Bill from NYC Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Does RW HAVE enough money to give Clements (or Stienbach if available) a 15 or 20 million dollar signing bonus? Years ago, didn't he talk about selling a painting to pay Andre Reed? If RW doesn't have enough money to pay these guys, or even franchise Fletcher, the only hope we have is the draft in terms of bringing in/keeping talented players, right? I am NOT asking this to be negative. We DO know that owners such as Allen, Bowlen, Snyder, Johnson, Jones, etc. have all the money they need to pay anybody they want. Even the Bengals were able to lock up Anderson and Jones. Whether or not he would want to spend it is certainly another issue, but does anybody know if Ralph actually has the funds to build a winning team? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obie_wan Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Does RW HAVE enough money to give Clements (or Stienbach if available) a 15 or 20 million dollar signing bonus? Years ago, didn't he talk about selling a painting to pay Andre Reed? If RW doesn't have enough money to pay these guys, or even franchise Fletcher, the only hope we have is the draft in terms of bringing in/keeping talented players, right? I am NOT asking this to be negative. We DO know that owners such as Allen, Bowlen, Snyder, Johnson, Jones, etc. have all the money they need to pay anybody they want. Even the Bengals were able to lock up Anderson and Jones. Whether or not he would want to spend it is certainly another issue, but does anybody know if Ralph actually has the funds to build a winning team? 845140[/snapback] probably not but the $20 mil would be structured to be paid out over 2-3 years. NO way he gets $20 mil up front. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daquixers_is_back Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Not sure ... very good question though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VABills Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 I'm sure at his age the bank would give him a reverse mortgage on the team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seq004 Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Does RW HAVE enough money to give Clements (or Stienbach if available) a 15 or 20 million dollar signing bonus? Years ago, didn't he talk about selling a painting to pay Andre Reed? If RW doesn't have enough money to pay these guys, or even franchise Fletcher, the only hope we have is the draft in terms of bringing in/keeping talented players, right? I am NOT asking this to be negative. We DO know that owners such as Allen, Bowlen, Snyder, Johnson, Jones, etc. have all the money they need to pay anybody they want. Even the Bengals were able to lock up Anderson and Jones. Whether or not he would want to spend it is certainly another issue, but does anybody know if Ralph actually has the funds to build a winning team? 845140[/snapback] I hope so because being a fan in his cheap days of the 70's and early 80's was brutal. I don't think the question is does he have it but does he feel spending it will bring them a ring. He gave Kelly, Bruce, Bennett, Thomas big contracts for their time he'll need to do it again if he wants to win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadBuffaloDisease Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 A $20M bonus for either guy? No friggin' way! Bentley got a $13.6M signing bonus and he actually made the Pro Bowl. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelly the Dog Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 With the jump in the television revenue in the last several years, and with the 36% jump from last year to this year alone, it is impossible for me to believe that he doesn't have the cash, even if he started with zero, which is ludicrous. The networks pay each team 110+ million, which is in cash. I am not sure when the payments are made but I would bet they aren't at the end of the season. That's a huge windfall that doesn't have to be spent quickly. The player's salaries, the majority of the team costs, are paid weekly during the season. So you're only paying starting in September, approximately 600,000 per week in cash (That's a gross simplification but based on about 100 mil in salary divided by 17 weeks). There are also cash payments of season tickets, which are paid in full before the season and amount to about half the ticket sales. That has to be about 8 mil in cash alone (again very loosely estimated numbers but say 40,000 at $40 each times 10). And that doesn't count the fact that 80-90% of all tickets were gone by early September, which is another 6-7 mil. I would think he easily has 20 mil in cash to pay out in the spring or early summer to Clements or Steinbach or anyone else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill from NYC Posted November 22, 2006 Author Share Posted November 22, 2006 A $20M bonus for either guy? No friggin' way! Bentley got a $13.6M signing bonus and he actually made the Pro Bowl. 845174[/snapback] How much did Hutch (a guard no less) get as a bonus? There is a new CBA which RW fought. Times have changed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadBuffaloDisease Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 How much did Hutch (a guard no less) get as a bonus? There is a new CBA which RW fought. Times have changed. 845179[/snapback] He got an $18.5M bonus on a 7-year deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill from NYC Posted November 22, 2006 Author Share Posted November 22, 2006 He got an $18.5M bonus on a 7-year deal. 845185[/snapback] See my point? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadBuffaloDisease Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 I don't know if the Bills will give out a 7-year deal. Also recall that Minny was WAY under the cap and wanted to make the deal almost impossible to match, which they did by adding the poison pill in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelly the Dog Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 He got an $18.5M bonus on a 7-year deal. 845185[/snapback] You may be right but I just read two articles that said it was 16 million in guarantees on a seven year, 49 mil contract. We also must consider that this was one of those poison pill kind of deals designed specifically so the Seahawks couldn't match it because of their own cap issues. One of those articles said that the cap figure for the Vikes was 13 mil this year and that's why the Seahags couldn't match it. So he might not have received so much of a signing bonus vs salary if it wasn't written that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daquixers_is_back Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 With the jump in the television revenue in the last several years, and with the 36% jump from last year to this year alone, it is impossible for me to believe that he doesn't have the cash, even if he started with zero, which is ludicrous. The networks pay each team 110+ million, which is in cash. I am not sure when the payments are made but I would bet they aren't at the end of the season. That's a huge windfall that doesn't have to be spent quickly. The player's salaries, the majority of the team costs, are paid weekly during the season. So you're only paying starting in September, approximately 600,000 per week in cash (That's a gross simplification but based on about 100 mil in salary divided by 17 weeks). There are also cash payments of season tickets, which are paid in full before the season and amount to about half the ticket sales. That has to be about 8 mil in cash alone (again very loosely estimated numbers but say 40,000 at $40 each times 10). And that doesn't count the fact that 80-90% of all tickets were gone by early September, which is another 6-7 mil. I would think he easily has 20 mil in cash to pay out in the spring or early summer to Clements or Steinbach or anyone else. 845176[/snapback] Well there is an answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadBuffaloDisease Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 You may be right but I just read two articles that said it was 16 million in guarantees on a seven year, 49 mil contract. We also must consider that this was one of those poison pill kind of deals designed specifically so the Seahawks couldn't match it because of their own cap issues. One of those articles said that the cap figure for the Vikes was 13 mil this year and that's why the Seahags couldn't match it. So he might not have received so much of a signing bonus vs salary if it wasn't written that way. Maybe the bonus was a roster bonus, a la what they did with Antoine? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCBongo Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Isn't it safe to say in the NFL you have to spend money to make money. During the Jim Kelly/Marv Levy era, the team sold out all home games, was on prime time all the time, had high merchandise sales and were in the black financialy. With a better team, and better marketing down in Rochester the Bills could be it the top 5%.... couldn't they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pyrite Gal Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 With the jump in the television revenue in the last several years, and with the 36% jump from last year to this year alone, it is impossible for me to believe that he doesn't have the cash, even if he started with zero, which is ludicrous. The networks pay each team 110+ million, which is in cash. I am not sure when the payments are made but I would bet they aren't at the end of the season. That's a huge windfall that doesn't have to be spent quickly. The player's salaries, the majority of the team costs, are paid weekly during the season. So you're only paying starting in September, approximately 600,000 per week in cash (That's a gross simplification but based on about 100 mil in salary divided by 17 weeks). There are also cash payments of season tickets, which are paid in full before the season and amount to about half the ticket sales. That has to be about 8 mil in cash alone (again very loosely estimated numbers but say 40,000 at $40 each times 10). And that doesn't count the fact that 80-90% of all tickets were gone by early September, which is another 6-7 mil. I would think he easily has 20 mil in cash to pay out in the spring or early summer to Clements or Steinbach or anyone else. 845176[/snapback] In addition to this good answer which indicates that the Bills franchise in and of itself (without Ralph dipping into his personal resources by selling a painting or his third Ferrari if cars are his vice) the Bills corporation is easily in a position to borrow a boatload of cash from a bank or some other capital holder to get the wad of cash necessary to pay a bonus. It is true that the team would lower its profits annually by going into debt, but owning ab NFL franchise is likely as close as one can get to printing money in this society as the largest cost of the franchise, labor costs, are set at specific levels for a number of years by agreement with the players. Further, these salaries go up specifically as the revenue stream goes up. As long as this cost stream is firnly controlled by the CBA and moves directly with the level of income produced, the question of having additional cash is purely a question of how one chooses to generate it. Extremely successful businessment like Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder do this through having businesses which generate cash. Merely successful (rather than extemely successful) businessment like Ralph would also seemingly have a great deal of cash they can make available unless they have been incredibly foolish with their investments, or have an investment strategy which is so conservative they choose not to be liquid enough to generate up front cash which eventually will fall subject to the cost controls of the cap. The answer to the question of whether Rakph has the money to extend a large bonus is yes if he chooses to and winning means enough to him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Ummm, the selling-the-Monet line was a joke. (For that matter, so were some of the huge signing bonuses given to second-line players during the Butler era.) After 1998, Ralph personally made the decision to honor the playing-time bonuses in Flutie's contract even though Flutie didn't hit them, and I seem to recall that TKO made out all right WRT his signing bonus when he came here in 2003. Whether or not RCW and Marv WANT to hand out ten-figure signing bonuses is a different story, but I kinda doubt he'd have to mortgage the fieldhouse to scrape together the cash to pay one out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill from NYC Posted November 22, 2006 Author Share Posted November 22, 2006 Ummm, the selling-the-Monet line was a joke. (For that matter, so were some of the huge signing bonuses given to second-line players during the Butler era.) After 1998, Ralph personally made the decision to honor the playing-time bonuses in Flutie's contract even though Flutie didn't hit them, and I seem to recall that TKO made out all right WRT his signing bonus when he came here in 2003. Whether or not RCW and Marv WANT to hand out ten-figure signing bonuses is a different story, but I kinda doubt he'd have to mortgage the fieldhouse to scrape together the cash to pay one out. 845454[/snapback] Thanks for clearing that up Lori. Yeah, I too remember Ralph handing huge bonuses to the likes of Ostroski, Rogers, Fina and others. With a shortage of high quality ufas, and the money that the few good ones are going to demand, it looks as if the draft will once again be the main (if not the only way) to build a team, at least for now. I am thinking that the value of draft picks will also skyrocket. We shall see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plenzmd1 Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 I'm sure at his age the bank would give him a reverse mortgage on the team. 845168[/snapback] Now that had me laughing!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted November 22, 2006 Share Posted November 22, 2006 Moot discussion. There's no way Marv would ever give out those kind of contracts to a OL or DB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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