Hplarrm

The last few high school games I went to I went for free. I did gladly pay for popcorn but I think it mostly went to the Veterans of Foreign War to pay for their 4th of July fireworks. I am more likely to pay serious dollars to watch a knife fight between Mr. Ralph and Al David than I would replacement players. Now that would be entertaining (Once).

This view is odd in that it does not seem to recognize that there are at least three sides to this debate, the owners, the players and the third side I am a part of the fans. Are the players on our side and representing out interests? No. However, are the team owners on our side and representing our interests? Nope. What's a fan to do or root for? Lets ask some questions. 1. Why is the NFL in court primarily today and wasting taxpayer money? Directly because negotiations broke down and did not provide a solution to the dispute. However, there were only negotiations because the owners opted out of the deal they made. It simply seems contradictory to me that you seem to want to blame the players for the wasteful court battle when their position has been to simply maintain the deal that the owners and them agreed to. It also seems odd to not give the owners at least equal blame for wasting tax dollars in the courts when like in most battles you need two sides agreeing in order to settle and two sides to battle. Particularly since we would not even be in court if the owners had stayed with the deal they made or agreed to the public position of the NFLPA to stick with the current deal there would be no waste. 2. Do the team owners have any other history of making use of taxpayer money for their benefit? They sure do and its called college football. As a resident of Buffalo part of my taxdollars go to fund places like the SUNY system and UB. Particularly under past president Greiner a ton of that money went to build stadiums and practice facilities for UB to attract Division I players. One can debate the utility of these moves since a number of independent studies have found big ticket athletics do not pay for themselves at all in increased ticket sales. Thus debate is beside the point here as when one looks at the NFL versus other sports leagues. In the MLB and NHL parent teams pay big bucks to maintain minor league teams directly or through contractual agreements to fund them to pay the teenagers they have signed to speculative contracts. Instead, in the NFL, teams actually take the un-American step (up until decertification in collaboration with the NFLPA to not only bar teenagers from signing to sell their wares, but even barring adults until the year their age would graduate. Instead, the NFL collaborates with colleges, many of them using our tax dollars at places like UB or state school football factories like U. Nebraska to train and develop young athletes. You want to talk about using taxpayer dollars for their private business you gotta start with the team owners. 3. In this three way debate who is the unnecessary party. Football ultimately from my perspective and looking at who really provides the cash in the form of ticket and other doodad sales and primarily through providing eyeballs for the TV nets to sale beer, cars and soap to it is the fans. The players are also necessary because I want to watch the best athletes at the sport compete. The owners are a fifth wheel at best. I understand what you say about we should appreciate fiscal risk they took year ago, I do. However, like a spare tire I am glad they are there but really can do without seeing them. In fact, if I can minimize the space they take up so there is more room in the trunk I am happy to get rid of them and if I can get a tire which does not blow out I am happy to dispose of them properly. The team owners are really an item I am happy to see us get rid of in exchange for models like the municiply owned Packers or the many alternate sources of capital out there like a Pagula who bought the Sabres, the billions of dollars sitting in corporations right now since they were not secure enough to spend and hire during the economic meltdown or even the TV networks themselves. The main message to the owners which may come out from this lockout is thanks for all you did in the past, clearly the NFL team owners have made back the original investment plus a lot, but please do not let the door hit you on the way out as they are simply a little contributing middle man at this point from a fan's perspective.

Agreed that it appears to me that the union has choreographed this dance for a while. I think the owners stepped in it when they beat the crap out of the Ed Garvey led AFL-CIO old style union organizing when the owners launched the replacement player gambit as part of the last lockout. The owners have been trailing behind the players (led by Gene Upshaw and the talented tenth of players and reinforced by the NYC lawyers who are the heirs of Pete Rozelle who suggested the decert strategy to the NFLPA) since the lockout. We have seen this in the NFLPA using the fact this is a free country to force the team owners to accept this as partners when they threatened to decert. In the negotiation over the next CBA they forced the team owners to accept the NFLPA not only as partners but arguably majority partners in the NFL as the NFLPA got on paper a clear majority of the total revenues. My sense is here that the team owners may have really stepped in it by asserting their contractual right to re-open the deal as I think signs point to an outcome where the NFLPA makes a stand for increased competition by suing the league as anti-trust violators and ultimately starts a NEWFL where the team owners are actually the players who play the game. Who knows for sure what will happen as the team owners have a lot of cash and cash rules in this society. However, I think the team owners have probably gone a bridge too far on this one.

Yes! The antitrust collusion between the NFL team owners is even more ridiculous than the players and actors unions. The mistake you make in understanding this is that while there is no justification for the NFLPA in terms of these men somehow "deserve" to be even better compensated for playing a boys game. However, there is total justification for the union to exist as a check and balance against the rampant greed of the NFL team owners. The only thing more ridiculous than the players making way too much money off of the game is the owners making even more money off these men playing a boys game. This gets at the real issue. Where the NFLPA is headed on this is an effort to replace the team owners as the recipient of the profits and managers of the revenues from the game. I have little problem with this as I see the owners simply being a middle man who add little or nothing to the game I love. The original owners did take a risk with their capital and reasonably receive compensation for this risk taking. However, the original owners which are pretty much down to Mr. Ralph walking around this planet have been outragously compensated for the risk taken. The fact they have pushed the envelope even further by re-opening what is a sweetheart deal for them makes any taking from them also reasonable. The issue here is that really all the BFL team owners provide is capital and there are simply tons of sources of capital (including the players with their share of the revenue/profits from the game THEY play. In fact the real source of capital in the game now are the TV networks. The game needs the owners like a fish needs a bicycle and I would be happy to see them cut out of the process.

I think you are right that the key to this is that it is a free country and that Brees and a talented tenth of the other players are going to go and find a new job. The new employer is going to be the NFLPA (which by the way has decertified itself as the bargaining agent for the players with the NFL (which is their right to do under US Labor law amd acknowledged in the now inoperative CBA. The NFLPA still remains in business and will do so as long as a critical mass of players remain as members and pay their dues. Pro football players will not remain members unless there is something in for them. My sense is that the NFLPA will offer up to the players in order to get them to remain in the NFLPA something like: 1. A sense of solidarity and control over their own lives which will be embodied in the leadership the talented tenth shows in holding together their family of players and fighting the enemy which is the team owners, The NFLPA is off to a very good start in this dispute by: A. Producing the goods for the the players in the current CBA which saw the NFLPA get its butt handed to it in the last lockout led by the old-style AFL-CIO model but after decertifying in the late 80a they have essentially dictated a course which saw Gene Upshaw dictate to the owners that the player share would be determined by total rather than designated gross receipts and that the player share of that total needed to start with a 6. The players finished this negotiation with 60.5% of the take and has Tagliaboo-boo and the NFLs own lawyers cajole/beat the owners into accepting it. B. Really choreographed well these negotiations such that they were ready to go when negotiations failed to decertify and have the highest visibility (pay and recent accolades in the case of Brees) players file the anti-trust suit. 2. Leadership is key to winning any fight of groups, but money talks and simply talking just walks when it cones down to it. The NFLPA is going to need to show players the money when it gets down to it. To do this they have among other things" a. By lining up the high profile players who naturally are the team leaders, they have established a system which has demanded of individual players that they get their own financial houses in order so they can hold out as long as they can. b. Put away money into a strike fund which allow them to keep regular though smaller checks coming to NFL players. c. Set-up a system where when players get into financial trouble they can apply to the strike fund for loans to help pay for immediate heavy duty problems like loan payments being done or legit legal problems. c. Has actually worked with NFL itself over the past few years to identify and discipline idiots like Pac-Man Jones. The NFLPA has done what it can to help players hold out as long as they individually can, AND have a system in place to help NFL players who get in trouble through no direct fault of their own, AND set-up a habit of iding and disciplining idiots. NFL players who get in trouble are actually going to be less likely to admit this by stepping out of line and admitting they need the money the owners would give them, further, if a player has a legit problem (a business deal goes south for example) the NFLPA will actually give him a bunch of cash or leverage up front in the form of business loan, AND in the cases of a Travis or Chris Henry the NFLPA has changed from the days when it defended all players no matter what they did but to be willing to brand some players as idiots and throw them under the bus to save the whole deal for the players. The players may not be able to hold out a long time, but my guess is that they too learned the lessons of the late 80s and their talented tenth are going to try to do the job to keep them together. The success they showed in getting Brady, Manning an Brees to be high among the name plaintiffs in the anti-trust suit is an indicator to me these boys are gonna wage a good fight against the owners, 3. They will have to reveal a credible plan that puts money into the pockets of high, mid and then low level players. My guess is that the NFLPA will announce the founding of a new Football league which will employ players and actually fill the void left at the TV networks by the lockout. The NEWFL will form teams and the NFLPA will act as its bargaining agent just as they did reaching a CBA with the NFL. The NEWFL will develop personal service contracts with players the same as the NFL now must do with the CBA thrown out. Yes, to answer a question above players do have the right to jump ship on the NFLPA and sign personal services contracts with individual owners. However, this type of free market is exactly what the team owners were running away from when it signed the CBAs. Te NFL team owners do not want to and cannot operate in a free market. Someone above asked for an example of anti-trust or collusion by the owners that the NFLPA is suing against. Am answer to that will be the NFL draft being held without the agreement of the NFLPA. What greater collusion can there be than the NFL teams holding a draft without the agreement of a bargaining agent for the players where all the teams agree not to negotiate with any players they have not chosen in a draft. This game lasts until the draft at which point the owners cave or alternately hold their own draft and collude against individuals and lose in court. My GUESS is that the NFLPA takes advantage of the fact that the only things the team owners provide is history and capital. They have just separated themselves from the history which has produced the current CBA and quite frankly there is tons of capital around in forms like Pagula just showed with the Sabres, private businesses are sitting on googobs of capital after the last recession, and also models like the one employed by the Packers show municipal ownership and management can work, The main question I see looking at the current situation is whether the owners will still exist in a pint sized competitor for he NEWFL, or will they simply go bankrupt and cease to exist. The folks who judge the owners have all the leverage here are simply mistaken. How much money would you pay for season tickets to watch Al Davis and Ralph Wilson play football against each other? Zero, nada, zip, and none are the correct answer (I would buy a ticket once to watch the two of them have a knife fight but once is all I would pay and not much at that actually). The players are the league. If there was a NEWFL with teams called the Mannings, the Bradys, the Brees, etc, and they sold the rights to games featuring them and 80 of their buddies playing for 16 teams, I would pay money or turn of the TV so the networks can sell my eyeballs to beer, car, and soap companies, Manning and 80 if his friends per 16 teams can then split even as little as 5 billion bucks between themselves and scrape off some of it to pay coaches, GNs, etc. The NFL team owners made the same big mistake when the NFLPA kicked their butts to form a CBA in the 90s which made them a partner with the owners and brought them the current CBA which arguably makes them majority partners since by agreement they get 60%+ of the total receipts. If Mr. Ralph wants to leave a near billion $ asset to his heirs he better dies soon as after the NFL draft in April he likely will see the value of the Bills asset go spinning down the toilet,

I'm not sure either what "slug-free" means but my sense is that getting rid of Quinn as a partial owner and generally the operating manager of this team is a very good start of reaching this goal.

If there is an owner who would keep the team in WNY, then this day could not happen soon enough.

My GUESS would be that be that Gailey likely follows the same method of operation he has used in he past with Fiedler, Kordell, Thigpen, Bulger, and Fitzpatrick and gets a vet QB who has shown football smarts and has seen NFL Ds behind the center in games and lots of practices to be his back-up. As one poster correctly pointed out, the choice is more than Gailey's so simply because he has shown no tendency nor any (I mean zero, nada, none, zippo) previous success with drafting and training up a rookie starting at ground zero as his starter, perhaps he will do something totally differemt. I really doubt it though. Particularly when with Luck deciding not to go there is no (again zero, nada, none zippo) draftees with more than a remote long distance chance of being the franchise guy we want (perhaps actually Newton might be but his primary likely rookie contribution is going to be as a QB in the Wildcat- in fact if Newton is our #3 it pretty much means by definition we have not used the #1 to improve our run D when actually the run D is likely two starters away from adequacy. Further, we have decided by taken Newton to push our acquisition of OL help down a round when we appear to be at least a player and a half (RT and swing guy who makes the back-up OL situation work) and likely a year of play for the new OL to develop chemistry). If Newton or a second tier talent gets thrown to the wolves if Fitzy gets injured my guess would be that his training gets short circuited by being required to do more than he can reasonably be asked to do. He would have to produce with a D which right now is a couple of good players (a DE and OLB) short of adequacy and with an OL (a player and a half short of adequacy) that is not good enough without a vet QB capable of reading pro Ds well. Do you really feel Newton is a good enough player that he will be able to make pro-reads his first year? It is pretty doubtful the Bills will be able to plug all their needs from this one draft. Spending the 1st on Newton simply sets back filling other needs by a round of talent.

The question I tried to answer since that was the one asked was in regard to what the biggest IMMEDIATE need was. Perhaps you are clairvoyant enough to see that Brett Favre is done in a year or two (Favre actually did not see it that way and lead a team deep into the playoffs after the Pack let him go to show it) and in translating this to the Bills case can anticipate that the guy you draft in the first can deliver you an SB win years later making him an immediate need that you judge the Bills using their #3 next year (or even their second rounder) on a player who will sit for a year or two... I however decided to answer by proposing more likely IMMEDIATE contributors.

Agreed. I also agree with the idea of picking either DL stud with our overall #3 (though our immediate needs are so large adequate) but disagree with the idea of spending a 2nd on a QB who at best is going to sit on the bench this year in the 2nd. There simply is no very good potential for a reasonable bet for any of the QB prospects to be much more than a speculative project who merits a early pick. I think folks like Ponder, Mallet, Kapernick, etc MIGHT turn out to be good pros, but none of these are such a sure thing that they merit the Bills passing on a DL, OLB, or an OL guy they should be able to develop at least into a quality back-up in a year or two of training. Its a 50/50 crapshoot that even the #3 pick will be a starter after the end of his first year. It is possible but gets less and less probable and possible as the rounds go up whether we get any contribution out of the pick. A QB taken is pretty much guaranteed to be a project his first year contributing little or likely nothing. This also is probably ls likely his second year for any of these individuals talked about. Our immediate needs dictate that we not roll the dice on a QB prospect until round 4 or later.

The lazy thing is allowing a doctrinal view like race determines abilities or results as a crutch instead of making real assessments of individuals. Even if were true that a statistical variation in how one chooses to configure large statistical pools somehow justifies not judging an individual as an individual we are all lost. To judge (really prejudge) an individual based om gross statistical analysis is not simply racist (if race is the statistical factor looked at) but just un-American in the worst way.

Thanks Napol for introducing some sane thought into this debate. It is fairly simple in that folks can plunk any label on others that they want or Frank Luntz tells them too, but the bottom line is that no manipulation of the gross statistics justifies discriminating against an individual or makes it a good thing or even intelligent to ignore what an individual does or can do. Eugenics can simply be tossed it makes no sense in terms of reaching the goals you want to reach or in fostering the best performance out of a QB be he Tom Brady, Doug Williams, or whomever to prejudge them based on whatever gross statistics are out there. Is it racist to read the statistical facts in some particular way or another? Maybe. Is it racist and in fact stupid to let this reading of the facts dictate whether you take a player who can do the job or maybe not. Yep. There is no logical reason not to treat and individual choice as based on the performance of that individual.

The most amusing thing about this whole drama is when folks offer up opinion and claim that for sure so and so is gonna happen or claim that one side is totally right and the other side is totally wrong. Actually, this is such unplowed territory that no one can say with any certainty or clarity what is going to happen. The team owners have the tactical advantage right now but only maintain it if the players pursue the same strategy of traditional employer/employee relationships. The players have demonstrated in the real world that when they get beaten incredibly badly by the owners as they did with the mid-80s lockout that they are capable of adopting a totally new strategy which in essence through out the old rulebook. The Dody finding is potentially massive as it also throws out the old script of simple labor/management dispute and instead insists that the current CBA is based on a model where the NFL and NFLPA are partners. The league in diverting part of the revenue into work stoppage insurance did not serve the interest of their partners the NFLPA. We will see how this plays out.

You are right that competition is the key issue here, but actually it is the fact that the NFL between having a partial anti-trust exemption from the Congress has the individual NFL teams collaborating with each other to deliver the NFL product as a business and really only competing with each other on the field, It is only a partial exemption (sort of partially un-American which I guess is like being a little pregnant) and does prohibit the NFL from colluding with each other over salaries and working conditions. Things changed big time when the NFLPA using traditional labor tactics led by AFL-CIO guy Ed Garvey got their heads handed to them in the mid 80s lockout. This move so discredited the Garveyites that the talented tenth of NFL players led by Gene Upshaw who really had understood stuff they learned in college ended threatening to decertify the NFLPA. This would have forced NFL team owners into operating a free market system as there would have been no draft to bind individuals to teams. Rather than compete in the free market, NFL owners ran kicking and screaming to sign the CBA. There is a great irony here in that I doubt that pro football as we know it today could even survive in a free market system (at best it would look like MLB)it actually produces more revenue in a social compact system than it does in a free market. The current labor dispute strikes me as being about the players recognizing thanks to Upshaw and a few others that people tune in to watch the players. The owners used be a necessity back in the day when there were fewer sources of capital willing to invest in a team or when folks like Halas really were football guys. However, in todays world the owners are like fifth wheel on a car at best. We all have a spare tire in the trunk but we hope we never really have to use it. I'd love it if we simply cut the owners out of this with our hearty thanks and get to 32 (or more) teams using the Packers model of ownership and management. The NFLPA actually managing the league using the Packers model is likely the best bet for how you might make this work. It would virtually certainly never happen as the Snyders and Jerry Jones of the world have too much cash to be kicked to the curb, but hey one can dream.

You are right. I went too far ascribing the draft as one man's choice and vision. That being said it is a Gailey O they are trying to run and the simple fact is that historically with his style it is one which puts a premium on football intellect (a rookie might or might not have it), toughness, athleticism, and at least a couple of years seeing NFL Ds in practice and in gametime. A rookie is simply going to flat out lack the last item. The question to me is will he survive for two years behind our OL to get that experience? This OL is at least a player (starting RT) and a half (a swing guy who can back-up several positions or create tbe flexibility to allow 2 guys to back-up without missing a beat) from being adequate. Add to this a year to get chemistry. I find it hard to see any QB surviving with this OL unless he is a smart enough vet to often be able to see where the blitz may well be coming from and also have the football sense to duck and cover when needed.

For those who see Gailey will pick Newton or Gabbert or in fact devote much in terms of draft resources to a QB I still ask what examples are there in Gailey's history of training a rookie QB into his successful starter. He could always do something different than he has ever done, but if one insists that drafting a rookie QB will happen there needs to be a credible case stated than just claiming you need a 1st round or highly drafted QB. We do not need Ryan Leaf, Joey Harrington, JaMarcus Russell, Akili Smith or a host of others. The Gailey MO has been to get a Jay Fiedler, Kordell Stewart, Thigpen, or Bulger, etc to run his O. No one has come remotely close to explaining why Gailey is going to do something different this time around.

Naw,you make a trade or even pick up an FA like a Brees, Dilfer, two-time loser Brad Johnson, Vick or even Brett Favre (a second rounder run out of town elsewhere who actually was available twice as an FA and took a team into the championship game after being picked up as an FA. Sure, some of these gets were malcontents or high maintenance, but you are saying that tons of early QB choices like Leaf, Russel or Smith were also not malcontent high maintenance idiots. The key is that it comes down to individual player assessment and relative risk/reward judgments. I simply see no QBs in this draft whose risk/reward and the Bills obvious need to stop the run who would be worth more than a 4th rounder to us. Disagreeing with this is more than legit, but the debate devolves down pretty quickly to the person advocating the QB choice to choose a name and advocate for him being worthy of that draft pick.

So are you arguing here that the players also should be pushing to revise the CBA and not simply the owners in order to get a better CBA which actually distributes money to the full NFLPA. Your greater understanding of the economics here raises some interesting questions for those with less knowledge and whatever you can do to explain it would be helpful. 1. Why did the owners unilaterally push to get the CBA reopened if the current cap number does little beyond the escalating take to increase player salaries except for those who are due for new contracts? 2. You are correct that teams do not have to spend up to the cap so it is voluntary in that regard. However, the active item which is not voluntary is that there is a minimum % of the cap which teams must spend or be subject to fine. It is actually that definite fear of crossing the minimum which has raised salaries of most NFL players. Is your description of the cap as voluntary only true for for reaching the max but not for maintaining a minimum which assures balance and actually drives salaries up. 3. The NFL is simply not a free market in important ways. You do realize this don't you and see the significance of this fact in driving up and distributing cash payments. The Bills are actually a team which needs to keep ladling out money in salaries to avoid the minimum (to some extent this explains the travesties to Kelsay, Dockery and Walker and then this had an impact on the contract demands and give aways to folks under contract like Schobel and Peters. Your new contract dictum is not nearly as pristine as you describe it. 4. Enough player are earning the minimum and then demonstrating interest above the minimum is immediately wratcheded up. So the increases in the minimum built into the CBA are significant. These are just a few things the doctrinaire view you seem to take does not fit reality. Overall the Dody decision was a big thing despite the yelps of those who claim it is not simply due to the timing which gave momentum to the player negotiators and hurt unity in terms of dealing with distraction at exactly the moment of the deadline when the deal gets cut. Saying it means nothing comes off as simple whistling in the dark.

Do you or anyone else think that the NFL is a free market? If you do then you have a different understanding of what a free market is (and I think a different definition than reality. One needs to acknowledge that while there are some free market principles which govern all negotiations using cash thay in the mid 80s lockout the owners cleaned the clocks of the traditional AFL-CIO style NFLPA by seizing the initiative with lockout and use of replacement players. The old style union leadership in fact got their clocks cleaned so bad that the talented tenth of NFL players led by Gene Upshaw were able to understand and sell their more cattle like peer players the idea that the way to win was to in fact threaten to decertify the NFLPA. The truth is actually that the NFL pre-lockout was not anything which could credibly called a free market as individual rights to negotiate and sell their skills to the highest bidder were almost completely abridged by cooperation between the NFL and NFLPA which agreed to the anti-free market step of the a draft of players and their assignment to negotiate only with that one buyer. Decertification would have forced the team owners into an actual free market where they had to buy individual player services in a free market. Rather than operate in a free market the owners ran kicking and screaming to negotiate the restraints on individual trade such as the draft and a flat out ban on adults being signed until their graduating class hit roughly 21 years of age. This stands in sharp contrast with other sports leagues such as MLB and the NHL where teams have to spend their money to sign 16 year olds to speculative contracts and maintain minor league teams through direct ownership or contractual dealing (not to mention sharp contrast to individual sports like tennis or golf where individuals play as pros at very tender ages. The old league was no where near being a free market and it moved more towards operating based on a social compact with the mid90s CBA. In the current CBA which the owners re-opened but the NFLPA was quite satisfied with because in it the players moved from not only actually being more like partners with the team owners in the mid 80s CBA to actually arguably becoming the majority partner as Gene Upshaw publicly dictated before negotiation began that the new salary cap would be based on total revenues rather than a designated gross as under the previous deal (a deal which saw folks like Mr. Ralph get rid of thousands of seats which were shared revenue and instead install premium seats where he got to keep all the take. Upshaw dictated that the new players cap amount needed to start with a 6. and 60.5% was the final number. The owners actually were gonna vore down this deal but Paul Tagliaboo-boo and the NYC lawyers who operated the league pointed out to Mr. Ralph and the old guard owners that even though they gave up the traditional control they had in the pretend free market the NFL had where George Halas through around nickels like they were manhole covers (a great Ditka line when he was a player), but they were going to make a lot more money in the social compact which is now the NFL than in their pretend free market. 66% of a lot of money is great, but 39.5 of tons more money is even better. The NFL owners were forced to realize that the real money was with the TV networks and if stability and peace with the NFLPA cost them giving up the majority of the revenue, a minority of the gross revenue was actually a lot more than they made under the old system. The NFL certainly has some aspects in common with a free market as that is the overall marketplace of the US dominated system it operates in. However, anyone who analyzes and understands this would not make a claim that the NFL is a free market system as it simply produces more and consistent revenue in the more socialized system it operates under. The sad fact is the reality that though George Halas and Wellington Mara were essential to founding of the league, they are dead and Mr. Ralph will soon be. The NFLPA is really the majority partner in this operation. IMHO this is actually a better reflection of reality as I am willing to pay to watch the Bills player face the Oakland players, but I might watch once if Al Davis and Mr. Ralph had a knife fight, but overall I (and anyone else with half a brain know the owners have import as historical relics but the league is the players as far as this fan is concerned. I would love it if every team followed a Green Bay Packers public ownership model as it is clear that a team can be operated profitably in this framework. However, the owners are really superfluous as far as I am concerned and it is unfortunate that their death throes are interfering with delivery of the product right now. It was my hope that the talented tenth of NFL players (folks like Troy Vincent and TKO who spent their off seasons at Ivy League business schools) had a trick up their sleeves like the mid-80s decertification gambit. If the NFLPA uses lockout to do the smart thing for player salaries and establishes free market competition for the NFL much as what was done when the AFL pumped up Namath's salary and even the failed USFL pumped up Jimbo's salary it would be great if they simply used the owners reopening the CBA to essentially kick the team owners to the curb. The team owners are simply historical sources of capital. In today's market the team owners are really redundant as there is simply far more capital in the TV networks. Ironically Dody might have actually saved the team owners from themselves as he has created a path to where the NFLPA can stick to something like the current CBA with adjustments they want such as a rookie salary scale which gives more money to current players. My GUESS is that the talented tenth of players likely had some curveball such as the decertification gambit and antitrust suits which would have meant a risk for the NFLPA but likely spelled the end for the owners controlling the NFL. As long as the NFL does fundamental things like force players to negotiate with one and only one team and actually virtually totally bars many adults from negotiating you cannot seriously call this a free market. The NFL enjoyed having taxpayers subsidize their training and development of players through paying taxes for a U. Nebraska or a Univeristy at Buffalo Division I team. However, the NFL is now paying the price for riding this subsidy to have them negotiate with adult athletes leadership even if most of the NFLPA are babied sheeplike athletes. Gailey can order them around like little kids but they can now be organized by the talented tenth of fellow athletes.

The Bills are short by their own admission 2 DEs (even in a 3-4 btw so I think they are blowing draft smoke here and will look to get 1 DE likely with their first pick). 2 LBs (this likely is true but my GUESS is that they only expect to get 1 it is to be hoped LB starter from this draft- yet you already are in roun2 and 1st rounders appear to be only slightly above 50/50 to be starters by the end of they year. The good news for us is that our second rounder will be about as high a pick as can be and we get the advantage of overnight negotiation to try to multiply this pick with a trade. This need is necessary because even devoting the first two picks to the D we are still likely a D player short of what we would love to see of contributors from this draft. By spending this high high second round pick on Kapwhathisname you do several things: 1. By definition in your post as we assign him the back-up role to him and we all know how Mr. Ralph hates to pay for someone to sit whether it be Wade whom he contractually agreed to pay even if he was sitting in his sons high school games or RJ whom he designated the starter after he gave him a guaranteed contract based on him dismantling and Indy team which had given up on the game. The boss will almost certainly chafe (if we are lucky silently) every time he signs the big check evem if the K-man is sitting for his own good. Further, a small but loud and whiny part of the fan base will be calling for the rookie to play every time Fitzy makes even a slight error. They will be egged on by WGR and Sully who will be happy to sell commercials and fill column inches by stoking the next QB controversy. If we spend a 2nd on a QB it remains ugly around here. 2. This essentially will be a declaration of no mas for the 2011 season by the Bills. They not only forgo using the #2 for an LB they desperately need to be even adequate against the run, but in doing so they put off by another round their search for a player and a half (RT and a swing guy they need on OL to have it be adequate. 3. We are also telling the team and Fitzy we are giving up on 2011. In fact, given the OL boot down in the draft we are not only demanding Fitzy survive with an undermanned OL, but if worse comes to worse it forces the K man into th line-up with an inadequate OL to protect him and him not having had the usual 2 years a Gailey failed vet QB has of seeing NFL Ds before he gets thrown to the wolves. I just do not see taking him so early as worth the cost and risk.

You do understand though that even if the players end up back in the NFL that new leagues are great for players because the actual free market of competition raises players salaries. The USFL had stupid owners and lost virtually completely to the NFL in court. Yet, ask Jim Kelly and the rest of the players was the USFL a great thing for them and they would uniformly and correctly answer TES! The AFL did far better than the USFL in that Mr. Ralph and the boys forced the NFL to fold them into the BFL, but even though the outcomes were very different ask Joe Namath and the rest of the players was the AFL a great thing for them and they would uniformly and correctly answer TES. You really miss what the point is here when you think about where the players end up as the determinant of what is the correct thing to do. The correct thing for the players is to make as much money as they ca, This turned out to be the case with the USFL, the AFL and also by threatening to decertify itself which would have forced the team owners to actually compete in more of a free market. The team owners chose the more socialistic approach of the CBA because there was more money to be made from a social compact with the players that guaranteed a product for the "real" money of the TV networks. The determinant of success you seem to choose is really not what its all about.

+1 (at least I hope so. The silliness of a lot of these posts is that they fail to recognize that there are not simply two sides to this dispute and one has to favor the owners or the players. There is a third side (at least 3) with interests of the fans being significantly different from those of either the owners or the players. Just as it was set up in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution, given a fight between two parties I prefer checks and balances. I do not absolutely trust anything (even myself) but I have more trust in larger bodies than in individuals. I advocate the owners being kicked to the curb in favor of a Green Bay model because it puts a larger group in charge and makes for more honesty and accountability. Not perfect but clearly better IMHO.

I saw a newsblurb this morning (forgive me if this has already been mentioned in another thread) that says a federal district court judge has overruled the special master who had found that the final TV deal crafted by the owners and the networks was contrary to the interests of the players. The deal apparently is the foundation for the NFL getting paid billions by the nets even if they lockout the players and do not deliver a product. The judge cited several legal errors by the special master and order that any network money be put in escrow and thus is not going to be available to individual owners (many of whom need the cash flow to pay for large loans they took out to buy the team, pay for stadiums, etc. This move on the cusp of final negotiations at least throws into question if not simply eliminates a major piece of the NFL negotiating strategy. This is amusing to me as I had fully expected the NFLPA to come up with some out of the box proposal to alter the basic relationship between the players and the owners, but I never expected that this would happen due to a court decision. In the past the owners have run kicking and screaming to sign the CBA rather than operate in a true free market. Once again the free market appears poised to wreak havoc on the owners strategy as outstanding loan payments may well make them roo the day they opened up to CBA to renegotiation by Thursday night. The players clearly became partners with the team owners in the first CBA. They arguably became the majority partner when Upshaw dictated that there would be no designated gross and the cap would be based on total revenues and further that the cap number needed to begin with a 6 (60.5% was the actual final number) With this 4th quarter finding, perhaps this creates an opportunity for the players to basically kick the owners to the curb as quite frankly all the owners provide is money and even in our current troubled economy there are numerous sources of cash around. It actually is amusing to me to see the team owners get hoisted on their own petard. I only hope that we end up with a better product which is more responsive to the fan base if the middle man of the team owners is kicked out. Green Bay has shown that public ownership is a working model for on the field excellence which in the end is pretty much my main concern with pro football.

Amusingly over-produced neat video. It makes me wish we all had theme songs to go with our life. Mine would be Its the End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine).

In the end, the NFL is a business, and one of the maxims of business is that the customer is always right. We know that this does not result at all in the real world in a business owner doing what the customer may actually want, but the business owner is not gonna be an owner for long if he totally disregards customer wishes. In the Bills case, the fan base (the customer in this case) and the local media (which uses its megaphone to influence the local fan base or at least a noisy whiny part of it in the case of WGR radio and Jerry Sullivan at the Buffalo Snooze) make their nickels and seem to delight in fostering QB controversies. Mr. Ralph has fallen victim to that himself starting with the handshake deal only he could make (and utter football snafu as he bet Kelly could be rewarded in his next FA contract and he did not last long enough as a player to have a next contract. Mr. Ralph has all the appearance of Ahab chasing Moby in the eternal quest the Bills keep making and demolishing the team to do it in search of the next Jim Kelly. At any rate, my point is do you really think that the Bills are gonna spend a 1st rounder (and based on the Trent example anything better than a 4th round QB), and simply let him sit on the bench and learn the game as he almost certainly will need to do in order to have a good career. The sad dichotomy of the situation the Bills are in is that: I. Nix is right that building through the draft MUST be a central part of the strategy for building a winning team (this is not to say it is the ONLY part, but definitely a central strategy). If a team does not draft well it is quite unlikely to do well. I. However, the quest to find the next Jimbo is so huge on the football hearts of fans and most of all Mr. Ralph that the pressure to actually train a QB well here makes the task impossible. Literally football insane moves have dominated how the QB situation has been handled by the Bills in the past decade plus: A. Mr. Ralph's handshake deal with Jimbo was just incorrect and bad football judgment. B. The Bills stretching a bit in the view of many observers to take TC with a #2 and then as reality has shown us making him the starter while he had a clear happy feet problem that has proved his undoing as a winner. We rushed him into a starter role specifically because Mr. Ralph's football judgment of how much Kelly had left was wrong wrong wronh. C. The whole DF/RJ debacle as best as this observer could tell came from: 1. The Bills promising Flutie at least a fair shot on the field at winning the starting job (at least in his perception) 2. The Bills taking action which ran directly counter to this by signing RJ to a huge guaranteed deal. 3. The contractual situation was created where if RJ did not play and got benched (an outcome which happened because it turned out he was injury prone which was clearly forseeable) where if Flutie played like AJ Smith said he would all his achieved bonuses would not only count against the next cap but would be rolled into his base pay. We had to extend DF if only to spread the cap impact over a longer contract. 4. Mr. Ralph personally and publicly deemed RJ the starter after he folded and spindled an Indy team which really quit on the game after Bennett got hurt (and ultimately IRed) and it became clear from the scoreboard that the team they needed to lose was going to win). RJ beat up a team which was saving itself and Mr. Ralph publicly declared him the starter. Given the results simply a bad football judgment. 5. The whole Billy Joe Hobert escapade (where there is no smoking gun that this was Mr. Ralph's doing but in this case given the role he was acquired for and giving up a first day draft pick for him if Mr. Ralph was not involved that absence would be negligence. 6. Acquiring Bledsoe was actually not a bad move from my standpoint. One year of performance as well as could be hoped for (Comeback player of the year and if you want to claim he was not one of the best three QBs in the AFC that year than name who you claim is better that year) but then followed by a performance which was about as bad as one could be by a starting QB. The mistake was not just calling this a wash and actually extending his contract. Again no smoking gun on Mr. Ralph like the handshake and the RJ to starter bad football judgments but again it would be negligence if the major moves to extend Bledsoe and trade for Hobert did not see serious involvement by the owner. 7. Promoting JP to the starter role after Bledsoe went in the ditch when even JP was on record saying he did not deserve the starter role. 8. The Edwards debacle (less blame for this one as the Wilfork injury forced our hand) but again clearly Trent was effective initially, but once the Bills coaches got a hold of him and opponents got some tape, Edwards was simply uneffective. I simply do not see anyway we draft a QB at #3 or anywhere early and then let him learn as he should. Unless you want to declare that Newton or Gabbert is the next Dan Marino, I do not see the Bills intelligently spending more than a 4th on a QB. Actually given that the past Gailey MO has been to rehab vet QBs who have actually failed badly in previous starts (Fieldler, Kordell, Bulger, Thigpen had one start and got cut by Miami and even Fitzy to some extent). Gailey MIGHT draft a QB and then train him up. However, he has none, zero, nada, did I say none yet record of having developed a rookie QB into a productive QB. I think folks are making a bad football judgment when they read into the skills on paper of a rookie QB that he is a Gailey type. This is simply wrong because the Gailey type has always been a vet (and usually a declared failed vet at that).