. Nebraska also are well compensated for their gleefully training student athletes for the NFL business at limited cost to the NFL (they do pay for the combine which allows them to abridge individual rights in an orderly manner) but this huge taxpayer subsidy to this private business is simply not the theory or principle we operate under as a country. Its no surprise to me that various travesties occur under this system which sees universities stand on their heads to in essence hire student athletes without paying them. 4. What also is outrageous is that traditionally the courts have been the protector of individual rights being ignored by the government or trampled on by corporations. The courts have correctly IMHO stood up for individual rights by only accepting the limited anti-trust protection the NFL enjoys if they negotiate in good faith with a representative of the players which is democratically elected. This is why the decertification threat by the NFLPA has proven to be so powerful. It is clear that with the union, that the courts (as reflected in the decisions by Reagan appointee Doty) stand by individuals to operate in a free market. In the face of this threat the NFL ran kicking and screaming to sign a CBA with the NFLPA which has now resulted in the players getting a majority of the total gross receipts of the NFL. However, even if one accepts this system even if it goes against free market principles simply because it works to generate higher profits for both the players and the owners than if they used an actual free market (which was the ask of Brady et al. in their suit) it still does nothing to preserve the rights of young athletes. These potential players have no representation and essentially no rights until they sign a contract. Its no wonder that that the NFLPA would agree to a rookie salary cap in exchange for more money for the vets and the retirement fund as young athletes are not represented at all in this "negotiation". Overall, this fan is quite pleased to get this game back after it was held hostage in a fight between millionaires and billionaires. I am happy with any deal which the owners and players make to bring back the game! However the principle still sticks in my craw that young athletes are having what most of us take for granted as rights to be stripped from them. They are getting screwed in principle but at least they are well paid for bending over. The NFL and the NFLPA deserve each other in their un-American actions to simply generate cash.

Whether he likes the bailout or not economically will probably pale as a driver for his decision-making to his estimation of the legacy he wants to leave and how he will be remembered once he is gone. In the big picture, the only facts are these: 1. No one gets out of here alive. 2. He who dies with the most toys is still dead. The bottomline I think is that any calculation as to whether this deal is good or bad economically for Mr. Ralph is likely to pale in significance to other considerations which none of us outside his head and heart can calculate.

The bottomline is that by mutual agreement the players receive comfortably over 50% of the total gross receipts after dictating publicly to the owners that the new cap would have to be based on the total gross (rather than a designated gross back in the old NFL which fits the ownership and control model you describe. Arguably the players made themselves partner when they first threatened decert. The last CBA and apparently this one as well instead gives the players a solid majority of the total receipts making them arguably the majority partner. The bottomline is that yes in the old NFL business model from back in the day when George Halas threw around nickels like they were manhole covers your description is closest to reality. However, even if one does not want to concede that the players are majority owners of the NFL based on their majority receipt of total receipts, one would simply be foolish to not recognize that the partnership/employee equation is simply quite different than it was back in the day. The bottomline is that players come and players go, but that in the end, part of the reason why owners do not come and go is that they really add little to the product we consume. As far as who is the owner the are best seen and not heard and actually the more I see them the more worried I get because we they tend to dabble they often screw up the game. The bottomline is that the team owners used the main if only source of capital necessary to run the team and they used to be the source of good management. However, the bottomline is simply that the original NFL team owners did such a good job making the product profitable, the capital they provided now can be found lots of places. In addition, though good owners provided good management back in the day when George Halas and Al Davis were true sportsmen who understood the game. Yet, today's owners are great businessmen who struck it rich doing well in other businesses like Snyder or Jerry Jones but as sportsmen they are bad and worse. Fans need the owners like fish need bicycles. Players come and go but though the individuals change it's why I watch the game. I am glad Mr. Ralph did what he did but as long as his death does not trigger a team move, Mr. Ralph actually would deliver a better Bills product if he were dead and did exercise his owners tight to meddle. The team owners are simply replaceable and simply add 40% to the cost of the product without any replaceable benefit from their presence.

It appears that the NFLPA got the breathing room to maneuver when the owners had tried to simply bulldoze them by getting leverage over the stupid part of the NFLPA membership which did not take the warnings of the NFLPA from over a year ago to prepare themselves financially for several months of protracted bargaining with no paychecks coming in. The clock was ticking in that if the lockout continues the NFL and their partners (whether the owners admit it or not or nor or the owners refuse to treat then like partners and honor their contract)the owners and the players were going to start leaving money on the table when pre-season was canceled. What Smith and the NFLPA bought themselves for the multi-millions strike insurance cost them was time as the $200K a player undercut the owners plan to force a settlement. $200K paid out in 2012 was not going to make a difference right now for the players who were stupid and did not prepare themselves fiscally for a pro-tracted lockout. However, it did provide an avenue for these stupid players to come to the NFLPA and borrow money right now if they needed (actually wanted it) for bling or the revolving credit line at Tiffany's. Without this breathing room, these idiot players might have provided fertile ground for the team owners to try organize a rejectionist front of players. The $200K bought the NFLPA solidarity. They provided a reasonable showing that they might be able to get the weakest players to hold out longer than the weakest owners. All signs point now to this jujitsu having turned the owners power play against them. Sweet move if this plays out the way its looking right now.

Right on target! It has been a mixture of both hilarious and pathetic to see a lot of the anti-Smith and anti-NFLPA whining and bleating which has gone on. As a fan, I do not think that the NFLPA deserves much sympathy from fans because it is pretty clear to me that the players do not "deserve" in any value based calculus of how much a man should be compensated for playing a boys game. However, two things: 1. This entertainment business is worth based and not value based. The level of compensation received by the players and the owners has tons to do with the market can bear and little to do with any sense of morality or fairness. 2. The players are disgusting over paid idiots who are the worst except for the owners who are even more disgusting idiots. If this plays out the way it appears to be going, hats off to Gene Upshaw and the NFLPA for bludgeoning the owners into a deal that they themselves beat each other up to finally sign it and then had to pull a 180 and use the language of the contract to get out of this deal. Likewise now hats off to Smith for apparently pulling a rabbit out of his hat he had quietly set-up to unleash at crunch time in the negotiations. If the NFLPA merely were able to retain this as a good deal rather than the great deal they had under Upshaw (and not end up with what they would have judged to be a bad deal) when the owners had a lot of leverage he looks like he pulled off a nice trick. It does not add up to the truly ballsy move I was hoping for that the players would opt for a set-up with essentially replacement owners but it looks like it was well played.

A fairly rash generalization. Some football players are idiots legends in their own mind, some are nice guys and community minded. The same is true for hockey players. Some are nice guys and some you would not want to be in the same area code much less the same city. There is too much variation between individuals to try to generalize a claim about the type of people attracted to or who survive or prosper in either sport. The biggest generlizable difference you could make about these two types of athletes in their relative age in their training regime. Like many major league sports hockey often tends to draft players as teenagers to play in the minors. These youngsters develop their relationship with A team when they are kids. NFL players on the other hand operate in a system where the colleges (often funded by taxpayers) pay for the training and development of athletes who do not gain an affiliation with a specific team until they are adults. If anything this makes the largest difference in the NFL being more of a business than a sport.