The world’s most powerful professional sports league is in its fourth month of labor-related lethargy, with NFL owners and players locked in a multi-billion-dollar stare down. Anxious for free agency and weary of the war of words, the eyes of football fans around the world are starting to glaze over.
In other words, the owners and players have you right where they want you.
Despite a breakdown in communication and trust that boiled over last week, the two sides are closer to an agreement than many people realize – perhaps than even some of the people involved realize. That the respective negotiating teams hung in amid the negativity and held a marathon session Thursday and a shorter one on Friday was a deceptively positive sign.
As the owners and players prepare to reconvene this week in New York City following the Fourth of July holiday, a deal is very much there for the making. And if NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith and their respective table mates can pull it off in the next few weeks, they’ll all be heroes, and this Lost Offseason will be forgiven and forgotten before you can say fantasy draft.
There has been a lot of heavy-handed rhetoric thrown around since the NFLPA decertified on March 11, Tom Brady et al. filed their antitrust lawsuit against the league and the owners locked out the players – some of it by yours truly – and there’s a tendency to assume that all parties concerned will suffer irreparable damage from the bloody standoff if regular-season games are missed, I suppose that’s possible. But if there’s a tentative deal on a new collective bargaining agreement by the end of the month, the NFL will come out looking better than Aaron Rodgers last Super Sunday.
Many fans will be so grateful that football is back that they’ll swallow their earlier vows of punishing the labor war’s perpetrators and greet them like long-lost lovers. I expect embracement, excitement and even euphoria.
Now all the players and owners have to do is settle their differences and hug it out.
It shouldn’t be that hard. The formula suggested last month by the players, which ties their take to the concept of “all revenue,” instead of “adjusted revenue,” is a simple and reasonable one that should appeal to both sides. Rather than squabble over an altered business model, cost credits or whether owners should open their books, the all-revenue approach frees up the respective parties to craft a cut-and-dried, mutually beneficial business partnership.
The owners get the economic concessions they sought – with the players reducing share of total, unadjusted revenue from roughly 51 percent to 48 percent – and the players get a more favorable salary cap that forces teams to spend real dollars to beefed-up minimum thresholds.
By Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports...
Read more at Yahoo.com
In other words, the owners and players have you right where they want you.
Despite a breakdown in communication and trust that boiled over last week, the two sides are closer to an agreement than many people realize – perhaps than even some of the people involved realize. That the respective negotiating teams hung in amid the negativity and held a marathon session Thursday and a shorter one on Friday was a deceptively positive sign.
As the owners and players prepare to reconvene this week in New York City following the Fourth of July holiday, a deal is very much there for the making. And if NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith and their respective table mates can pull it off in the next few weeks, they’ll all be heroes, and this Lost Offseason will be forgiven and forgotten before you can say fantasy draft.
There has been a lot of heavy-handed rhetoric thrown around since the NFLPA decertified on March 11, Tom Brady et al. filed their antitrust lawsuit against the league and the owners locked out the players – some of it by yours truly – and there’s a tendency to assume that all parties concerned will suffer irreparable damage from the bloody standoff if regular-season games are missed, I suppose that’s possible. But if there’s a tentative deal on a new collective bargaining agreement by the end of the month, the NFL will come out looking better than Aaron Rodgers last Super Sunday.
Many fans will be so grateful that football is back that they’ll swallow their earlier vows of punishing the labor war’s perpetrators and greet them like long-lost lovers. I expect embracement, excitement and even euphoria.
Now all the players and owners have to do is settle their differences and hug it out.
It shouldn’t be that hard. The formula suggested last month by the players, which ties their take to the concept of “all revenue,” instead of “adjusted revenue,” is a simple and reasonable one that should appeal to both sides. Rather than squabble over an altered business model, cost credits or whether owners should open their books, the all-revenue approach frees up the respective parties to craft a cut-and-dried, mutually beneficial business partnership.
The owners get the economic concessions they sought – with the players reducing share of total, unadjusted revenue from roughly 51 percent to 48 percent – and the players get a more favorable salary cap that forces teams to spend real dollars to beefed-up minimum thresholds.
By Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports...
Read more at Yahoo.com
