Hapless Bills Fan Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 No player worries about injuries, NONE. You are talking about player agents. A broken leg is nothing, 3 months You guys assume these players are about money, most would play for free. Until I read the recent article, I had completely forgotten that Jim Kelly had severely injured his shoulder and hadn't played much his senior year. I'm sure there would have been a lot of second guessing the Bills draft strategy if he hadn't worked out. I have wondered how Kelly's career would have gone if he had signed with the Bills in 1983 Kelly gives huge props to Mouse Davis and the UFL for developing him as a QB, teaching him to "use his feet" and refining his passing game By the time he came to the Bills in 1986, the OL was solid, 1st and 2nd picks who'd had time to learn and mature. Hull and Wolford had joined Ritcher and Devlin and Jones had taken over at LT If instead Kelly had tried to play behind the '83 line with that coaching, and without the run-and-shoot USFL seasoning, how would it have worked for him? Comment: "play for free". I think that was true for all back in your day. I wonder if that's part of the issue today with the money being bigger esp for high draft round rookies. I'm sure what you say is still true for many, increasingly though I think there are some who see NFL as their "easy money train" and putting them above accountability or the need for hard work. "I'm Ko Simpson of the Buffalo Bills and I'm worth millions!" Maybe it's harder to get angry if you're driving a paid-off Caddy Escalade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sisyphean Bills Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 My sense is that though Mr. Ralph may have been right in his analysis and thus cast his vote based on the discrepancy between big owners vs. small owners that this does not mean Tagliaboo-boo was wrong as I think he and Mr. Ralph actually had the same analysis. Tags argued for agreement with the CBA because the analysis which he and Mr. Ralph likely shared saw the NFL as a collective making far more $ with the CBA than without it. The NFL tends to go where the money is thus they voted 30-2 to sign the CBA. 30 owners made the right decision for them because even getting 39.50% meant making gobs more money than getting 100% of 0 income is the players went on strike. Sure there is the potential that the NFL might go with some version of "Replacement Player II" in an attempt to replicate the lockout of the mid-80s when the owners kicked the AFL-CIO style the NFLPA went with. However, the ironic comeuppance of the NFL is that they had been able to pass along all the training costs of a minor league to college football (in many cases to taxpayers who absorb virtually all the costs of training players at Football U state schools like U. Nebraska). NFL owners joined with the NFLPA to restrain the rights of individual to sell their services to the highest bidder (AKA the American Way)through the draft and even restrained the rights of adults to participate in a free market by restricting the draft to men whose senior class would have graduated (whether they went to college or not, However, by living off this gravy train rather than buying (and thus educating and buying the loyalty of teenagers like the MLB or NHL, they instead dealt with making deals with adults (even worse for them a talented tenth of these adults became Gene Upshaw and other player leaders who understood and agreed with the tactics of smart NYC lawyers who proposed that the NFLPA would actually gain the most leverage over the owners by threatening to dissolve themselves. This would take away the union as a willing conspirator to restrain and regulate trade and force the individual owners into a true free market where they negotiated individual personal services contracts with individual players. The team owners ran kicking and screaming to accept the first true CBA. They did negotiate the salary cap coming from a designated gross (which did not include premium seats so owners like Mr. Ralph were happy to give up seats for 5,000+ fans they had to split the income with the players to get a fewer # of premium seats they got to keep 100% of the take from. The NFLPA was even willing to accept this as under the new CBA they like the owners would make more money than they ever thought possible (by assuring the TV nets of a product without labor disruption the nets agreed to deals worth billions for team owners). Going back to the title of the thread in terms of what this means for Luck. The great likelihood is that there will be no work stoppage. There is too much money in selling the product to stop producing the product. It is a negotiation however so each side will need to make a show of being ready to win a work stoppage and there may even be a short interruption if both sides miscalculate. However, in the end, my sense is that too many of the owners are paying debt service on loans they took to buy or intelligently manage paying for this asset and the banks will not stop requiring payment simply because income is down or out, Further, the networks need product so they can sell beer and other ads and with no product or an inferior product income to the NFL will dry up. The players will also face tough times as their huge salaries will also dry up. However, they have had tons of lead time (the key move the owners made in the 80s was to lock the players out before they had collected cash for regular season rather than the AFL-CIO led NFLPA plan to strike after the regular season when their members were flush and deny the NFL and nets playoff income- the owners then launched the replacement player move which threatened the players with loss of their jobs and the NFLPA came crawling back. Now however, not only are the athletes smarter (men like Takeo Spikes and Troy Vincent going of to Wharton in the off-season) that most of these too rich athletes have planned for the stoppage. There are always Pac-Man type idiots who will not prepare but even they with a work stoppage will go collect money from WWE or card shows and other idiots like Travis Henry will go get arrested. The big wildcard in this is that if the owners refuse to play the players I do not think it will take a bunch of time for the cream of NFL athletes to form their own league and compete with the NFL which is unilaterally under the CBA suspending the agreement. Luck actually just needs to wait for reality and then make decisions. Pyrite Gal! The points I've stated on Luck and the labor dispute can be summarized succinctly as Andrew Luck is the best college QB in my opinion Not everyone makes life decisions based strictly on financial benefit The CBA that Tagliabue pushed on the owners at the 11th hour (they didn't even have time to review it in detail) was clearly one that the NFL owners now regret because they voted out of it last year. How it can be suggested that the owners really think it was fair/good/acceptable given the course of events is incomprehensible. I do recall, Pyrite Gal always took labor's side on such issues and regardless of the economic realities. In part of your rant, you mention that the NFL doesn't develop younger players in minor leagues, yet fail to connect the dots that part of the reason that isn't possible is that the NFLPA takes its lion's share of the gross revenue and distributes it to a fixed pool of roughly 2000 individuals. Your argument that the owners cannot have a lockout because of fixed costs is factually incorrect; the owners will be paid by the networks regardless of whether there are games or not, which will easily enable them to bridge a work stoppage. It's not quite as simple as "Down Owners! Bad boys!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saint Doug Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 Speaking of Pyrite Gal, what ever happened to him/her? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurman#1 Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 There is no way I enter the draft with any posibility of a NFL player strike. I would be out of football for one full year, maybe 2.No money and too much uncertainy. I have great teamamtes at Stanford and I don't sit at home while my senior classmates play. Sorry, its the same deal for any Junior QB in this years draft. The Pros can wait!! I'm not sure I'd agree that all the junior QBs would feel that way, but particularly for Luck, who has made it clear that it's really important to him to graduate, I'd have to agree with you, Die Hard. Very good to see you again, by the way. Pyrite Gal! The points I've stated on Luck and the labor dispute can be summarized succinctly as Andrew Luck is the best college QB in my opinion Not everyone makes life decisions based strictly on financial benefit The CBA that Tagliabue pushed on the owners at the 11th hour (they didn't even have time to review it in detail) was clearly one that the NFL owners now regret because they voted out of it last year. How it can be suggested that the owners really think it was fair/good/acceptable given the course of events is incomprehensible. I do recall, Pyrite Gal always took labor's side on such issues and regardless of the economic realities. In part of your rant, you mention that the NFL doesn't develop younger players in minor leagues, yet fail to connect the dots that part of the reason that isn't possible is that the NFLPA takes its lion's share of the gross revenue and distributes it to a fixed pool of roughly 2000 individuals. Your argument that the owners cannot have a lockout because of fixed costs is factually incorrect; the owners will be paid by the networks regardless of whether there are games or not, which will easily enable them to bridge a work stoppage. It's not quite as simple as "Down Owners! Bad boys!" The owners will recieve payments from the networks, but those payments will be in the form of a loan. It'll help them, but not in the long term. They also have a strong incentive to get an agreement. It's not a simple situation, you're dead right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sisyphean Bills Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 The owners will recieve payments from the networks, but those payments will be in the form of a loan. It'll help them, but not in the long term. They also have a strong incentive to get an agreement. That's what I meant when I used the term bridge. It's not a simple situation, you're dead right. Nor is the labor issue a "right vs. wrong" situation. The players deserve to be paid, but there is more to the NFL than just having guys run around in pads on a lawn with a ball. (The idea that the players could just walk off and start a new league is laughable.) Part of what makes the NFL a success is the competitive balance, which was something Rozelle was always preaching to the owners, and which is tied closely to equality of revenue streams for all partners. There are a lot of different factors and tactics in place to try to maintain that competitive balance obviously. Some owners, such as Jerry Jones, seem to only pay lip service to competitive balance and are only for it if his team happens to be on top. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurman#1 Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 (edited) Jimmy Clausen. Colt McCoy. Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, JP Losman. Locker will be still be there in the 3rd round. Or not. We'll know in about seven months. Bull. You wouldl take the money and run. Edited October 16, 2010 by Thurman#1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurman#1 Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 Yeah, Darth, I'm sure you know more about what he would do than he does. You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes. It would be just as reasonable for me to say, "No, Darth, you simply wouldn't do that, and I know it. Sure, you think you would. But you're just wrong. Not that I know you or anything, but I know what you would do." Does this make any sense? Not really, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob in STL Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 There is no way I enter the draft with any posibility of a NFL player strike. I would be out of football for one full year, maybe 2.No money and too much uncertainy. I have great teamamtes at Stanford and I don't sit at home while my senior classmates play. Sorry, its the same deal for any Junior QB in this years draft. The Pros can wait!! Make sense to me. Stay in school. I think they should all stay in school for that matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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