NFL lockout, failure of Atlanta Thrashers, and other sports struggles can be blamed on Ronald Reagan
WEDNESDAY, 25 MAY 2011 08:29
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-lockout-failure-of-atlanta-thrashers-and-other-sports-struggles-can-be-blamed-on-ronald-reagan
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
If and when the Atlanta Thrashers National Hockey League franchise is sold and moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, there will be those who will analyze the failure of the business to catch on in Georgia. Yes, the Thrashers ownership was bad, and there is enough evidence to completely convict the ownership of being thoroughly incompetent as a court proceeding proved.
But it is far more than just bad ownership that doomed the Atlanta Thrashers franchise and after a quarter of a century it is time to place the finger of blame on the real culprit on the potential Thrashers move along with the National Football League lockout, the potential National Basketball Association lockout and the struggles of various franchises to succeed economically in the sports arena.
It was the 99th Congress that revised the 1986 tax code and President Ronald Reagan who signed those changes into law.
A good number of cities should never have had "major league" sports franchises but those cities decided to go into the sports business by building stadiums and arenas and handing out leases to owners that became an albatross around the necks of taxpayers.
The smaller market cities went after teams to show other businesses that their city was a great area for business. Memphis, Nashville, Jacksonville and other smaller towns all of a sudden became big league and paid handsomely for the “title."
The 1986 tax code revision redistributed the wealth and shifted the burden of paying for new facilities from team owners to taxpayers. Only eight cents of every dollar generated in new facilities could go to pay down the debt of the municipally built facility unless a local government got tough and negotiated a better deal.
In most cities, the local governments who were so desperate to build "major league" structures rolled over and gave owners whatever they wanted in an attempt to be "major league" and forced all sorts of tax hikes on local residents. The stadiums and arenas were peddled to voters as "economic engines" that would provide first construction jobs then build up an area. Local residents who had to vote on the expenditure were told that they would pay nothing (in some cities) that the money would come from hikes in hotel and motel taxes and car rentals. Other tax hikes were imposed on beer, alcohol, cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, water, sewer and a general sales tax hike to fund facilities. There were breaks given on property tax payments (the combined Giants-Jets real estate holding pays East Rutherford, NJ about $6 million a year in combined rent and taxes on the Meadowlands facility on a property that is probably worth about $13 million a year on the tax roll.)
Sports owners jumped on the 1986 Congressional act which Ronald Reagan approved. This is what the change in the tax code has brought. A 2011 NFL Lockout, the probable move of the Atlanta hockey team to Winnipeg, the Glendale, Arizona government paying the National Hockey League $25 million to keep a franchise in the city, the delay of a move of the National Basketball Association's Sacramento Kings to Anaheim, California until cash-poor Sacramento along with other local governments in the area find an arena funding formula. The move of the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn has New York City and New York State politicians fingerprints all over it. The building will be heavily subsidized by New York taxpayers as are the new Yankees Stadium, the Mets ballpark in Flushing (complete with the logos of the taxpayers bailed out corporate sponsor--Citibank) and New Jersey kicked in well over $300 million for infrastructure for the Giants-Jets new stadium. New Jersey still owes hundreds of millions of dollars in paying down the debt at the departed Giants Stadium. New Jersey is not alone in paying for sports facilities that were blown up. Pittsburgh was paying off the debt at Three Rivers Stadium for years, Seattle and King County will be paying off the bonds on the long gone Kingdome until 2014. Those stadiums were replaced after the changes in the 1986 tax code.
The NFL lockout's roots can be directly traced to Ronald Reagan's signature in 1986. It is no coincidence that the majority of NFL cities built new venues after the 1986 legislation. As more and more stadiums were opening on the public dime, revenues kept rising. By the late 1990s, the New Orleans Saints ownership claimed it could no longer compete in the NFL unless they got a new stadium in the city because the team no longer was in the top of the NFL in stadium revenues and fell to the bottom.
Eventually the state of Louisiana came up with a $186.5 million deal to satisfy the owner, Tom Benson, and handed him direct checks every July 1 between 2002 and 2010 to make him happy and keep the team in town. As far as anyone could tell, it was the first time a state gave money to a team. New York State gives $3 million annually to make Ralph Wilson elated in Orchard Park, New York. Indianapolis virtually gives away the new football facility and all of the revenues generated inside the place to Colts owner Jim Irsay. Small market owners need help from governments.
In places like Cincinnati, the local government has to take money from other services to pay down the debt at the football stadium. The new stadiums have helped the owners but in cities like Minneapolis, Oakland and San Diego where the stadiums are old (although renovated in Oakland and San Diego) and cannot produce the revenues that are found in Arlington, Texas (Dallas Cowboys), East Rutherford, Philadelphia, Houston, Foxboro and Washington (Landover, Maryland) and that has hurt the franchises in Minneapolis, San Diego and Oakland. Those teams cannot keep up with the salary floor as NFL revenues rose. The old stadium franchises cannot keep up with the Joneses, Maras-Tischs, Johnsons, Krafts, Snyders, Laniers and the other big boys in revenues.
The NFL lockout is designed to help the old stadium owners who don't have the revenue sources in the local market that new stadium owners have. That's the whole reason behind the NFL lockout strategy. It's not a difficult concept to grasp even though the league and players continue to slug it out in the judicial system. The NFL has been reluctant to spell out the real reason it has locked out the players. They need taxpayers dollars to fix the problem in Minneapolis, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco (Santa Clara) possibly Buffalo and certainly in Los Angeles and it is a tough sell for the prosperous NFL to beg for tax dollars to build stadiums to help the lower revenue teams. But the league needs taxpayers dollars to make everyone equal.
The National Hockey League came up with a grand plan to expand the business in 1990 from 21 franchises to 30 with most of the nine franchises to take root in the United States. The expansion scheme was hatched long before Gary Bettman became National Hockey League commissioner, something that seems to be conveniently forgotten by sportswriters who don't have any understanding of business and politics and sports.
The official line was the NHL needed to expand their United States footprint for television purposes and the unofficial line was that Wayne Gretzky popularized the NHL because he was in Los Angeles and attracted the Hollywood crowd to Los Angeles Kings games. But the truth was that cities were building arenas and ready to give away the house in exchange for a franchise. In Anaheim, the Walt Disney Company decided to capitalize on the success of the Mighty Ducks movie franchise and bought a team from the league after securing a sweetheart lease in the new Anaheim arena. Disney ended up with everything at the arena and apparently would not share revenues with say Donald Sterling and his National Basketball Association Clippers. Sterling and other potential NBA owners could not get into Anaheim because there was not enough money available for an NBA team to be financially successful thanks to the Disney lease.
Before Bettman got to the NHL, the league split the Minnesota North Stars franchise with some players staying in Bloomington, Minnesota and the rest ended up with an expansion team in San Jose although the franchise started at the Cow Palace in Daly City south of San Franchise. The league expanded into Ottawa and Tampa and then Anaheim and Miami. The NHL owners began splitting a lot of money, $50 million per new franchise. Bettman joined when they league had 26 teams. Bettman came into the league in 1993 when Norman Green was attempting to move his Minnesota North Stars franchise to either Anaheim or Dallas. Green moved to Dallas. In 1995, Quebec City officials refused to provide funding for a new arena and the franchise moved to Denver. Winnipeg officials did not build a new arena and the Winnipeg Jets franchise ended up in Phoenix in a poor conceived arena that was built to satisfy Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo need for a new basketball arena for his team. The facility was built in such a way that it had thousands of obstructed seats making it unusable for anything but basketball.
In 1997, the NHL expanded to planned new buildings in Nashville and Atlanta (two cities that could hardly be called hockey mad cities), along with St. Paul, Minnesota and Columbus. St. Paul Mayor Norman Coleman pushed heavily to build a taxpayers subsidized arena in St. Paul while private money was found to build a venue in Columbus, Ohio. Also in 1997, Hartford Whalers owner Peter Karmanos moved his franchise to Raleigh, North Carolina. That deal also came with Karmanos promising to move a piece of his Compuware business to the Raleigh area. Connecticut Governor John Rowland was too busy trying to get Robert Kraft to move his New England Patriots NFL franchise to Hartford. Kraft listened said yes and then got a deal in Massachusetts abandoning Rowland.
The NHL expansion gave owners $450 million which was split between 21 owners. That was not Gary Bettman's plan but it was the NHL's business plan was developed by league owners in 1990.
The NBA added four franchises after Reagan changed the tax code but those arenas in Orlando, Charlotte, Miami and Minneapolis were online prior to the change in the law. All four cities became problems for NBA Commissioner David Stern and the league. The buildings were not state of the art 21st century buildings as they were designed in the 1980s. Orlando, Charlotte and Miami didn't have the real revenue producers, club seats and luxury boxes for corporate customers. All three cities replaced arenas that were 20 year old or less. Minneapolis's building was funded by private money---which nearly snuck the franchise---and by the mid 1990s the building was taken over by the government.
The NBA lockout of 2011 will be caused by reckless spending. The NBA went into markets that cannot compete with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and other large markets without a real revenue sharing plan. Those markets will never have had franchises without the Reagan signature. Memphis, Charlotte, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, San Antonio have teams because of new arenas, Seattle lost a team because local politicians would not spend money for a new build some 12 years after renovating the city's arena bringing the building up to 1990s standards. Despite giving all the revenues away at the arena in Indianapolis, Pacers owner Herb Simon may eventually move his team. Indianapolis cannot make money even though the city has given away the building.
Major League Baseball went through the same dance. New stadiums, great leases and broken promises of stadiums being an economic engine.
Major League Soccer owners learned their lessons well as they sold local politicians on the benefits of new stadiums starting with the failed economic engine theory.
The NHL is still playing the arena game. Charles Wang's New York Islanders franchise needs a new building and Nassau County voters will be asked on August 1 to sell bonds for a building. Edmonton is seeking a new arena, Columbus wants the city to take over the building, and Calgary is looking for a new building. Major League Baseball wants new venues for the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland A's. The NBA could become a league with three New York area teams, three Los Angeles area franchises and two franchises in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Taxpayers are on the hook for billions thanks to Ronald Reagan's signature. Reagan supporters and apologists will probably try to debunk the impact of the 1986 tax code changes on sports. It would be a futile argument. There is plenty of blame to go around starting with the House and then the Senate. Two Senators, New York's Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, and then Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania (before he switched parties) tried to close the 92 percent loophole in the tax code but to no avail.
Reagan and Congress changed sports in 1986. A quarter of a century later the impact is astounding. The NFL lockout, the NBA lockout, the Sacramento arena problems, the Glendale subsidies, the Louisiana subsidies which continue to this day for Benson's NFL Saints and the NBA Hornets, Nassau County's vote, the Atlanta relocation, baseball's "Bay" problems in St. Petersburg and Oakland. It goes on and on with no relief in sight for sports fans.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Showing posts with label NFL lockout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NFL lockout. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
How DeMaurice Smith Can Wreck Havoc on the NFL and House GOPers and the Washington Media
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/demaurice-smith-can-create-havoc-on-the-nfl-and-house-gopers-and-the-washingt
By Evan Weiner
National Football League fans probably aren’t paying too much attention to what might happen once the Super Bowl rolls around. Some teams and their fans are gearing up for a December playoff run but in Washington, DeMaurice Smith is plotting strategy as National Football League owners and officials of the National Football League Players Association are about ready to face off in a much bigger game than the Super Bowl.
The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the players nearly ends after the NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii in February. The old CBA expires on March 3 but the real lockout for NFL customers and fans, if the owners and players don’t reach an agreement, could start in April with no mini camps and by July, there could be no training camps, It is unclear whether the league can even conduct a draft if there is no CBA in place.
The dispute is all about money. NFL players take about 59 percent of league-generated revenues and the NFL want to scale that back to 41 percent.
If there is a lockout, NFL players and perhaps NFL retired players will be impacted as the owners do not intend to fund the NFL pension plan or pay for life insurance. The league no longer has to put money aside for that under the terms of the expiring labor agreement. The league will use that money for an owners lockout fund.
Present and former players need to find out how the defunding of those programs will impact their lives.
DeMaurice Smith, the political operative who served on President Barack Obama’s transitional committee, could spring into action and shake up not only the football industry, but members of Congress and the zombie Washington, DC/national media by going on a public relations tour which should include the most unlikely of places.
A visit to that noted football fan’s radio show, Rush Limbaugh and other carnival barkers.
Smith should bring with him a number of discarded football players who are suffering from brain damage or other physical ailments and start talking about the loss of benefits for these players and what happens if the NFL players actually lose their health benefits in the course of the lockout. He should also talk about the number of players in assisted living facilities and who might be paying for their care.
Smith, the political insider, should appear before the GOP controlled House of Representatives and tell presumed House leader John Boehner of Ohio and Virginia’s Eric Cantor that you figure out what to do with my players if they lose their health benefits. After all, Smith should say, you want to repeal the new health care law and one of the provisions you would eliminate is that insurance companies could say no to my clients because of pre-existing conditions and all players have pre-existing conditions.
Who will pay for their care?
Smith would put a face to all of those with pre-existing conditions and put Congressmen Boehner, Cantor and all the others who want to repeal the health care law in a box. He would also force the Washington media, most of whom are probably planning the 2011 White House Correspondence Dinner, to examine the health care issue in a different light because the gladiators of Sunday—the players of the most popular sport in America---would been seen as advocates for health care as they do have pre-existing conditions.
The only people reporting on discarded football players come from the sports media at this point.
The Washington media would have to report on something other than polls and conservative right wing talk show hosts like Limbaugh, who have to actually face someone who is more articulate than they are, will be forced to have an honest, two-way conversation about health care. Smith should also hit the so-called cable TV news channels including FOX and MSNBC and get into a real dialogue instead of the usual in your face food fights that passes for news in these environments. He should appear on the Sunday talk shows and the network morning fares. He should engage in a full media blitz and take with him the “discarded” players.
More than a handful of former players are collecting social security and using Medicare assistance to take care of their health needs because the NFL is not paying for medical insurance down the road for former players. Smith needs to point this out to Boehner, Cantor, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and all the other members of the Senate and the House. It is a story that needs to be told and probably explained to the football crazy Washington insiders who appear at Washington Redskins home games because that is a place to be seen.
Smith should start his tour during the NFL playoffs. If Smith reached out to the retired and discarded players, they would jump on the opportunity to educate the Boeheners, Cantors, McConnells and the Washington media on issues that effect “real Americans” like the ones politicians always talk about and the media always reports on.
Smith can use some political leverage too. Elections have consequences that are often not reported by national or local media. With Barack Obama’s election in 2008, the National Labor Relations Board changed and because there is a Democrat in the White House, there is a good chance that Smith can eventually use the National Labor Relations Board to his advantage.
Democrats are seen as pro workers while Republicans are seen as pro business and the NLRB reflects that.
Smith might decide that the National Football League Players Association should decertify—although he runs the risk that another group of players might want to form a new association----and file a complaint with the NRLB about the negotiations and see whether or not the NFL owners are engaging in fair collective bargaining negotiations.
During the Bill Clinton presidency, the Major League Baseball Players Associations appealed to the National Labor Relations Board in 1995. The baseball players filed for injunctive relief under Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act. Under the provisions of Section 10(j), the players sought a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board for injunctive relief and so they could go to a federal district court and ask for an injunction if a party is found to be negotiating in bad faith to preserve the status quo.
The Major League Baseball Players Association got the NLRB to agree with them and the case ended up in the courtroom of the youngest justice sitting on the bench of the Southern District of New York. A judge by the name of Sonia Sotomayer was assigned the case.
The 40-year-old Judge Sonia Sotomayer on a cold spring day in a packed courtroom at Foley Square in lower Manhattan back on March 30, 1995 issued an injunction against the owners and restored free agency and arbitration and ruled that the owners negotiated in bad faith.
One of those Major League Baseball owners was George W. Bush. Sotomayer eventually was nominated to the United States Supreme Court by Barack Obama in 2009 and was confirmed by the Senate.
In 2004, Judge Sotomayer upheld the NFL’s college draft rule that requires a player to serve three years in a college football program before being eligible for the league’s draft.
In 2008, the minor-league Central Hockey League asked for injunctive relief under the Section 10(j) provision of the National Labor Relations Act in a dispute between Central Hockey League owners and CHL players. The CHL strike ended two days after the request on October 5. The players went back to work. It was the only time during the Bush years that a sports players association looked to the NRLB for help.
Whether the Obama NRLB would take up Smith’s case, if an action was filed, is not known. But, during the Bush’ years between 2001 and 2009 there was only one “major league” sport job action. The National Hockey League owners locked out the NHL players in 2004-05 but the National Hockey League Players Association never sough out the National Labor Relations Board, possibly because the leadership knew that Bush’s NLRB was going to be less friendly to them than Clinton’s NLRB.
Smith and the players are in a high stakes negotiation that is filled with politics. Smith is taking on 31 of the most powerful people in the world (Green Bay is community owned) with powerful political connections. Jets owner Woody Johnson is a major Republican fundraiser as is San Diego’s Alex Spanos. The guys on the other side of the table generally get their way and have powerful allies. Smith also has some leverage and if he was smart would use it for to his advantage on behalf of his players and education the “American people” and the Washington media on contract negotiations, health care and political leverage.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/demaurice-smith-can-create-havoc-on-the-nfl-and-house-gopers-and-the-washingt
By Evan Weiner
National Football League fans probably aren’t paying too much attention to what might happen once the Super Bowl rolls around. Some teams and their fans are gearing up for a December playoff run but in Washington, DeMaurice Smith is plotting strategy as National Football League owners and officials of the National Football League Players Association are about ready to face off in a much bigger game than the Super Bowl.
The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the players nearly ends after the NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii in February. The old CBA expires on March 3 but the real lockout for NFL customers and fans, if the owners and players don’t reach an agreement, could start in April with no mini camps and by July, there could be no training camps, It is unclear whether the league can even conduct a draft if there is no CBA in place.
The dispute is all about money. NFL players take about 59 percent of league-generated revenues and the NFL want to scale that back to 41 percent.
If there is a lockout, NFL players and perhaps NFL retired players will be impacted as the owners do not intend to fund the NFL pension plan or pay for life insurance. The league no longer has to put money aside for that under the terms of the expiring labor agreement. The league will use that money for an owners lockout fund.
Present and former players need to find out how the defunding of those programs will impact their lives.
DeMaurice Smith, the political operative who served on President Barack Obama’s transitional committee, could spring into action and shake up not only the football industry, but members of Congress and the zombie Washington, DC/national media by going on a public relations tour which should include the most unlikely of places.
A visit to that noted football fan’s radio show, Rush Limbaugh and other carnival barkers.
Smith should bring with him a number of discarded football players who are suffering from brain damage or other physical ailments and start talking about the loss of benefits for these players and what happens if the NFL players actually lose their health benefits in the course of the lockout. He should also talk about the number of players in assisted living facilities and who might be paying for their care.
Smith, the political insider, should appear before the GOP controlled House of Representatives and tell presumed House leader John Boehner of Ohio and Virginia’s Eric Cantor that you figure out what to do with my players if they lose their health benefits. After all, Smith should say, you want to repeal the new health care law and one of the provisions you would eliminate is that insurance companies could say no to my clients because of pre-existing conditions and all players have pre-existing conditions.
Who will pay for their care?
Smith would put a face to all of those with pre-existing conditions and put Congressmen Boehner, Cantor and all the others who want to repeal the health care law in a box. He would also force the Washington media, most of whom are probably planning the 2011 White House Correspondence Dinner, to examine the health care issue in a different light because the gladiators of Sunday—the players of the most popular sport in America---would been seen as advocates for health care as they do have pre-existing conditions.
The only people reporting on discarded football players come from the sports media at this point.
The Washington media would have to report on something other than polls and conservative right wing talk show hosts like Limbaugh, who have to actually face someone who is more articulate than they are, will be forced to have an honest, two-way conversation about health care. Smith should also hit the so-called cable TV news channels including FOX and MSNBC and get into a real dialogue instead of the usual in your face food fights that passes for news in these environments. He should appear on the Sunday talk shows and the network morning fares. He should engage in a full media blitz and take with him the “discarded” players.
More than a handful of former players are collecting social security and using Medicare assistance to take care of their health needs because the NFL is not paying for medical insurance down the road for former players. Smith needs to point this out to Boehner, Cantor, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and all the other members of the Senate and the House. It is a story that needs to be told and probably explained to the football crazy Washington insiders who appear at Washington Redskins home games because that is a place to be seen.
Smith should start his tour during the NFL playoffs. If Smith reached out to the retired and discarded players, they would jump on the opportunity to educate the Boeheners, Cantors, McConnells and the Washington media on issues that effect “real Americans” like the ones politicians always talk about and the media always reports on.
Smith can use some political leverage too. Elections have consequences that are often not reported by national or local media. With Barack Obama’s election in 2008, the National Labor Relations Board changed and because there is a Democrat in the White House, there is a good chance that Smith can eventually use the National Labor Relations Board to his advantage.
Democrats are seen as pro workers while Republicans are seen as pro business and the NLRB reflects that.
Smith might decide that the National Football League Players Association should decertify—although he runs the risk that another group of players might want to form a new association----and file a complaint with the NRLB about the negotiations and see whether or not the NFL owners are engaging in fair collective bargaining negotiations.
During the Bill Clinton presidency, the Major League Baseball Players Associations appealed to the National Labor Relations Board in 1995. The baseball players filed for injunctive relief under Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act. Under the provisions of Section 10(j), the players sought a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board for injunctive relief and so they could go to a federal district court and ask for an injunction if a party is found to be negotiating in bad faith to preserve the status quo.
The Major League Baseball Players Association got the NLRB to agree with them and the case ended up in the courtroom of the youngest justice sitting on the bench of the Southern District of New York. A judge by the name of Sonia Sotomayer was assigned the case.
The 40-year-old Judge Sonia Sotomayer on a cold spring day in a packed courtroom at Foley Square in lower Manhattan back on March 30, 1995 issued an injunction against the owners and restored free agency and arbitration and ruled that the owners negotiated in bad faith.
One of those Major League Baseball owners was George W. Bush. Sotomayer eventually was nominated to the United States Supreme Court by Barack Obama in 2009 and was confirmed by the Senate.
In 2004, Judge Sotomayer upheld the NFL’s college draft rule that requires a player to serve three years in a college football program before being eligible for the league’s draft.
In 2008, the minor-league Central Hockey League asked for injunctive relief under the Section 10(j) provision of the National Labor Relations Act in a dispute between Central Hockey League owners and CHL players. The CHL strike ended two days after the request on October 5. The players went back to work. It was the only time during the Bush years that a sports players association looked to the NRLB for help.
Whether the Obama NRLB would take up Smith’s case, if an action was filed, is not known. But, during the Bush’ years between 2001 and 2009 there was only one “major league” sport job action. The National Hockey League owners locked out the NHL players in 2004-05 but the National Hockey League Players Association never sough out the National Labor Relations Board, possibly because the leadership knew that Bush’s NLRB was going to be less friendly to them than Clinton’s NLRB.
Smith and the players are in a high stakes negotiation that is filled with politics. Smith is taking on 31 of the most powerful people in the world (Green Bay is community owned) with powerful political connections. Jets owner Woody Johnson is a major Republican fundraiser as is San Diego’s Alex Spanos. The guys on the other side of the table generally get their way and have powerful allies. Smith also has some leverage and if he was smart would use it for to his advantage on behalf of his players and education the “American people” and the Washington media on contract negotiations, health care and political leverage.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
NFL preparing for ‘Replacements II’ sequel with possibility of 2011 lockout
NFL preparing for ‘Replacements II’ sequel with possibility of 2011 lockout
TUESDAY, 11 MAY 2010 13:04
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-preparing-for-replacements-ii-sequel-with-possibility-of-2011-lockout
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
There are stories that are beginning to surface that National Football League owners will sign United Football League, Canadian Football League, indoor football league and any other players that might be available in the event the owners and players cannot reach a new collective bargaining agreement sometime in the next year. The present deal between the owners and players ends after the 2011 Super Bowl.
The stories include details such as the National Football League buying a 25 percent share of the one-year-old United Football League, a five team entity with teams in Hartford, Las Vegas, Omaha, Orlando and Sacramento, and using some of those players.
If these stories are true, the NFL in 2011 will be revisiting an old plan that was used in 1987.
Replacement players.
How the paying customers who own Personal Seat Licenses and paying big money for games will react is unknown at this point but in 1987 neither New York Giants coach Bill Parcells nor Philadelphia Eagles coach Buddy Ryan was too thrilled with the idea. But the Giants and Eagles NFC East rivals, the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins embraced the idea. A little history is needed to understand why NFL owners endorsed the idea which was the brainchild of then Dallas Cowboys President Texas E. (Tex) Schramm and may revisit the idea in 2011.
The NFL owners and players had a contentious relationship for decades. The NFLPA formed in 1956 with help from Creighton Miller, the first General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Unhappy players in Cleveland and Green Bay assembled a network of "player reps" on each team. The players included Don Shula (Colts), Frank Gifford (Giants), and Norm Van Brocklin (Rams) to represent their teams. The Chicago Bears did not have a players representative. The players first meeting was held in New York in the fall of 1956, after the owners ignored the players' attempts to discuss their requests. The players asked for minimum salaries of $5,000 per season, injury pay, uniform per diems, and for teams to supply their own equipment.
Nothing happened but the players got a big break in 1957 when, the first lawsuit involving professional football and antitrust was filed, Radovich v. NFL, which significantly altered player rights within the league. The case involved a player/coach, George Radovich, who sued the league because the NFL effectively prevented him from attaining employment in the NFL or affiliated leagues, such as the Pacific Coast League, which was in existence at the time. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the NFL was exempted from the antitrust laws, and was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the trial court, holding professional football subject to the antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court decision changed life for NFL owners. The players could now sue the league on antitrust grounds which they threatened to do. The owners and players settled with the players receiving minimum salaries of $5,000, $50 payment for preseason games, medical coverage for injuries, and a pension.
But the players didn't get what they agreed to and spend the 1958 season chasing the owners to live up to the agreement. The deal was finally signed in 1959.
The players did catch another break when Lamar Hunt started the American Football league and for some college players, they were able to play the NFL off against the AFL in getting some leverage for their initial contract. The AFL-NFL war over established players began in earnest when Pete Gogolak, a kicker on the Buffalo Bills signed a deal with the New York Giants in 1966. What was good for Gogolak and two NFL quarterbacks John Brodie and Roman Gabriel along with Mike Ditka who were been pursued by AFL Commissioner Al Davis to sign with his league was not good for the owners of either league. Brodie, Gabriel and Ditka got raises from their NFL teams. The AFL and NFL announced their intent to merge on June 8, 1966.
The National Football League Players Association wanted to fight the merger but didn't have the funding to do so.
The NFLPA has always been weak and the owners knew that. The two leagues may have merged, but the player associations did not, as the players on the 16 NFL teams were NFLPA members and the players on the 10 AFL teams were American Football League Players Association members. This caused a major problem in subsequent negotiations as the NFLPA would come to a tentative agreement with the owners on certain collective bargaining issues (such as minimum salaries, retirement age) then the owners would bargain with the AFLPA, who accepted lower terms, which wasn't good for NFLPA members.
There was a brief lockout and a 20-day strike in 1970 that ended just before the 1970 All Star game and which did not result in the cancellation of regular or post-season games, the NFL and NFLPA signed a four-year contract, the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of the NFL, which raised player salary minimums to $12,500 for rookies and $13,000 for veterans, added dental insurance, improved the pension, gave players the right to have agents, gave players representation on the Retirement Board, and provided for impartial arbitration of injury grievances.
(Retired players from that era are still battling the NFL over injury grievances and those grievances have caught the attention of Congress)
In 1974, the previous CBA was coming to an end. Players were demanding the elimination of the Rozelle Rule and the option clause which kept a player tied to his team in perpetuity unless another team was willing to give up number one draft picks or players to sign a free agent among other things. On July 1, the players went on strike, and were prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out. The sit-out led to the cancellation of the New York Jets game at New Haven, the first game ever cancelled due to a labor impasse. However, by the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines, breaking down union solidarity. On August 11, Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period, instead pursuing the issue through the Mackey case. The 42-day strike ended that day with nothing gained.
On September 21, 1982, NFL players went on strike. It was the longest strike in professional sports in the U.S. at the time and lasted until November 17. The owners responded by locking the players out at the commencement of the strike. During the strike, only 126 of the 224 scheduled regular-season games were played, forcing the league to change the format of post-season play to include 16 teams instead of the usual 10 teams. The players held two "All-Star" games to raise some funding for players without a paycheck. The players got more money but two goals were not met, a form of free agency and more pension money.
The owners were not going to let that happen in 1987.
The players decided to strike after the second week of the season and the NFL reverted to its 1974 tactic of bringing in rookies and free agents and play replacement games. The league cancelled the third week's schedule and resumed with the week four matchups.
In 2000, Hollywood made a movie about the 1987 strike called "Replacements" which was based on the Washington Redskins.
Some teams scouted the best available talent and tried to put together a strong replacement team. Other teams took chunks of local semipro teams, like the New York Giants, and hoped for the best. Others like Philadelphia Eagles Coach Buddy Ryan didn't take the replacement games too seriously and wanted for the players to return.
Like in 1974, veterans crossed the picket lines and by October 25, the NFL was able to claim victory. The players reverted to their old standby; plan B that was court action and that set off years of litigation.
"It was a great time and a lot of fun," said Charley Casserly who was part of the Redskins front office at that time. "Really, the interesting thing was we put together a time, the whole organization and Joe Gibbs did a great job coaching them. Nobody crossed the picket line and we beat two teams, St. Louis and Dallas on that climatic Monday Night that had about 10-12 players cross the picket line. The Dallas team had (Tony) Dorsett, Randy White, Danny White, Too Tall Jones. It was quite a time."
The NFL teams who did compete for players for Schramm's replacement league look anyway for players. Casserley found four players in a Richmond, Virginia halfway house who were playing for a minor league team including Tony Robinson who was the quarterback of the replacement team that beat Dallas.
"We did have a little philosophy on it," Casserly continued. "We wanted players that knew the system. We had to put together a team in 10 days to go play a game. Football unlike all other sports is really a team sport. So we wanted guys who knew the Joe Gibbs system. So we started with players who had been in our camp that year and been in our camp the year before and had been in camps with the Gibbs/(Don) Coryell system. We got players from everywhere.
"Obviously NFL cuts, but we got players from Canada, players who were cut in Canada. We wanted players in camp who were healthy and ready to go."
The players crumbled quickly in 1987 but years later Dave Jennings, who was a New York Jets punter at the time, thinks the showdown with the owners was worth it.
"The players were not that interested in a long term strike, they were looking at the next paycheck," said Jennings. "It's tough to get players to strike and stay together. In 1987, it was a shorter strike and we had the court cases working and eventually it worked out for us.
"We got nothing from the 1987 strike, we didn't get anything directly, but indirectly we got free agency and you see what happened. Free agency works."
It took six years until the players and owners came up with a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and that under pressure from a federal court judge in Minneapolis. The players and owners have spent 17 years under that system. The owners want to chance the revenue stream that is going into players' wallets and maybe break the association in the process. It has worked before with the players caving but in the end, the owners have lost antitrust cases.
It is not surprising stories are surfacing that the NFL owners are planning a sequel to the 2000 movie, "Replacements"
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on the Politics of Sports Business and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
TUESDAY, 11 MAY 2010 13:04
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-preparing-for-replacements-ii-sequel-with-possibility-of-2011-lockout
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
There are stories that are beginning to surface that National Football League owners will sign United Football League, Canadian Football League, indoor football league and any other players that might be available in the event the owners and players cannot reach a new collective bargaining agreement sometime in the next year. The present deal between the owners and players ends after the 2011 Super Bowl.
The stories include details such as the National Football League buying a 25 percent share of the one-year-old United Football League, a five team entity with teams in Hartford, Las Vegas, Omaha, Orlando and Sacramento, and using some of those players.
If these stories are true, the NFL in 2011 will be revisiting an old plan that was used in 1987.
Replacement players.
How the paying customers who own Personal Seat Licenses and paying big money for games will react is unknown at this point but in 1987 neither New York Giants coach Bill Parcells nor Philadelphia Eagles coach Buddy Ryan was too thrilled with the idea. But the Giants and Eagles NFC East rivals, the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins embraced the idea. A little history is needed to understand why NFL owners endorsed the idea which was the brainchild of then Dallas Cowboys President Texas E. (Tex) Schramm and may revisit the idea in 2011.
The NFL owners and players had a contentious relationship for decades. The NFLPA formed in 1956 with help from Creighton Miller, the first General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Unhappy players in Cleveland and Green Bay assembled a network of "player reps" on each team. The players included Don Shula (Colts), Frank Gifford (Giants), and Norm Van Brocklin (Rams) to represent their teams. The Chicago Bears did not have a players representative. The players first meeting was held in New York in the fall of 1956, after the owners ignored the players' attempts to discuss their requests. The players asked for minimum salaries of $5,000 per season, injury pay, uniform per diems, and for teams to supply their own equipment.
Nothing happened but the players got a big break in 1957 when, the first lawsuit involving professional football and antitrust was filed, Radovich v. NFL, which significantly altered player rights within the league. The case involved a player/coach, George Radovich, who sued the league because the NFL effectively prevented him from attaining employment in the NFL or affiliated leagues, such as the Pacific Coast League, which was in existence at the time. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the NFL was exempted from the antitrust laws, and was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the trial court, holding professional football subject to the antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court decision changed life for NFL owners. The players could now sue the league on antitrust grounds which they threatened to do. The owners and players settled with the players receiving minimum salaries of $5,000, $50 payment for preseason games, medical coverage for injuries, and a pension.
But the players didn't get what they agreed to and spend the 1958 season chasing the owners to live up to the agreement. The deal was finally signed in 1959.
The players did catch another break when Lamar Hunt started the American Football league and for some college players, they were able to play the NFL off against the AFL in getting some leverage for their initial contract. The AFL-NFL war over established players began in earnest when Pete Gogolak, a kicker on the Buffalo Bills signed a deal with the New York Giants in 1966. What was good for Gogolak and two NFL quarterbacks John Brodie and Roman Gabriel along with Mike Ditka who were been pursued by AFL Commissioner Al Davis to sign with his league was not good for the owners of either league. Brodie, Gabriel and Ditka got raises from their NFL teams. The AFL and NFL announced their intent to merge on June 8, 1966.
The National Football League Players Association wanted to fight the merger but didn't have the funding to do so.
The NFLPA has always been weak and the owners knew that. The two leagues may have merged, but the player associations did not, as the players on the 16 NFL teams were NFLPA members and the players on the 10 AFL teams were American Football League Players Association members. This caused a major problem in subsequent negotiations as the NFLPA would come to a tentative agreement with the owners on certain collective bargaining issues (such as minimum salaries, retirement age) then the owners would bargain with the AFLPA, who accepted lower terms, which wasn't good for NFLPA members.
There was a brief lockout and a 20-day strike in 1970 that ended just before the 1970 All Star game and which did not result in the cancellation of regular or post-season games, the NFL and NFLPA signed a four-year contract, the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of the NFL, which raised player salary minimums to $12,500 for rookies and $13,000 for veterans, added dental insurance, improved the pension, gave players the right to have agents, gave players representation on the Retirement Board, and provided for impartial arbitration of injury grievances.
(Retired players from that era are still battling the NFL over injury grievances and those grievances have caught the attention of Congress)
In 1974, the previous CBA was coming to an end. Players were demanding the elimination of the Rozelle Rule and the option clause which kept a player tied to his team in perpetuity unless another team was willing to give up number one draft picks or players to sign a free agent among other things. On July 1, the players went on strike, and were prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out. The sit-out led to the cancellation of the New York Jets game at New Haven, the first game ever cancelled due to a labor impasse. However, by the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines, breaking down union solidarity. On August 11, Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period, instead pursuing the issue through the Mackey case. The 42-day strike ended that day with nothing gained.
On September 21, 1982, NFL players went on strike. It was the longest strike in professional sports in the U.S. at the time and lasted until November 17. The owners responded by locking the players out at the commencement of the strike. During the strike, only 126 of the 224 scheduled regular-season games were played, forcing the league to change the format of post-season play to include 16 teams instead of the usual 10 teams. The players held two "All-Star" games to raise some funding for players without a paycheck. The players got more money but two goals were not met, a form of free agency and more pension money.
The owners were not going to let that happen in 1987.
The players decided to strike after the second week of the season and the NFL reverted to its 1974 tactic of bringing in rookies and free agents and play replacement games. The league cancelled the third week's schedule and resumed with the week four matchups.
In 2000, Hollywood made a movie about the 1987 strike called "Replacements" which was based on the Washington Redskins.
Some teams scouted the best available talent and tried to put together a strong replacement team. Other teams took chunks of local semipro teams, like the New York Giants, and hoped for the best. Others like Philadelphia Eagles Coach Buddy Ryan didn't take the replacement games too seriously and wanted for the players to return.
Like in 1974, veterans crossed the picket lines and by October 25, the NFL was able to claim victory. The players reverted to their old standby; plan B that was court action and that set off years of litigation.
"It was a great time and a lot of fun," said Charley Casserly who was part of the Redskins front office at that time. "Really, the interesting thing was we put together a time, the whole organization and Joe Gibbs did a great job coaching them. Nobody crossed the picket line and we beat two teams, St. Louis and Dallas on that climatic Monday Night that had about 10-12 players cross the picket line. The Dallas team had (Tony) Dorsett, Randy White, Danny White, Too Tall Jones. It was quite a time."
The NFL teams who did compete for players for Schramm's replacement league look anyway for players. Casserley found four players in a Richmond, Virginia halfway house who were playing for a minor league team including Tony Robinson who was the quarterback of the replacement team that beat Dallas.
"We did have a little philosophy on it," Casserly continued. "We wanted players that knew the system. We had to put together a team in 10 days to go play a game. Football unlike all other sports is really a team sport. So we wanted guys who knew the Joe Gibbs system. So we started with players who had been in our camp that year and been in our camp the year before and had been in camps with the Gibbs/(Don) Coryell system. We got players from everywhere.
"Obviously NFL cuts, but we got players from Canada, players who were cut in Canada. We wanted players in camp who were healthy and ready to go."
The players crumbled quickly in 1987 but years later Dave Jennings, who was a New York Jets punter at the time, thinks the showdown with the owners was worth it.
"The players were not that interested in a long term strike, they were looking at the next paycheck," said Jennings. "It's tough to get players to strike and stay together. In 1987, it was a shorter strike and we had the court cases working and eventually it worked out for us.
"We got nothing from the 1987 strike, we didn't get anything directly, but indirectly we got free agency and you see what happened. Free agency works."
It took six years until the players and owners came up with a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and that under pressure from a federal court judge in Minneapolis. The players and owners have spent 17 years under that system. The owners want to chance the revenue stream that is going into players' wallets and maybe break the association in the process. It has worked before with the players caving but in the end, the owners have lost antitrust cases.
It is not surprising stories are surfacing that the NFL owners are planning a sequel to the 2000 movie, "Replacements"
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on the Politics of Sports Business and can be reached for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, March 1, 2010
Countdown to the Real Kickoff – the NFL Lockout in 2011
Countdown to the Real Kickoff – the NFL Lockout in 2011
By Evan Weiner-The Daily Caller 03/01/10 at 11:56 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/01/countdown-to-the-real-kickoff-%e2%80%93-the-nfl-lockout-in-2011/
The National Football League is entering a new phase of the 2010 season, the player recruitment campaign will start on March 5 and there are new rules for this endeavor because the owners have decided to blow up the old collective bargaining agreement, a document that kept both owners and players relatively happy.
The March 5 recruiting season is a prelude to something bigger — a 2011 owners lockout.
The owners and players had a horrible partnership from the 1956 through 1993, and there were various players’ strikes. There was a brief, hardly noticed 1968 walkout by the players which got the players $1.5 million into the pension plan but kept minimum salaries at $9,000 for a rookie, $10,000 for a veteran and $50 per pre-season game for National Football League players. The combined National Football League and American Football League Players Associations struck again briefly in 1970 and the players got some improvements in salaries, pensions and other areas.
In 1974, there was another brief strike but there was no new collective bargaining agreement until 1977. The NFLPA struck in 1982 and 1987 and the 1987 labor dispute lasted until 1993 as the players took their grievances to the National Labor Relations Board and federal court and eventually negotiated a deal before Judge David Doty of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota imposed a settlement on them.
Former NFL player Dave Meggysey joked that neither side, the owner or players, wanted Justice Doty to tell them what the new collective bargaining agreement should be and the judge kept around a big yellow envelope with his settlement inside but for all Meggysey knew, it could have been the latest issue of Playboy inside of Doty’s envelope.
The players and owners settled with the players getting 58 percent of league generated revenues, a $195 million litigation settlement for bills and free agency.
The free agency was a trade off. The owners will keep a salary cap and the players would become free agents after four years of work instead of six seasons. The final year of the collective bargaining agreement, if either side pulled out of the pact, would see players free agency start at six years while the owners would cede the salary cap. That clause kept labor piece between 1993 and 2009 because neither side wanted to give up a significant piece of leverage as the most players never even get to four years service and the owners could control players costs.
The owners blew up the contract in May 2008 and that has forced both the players and owners to use a different road map to construct teams for 2010 and beyond.
No one knows what will happen in 2011 when the collective bargaining agreement runs out but if there is a lockout or a strike and it is more than likely the owners will lockout the players once the CBA is through after Super Bowl XLV next February, what happens to the incident bystanders? The television networks, the marketing partners, the municipalities that put up money for stadiums and practice facilities, the corporate and fan partnerships for those who put up money for personal seat licenses and the non-football follower who is probably unaware that if they have a cable TV or satellite TV subscription that some of their money will be going to support the owners in a lockout.
The players and owners will eventually resolve their dispute although it may take a while. There is an usual circumstance here, the owners are not on the same page as large revenue producing teams don’t want to share all of their in-market revenue with the Buffalo, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Jacksonville and others. There may be a total of 15 franchises that don’t have the financial machines of Washington, Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston, New England and the two New York teams and want to keep revenue sharing strong. However, the money making machines in Washington, Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston, New England and in the New York area have huge bills that Ralph Wilson in Buffalo doesn’t have.
Dallas’ Jerry Jones has not sold naming rights to his new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Houston’s Robert McNair paid over $700 million for his franchise in 1999, Bob Kraft built the stadium for his New England Patriots in Foxboro, the combined Jets-Giants East Rutherford, New Jersey franchise has some public funding behind it in that New Jersey picked up infrastructure costs and the combined Jets-Giants entity is not fully paying property taxes to East Rutherford and is instead using payments in lieu of taxes to throw some money East Rutherford’s way.
So there are bills that need to be paid that Wilson or Cincinnati’s Mike Brown do on have. Wilson paid $25,000 to buy the Buffalo franchise in 1959 from American Football League founder Lamar Hunt. Brown’s family paid about $7.5 million to get a Cincinnati franchise in the American Football League back in 1967. Neither Wilson’s market nor Brown’s market can generate revenues like the big cities and that is a problem for old line NFL owners who perfected as sports socialism or as the former Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell, a proud Republican, once said, 32 Republicans who love socialism. For the record, not every NFL owner is a Republican.
It is unclear if the players have a war chest to last if there is a labor action, but the owners certainly do. And this is where the public gets involved. The owners will get their television rights fees from Sumner Redstone’s CBS ($622.5 million annually), from Rupert Murdoch’s FOX ($732 million annually), from General Electric’s NBC, from Disney’s ESPN along with John Malone’s DirecTV. Redstone, Murdoch and Jeffrey Immelt from General Electric ($600 million annually for Sunday night games) have guaranteed the NFL will get money whether there is a season, a truncated schedule or a full schedule for 2011. CBS, NBC and FOX are over-the-air networks, free TV but ESPN and DirecTV are subscriber supported and that is a problem for non football fans.
Will ESPN refund subscribers money for missed games? Will DirecTV also provide a refund for those who buy the NFL Sunday Ticket? Based on various labor actions in 1994 and 1995 with the Major League Baseball strike and the National Hockey League lockout, the 1998-99 National Basketball Association lockout and the 204-05 National Hockey League lockout, the answer is no.
Not one cable system operator or regional or national sports cable TV network returned one nickel to one subscriber despite not showing the product that subscribers were suppose to receive.
Fans always claim there is nothing they can do about sports labor actions. Little do they realize that they are being used in a labor action. Their money along with the other 93 percent who never watch ESPN or regional sports cable TV networks is going into an owners fund. DirecTV is paying over $700 million a year for the rights for NFL Sunday Ticket. ESPN gives the NFL $1.1 billion deal annually for Monday Night Football. A great percentage of ESPN’s money comes from 95 million subscribers, not advertisers, who have to take the channel whether they like sports or not because ESPN is part of a basic expanded tier and Congress refuses to even consider changing cable TV laws that would allow customers to opt out of taking ESPN or CNN or MSNBC or FOX News Channel or the Home and Garden Network or others who get basic expanded carriage from Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision and the rest of the cable multiple system operators.
Will the NFL Network give rebates if there are no games?
There are so many other questions that will arise. How the league will deal with marketing partners if there is a lockout or strike and will the league push the NFL shield logo as a substitute for players and speaking of that, will the NFL use replacement players as the league did back in 1987 in an attempt to keep the game going and lure players across the picket line?
Will municipalities get paid after putting up enormous amounts of money to build new facilities or will owners try like Chris Cohan did in Oakland during the 1998-99 NBA lockout to not pay rent? Cohan eventually had to pay Oakland for the dates not used at the Oakland Coliseum Arena because the NBA initiated the lockout.
What happens to people who pay for personal seat licenses and tickets? Do they get refunds if there are no games or does the money that would go for refunds get applied to future games in say the 2012 or 2013 season?
A couple of other questions that also will rise. There is a theory that the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike finished off the Montreal Expos as a franchise and that the Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets were irrevocably harmed by the 1994-95 NHL lockout and settlement. Will the Jacksonville Jaguars survive an NFL work stoppage and what happens in Orchard Park with the Buffalo Bills when Wilson’s lease with the various municipal entities in western New York State runs out after the 2012 season?
Finally, will Congress step in and attempt to force a settlement if there is a labor dispute. New York In October 2006, New York Senator Charles Schumer decided to “help” NFL owners break their logjam over how to redistribute revenues so comparatively smaller market teams — like Wilson’s Bills and Brown’s Bengals — have a chance to keep up with the big boys; among them Washington’s Snyder, Dallas’s Jones, Philadelphia’s Jeffrey Lurie, Houston’s McNair, and New England’s Kraft. Schumer was hoping the weight of his office, along with his effort to gather the bipartisan support of colleagues from several states that NFL teams call home, would pressure NFL owners into coming up with a revenue-sharing formula that satisfies owners from both the high and low-revenue end.
The Democrat Schumer and his fellow Senators — including Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, and others from Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin tried to put the heat on the league’s owners to get on the same page.
They failed.
In the absolute extreme, the Senate could attempt to undo the 1966 AFL–NFL merger which combined the leagues by 1970 (retaining the name of the latter). Or they could unravel the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act, which made legal a team’s sale of television and broadcasting rights packages to the networks. Both measures helped fuel the NFL’s popularity and owner profitability; a move to disrupt them would be the equivalent of throwing a Hail Mary pass with seconds left on the clock.
The new NFL player recruitment season starts next Monday but the real Super Bowl for the NFL owners, players, fans, non-fans and others connected with the NFL is still a year away.
Evan Weiner is a columnist, radio-TV commentator, author and lecturer on “the politics and business of sports.”
By Evan Weiner-The Daily Caller 03/01/10 at 11:56 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/01/countdown-to-the-real-kickoff-%e2%80%93-the-nfl-lockout-in-2011/
The National Football League is entering a new phase of the 2010 season, the player recruitment campaign will start on March 5 and there are new rules for this endeavor because the owners have decided to blow up the old collective bargaining agreement, a document that kept both owners and players relatively happy.
The March 5 recruiting season is a prelude to something bigger — a 2011 owners lockout.
The owners and players had a horrible partnership from the 1956 through 1993, and there were various players’ strikes. There was a brief, hardly noticed 1968 walkout by the players which got the players $1.5 million into the pension plan but kept minimum salaries at $9,000 for a rookie, $10,000 for a veteran and $50 per pre-season game for National Football League players. The combined National Football League and American Football League Players Associations struck again briefly in 1970 and the players got some improvements in salaries, pensions and other areas.
In 1974, there was another brief strike but there was no new collective bargaining agreement until 1977. The NFLPA struck in 1982 and 1987 and the 1987 labor dispute lasted until 1993 as the players took their grievances to the National Labor Relations Board and federal court and eventually negotiated a deal before Judge David Doty of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota imposed a settlement on them.
Former NFL player Dave Meggysey joked that neither side, the owner or players, wanted Justice Doty to tell them what the new collective bargaining agreement should be and the judge kept around a big yellow envelope with his settlement inside but for all Meggysey knew, it could have been the latest issue of Playboy inside of Doty’s envelope.
The players and owners settled with the players getting 58 percent of league generated revenues, a $195 million litigation settlement for bills and free agency.
The free agency was a trade off. The owners will keep a salary cap and the players would become free agents after four years of work instead of six seasons. The final year of the collective bargaining agreement, if either side pulled out of the pact, would see players free agency start at six years while the owners would cede the salary cap. That clause kept labor piece between 1993 and 2009 because neither side wanted to give up a significant piece of leverage as the most players never even get to four years service and the owners could control players costs.
The owners blew up the contract in May 2008 and that has forced both the players and owners to use a different road map to construct teams for 2010 and beyond.
No one knows what will happen in 2011 when the collective bargaining agreement runs out but if there is a lockout or a strike and it is more than likely the owners will lockout the players once the CBA is through after Super Bowl XLV next February, what happens to the incident bystanders? The television networks, the marketing partners, the municipalities that put up money for stadiums and practice facilities, the corporate and fan partnerships for those who put up money for personal seat licenses and the non-football follower who is probably unaware that if they have a cable TV or satellite TV subscription that some of their money will be going to support the owners in a lockout.
The players and owners will eventually resolve their dispute although it may take a while. There is an usual circumstance here, the owners are not on the same page as large revenue producing teams don’t want to share all of their in-market revenue with the Buffalo, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Jacksonville and others. There may be a total of 15 franchises that don’t have the financial machines of Washington, Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston, New England and the two New York teams and want to keep revenue sharing strong. However, the money making machines in Washington, Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston, New England and in the New York area have huge bills that Ralph Wilson in Buffalo doesn’t have.
Dallas’ Jerry Jones has not sold naming rights to his new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Houston’s Robert McNair paid over $700 million for his franchise in 1999, Bob Kraft built the stadium for his New England Patriots in Foxboro, the combined Jets-Giants East Rutherford, New Jersey franchise has some public funding behind it in that New Jersey picked up infrastructure costs and the combined Jets-Giants entity is not fully paying property taxes to East Rutherford and is instead using payments in lieu of taxes to throw some money East Rutherford’s way.
So there are bills that need to be paid that Wilson or Cincinnati’s Mike Brown do on have. Wilson paid $25,000 to buy the Buffalo franchise in 1959 from American Football League founder Lamar Hunt. Brown’s family paid about $7.5 million to get a Cincinnati franchise in the American Football League back in 1967. Neither Wilson’s market nor Brown’s market can generate revenues like the big cities and that is a problem for old line NFL owners who perfected as sports socialism or as the former Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell, a proud Republican, once said, 32 Republicans who love socialism. For the record, not every NFL owner is a Republican.
It is unclear if the players have a war chest to last if there is a labor action, but the owners certainly do. And this is where the public gets involved. The owners will get their television rights fees from Sumner Redstone’s CBS ($622.5 million annually), from Rupert Murdoch’s FOX ($732 million annually), from General Electric’s NBC, from Disney’s ESPN along with John Malone’s DirecTV. Redstone, Murdoch and Jeffrey Immelt from General Electric ($600 million annually for Sunday night games) have guaranteed the NFL will get money whether there is a season, a truncated schedule or a full schedule for 2011. CBS, NBC and FOX are over-the-air networks, free TV but ESPN and DirecTV are subscriber supported and that is a problem for non football fans.
Will ESPN refund subscribers money for missed games? Will DirecTV also provide a refund for those who buy the NFL Sunday Ticket? Based on various labor actions in 1994 and 1995 with the Major League Baseball strike and the National Hockey League lockout, the 1998-99 National Basketball Association lockout and the 204-05 National Hockey League lockout, the answer is no.
Not one cable system operator or regional or national sports cable TV network returned one nickel to one subscriber despite not showing the product that subscribers were suppose to receive.
Fans always claim there is nothing they can do about sports labor actions. Little do they realize that they are being used in a labor action. Their money along with the other 93 percent who never watch ESPN or regional sports cable TV networks is going into an owners fund. DirecTV is paying over $700 million a year for the rights for NFL Sunday Ticket. ESPN gives the NFL $1.1 billion deal annually for Monday Night Football. A great percentage of ESPN’s money comes from 95 million subscribers, not advertisers, who have to take the channel whether they like sports or not because ESPN is part of a basic expanded tier and Congress refuses to even consider changing cable TV laws that would allow customers to opt out of taking ESPN or CNN or MSNBC or FOX News Channel or the Home and Garden Network or others who get basic expanded carriage from Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision and the rest of the cable multiple system operators.
Will the NFL Network give rebates if there are no games?
There are so many other questions that will arise. How the league will deal with marketing partners if there is a lockout or strike and will the league push the NFL shield logo as a substitute for players and speaking of that, will the NFL use replacement players as the league did back in 1987 in an attempt to keep the game going and lure players across the picket line?
Will municipalities get paid after putting up enormous amounts of money to build new facilities or will owners try like Chris Cohan did in Oakland during the 1998-99 NBA lockout to not pay rent? Cohan eventually had to pay Oakland for the dates not used at the Oakland Coliseum Arena because the NBA initiated the lockout.
What happens to people who pay for personal seat licenses and tickets? Do they get refunds if there are no games or does the money that would go for refunds get applied to future games in say the 2012 or 2013 season?
A couple of other questions that also will rise. There is a theory that the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike finished off the Montreal Expos as a franchise and that the Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets were irrevocably harmed by the 1994-95 NHL lockout and settlement. Will the Jacksonville Jaguars survive an NFL work stoppage and what happens in Orchard Park with the Buffalo Bills when Wilson’s lease with the various municipal entities in western New York State runs out after the 2012 season?
Finally, will Congress step in and attempt to force a settlement if there is a labor dispute. New York In October 2006, New York Senator Charles Schumer decided to “help” NFL owners break their logjam over how to redistribute revenues so comparatively smaller market teams — like Wilson’s Bills and Brown’s Bengals — have a chance to keep up with the big boys; among them Washington’s Snyder, Dallas’s Jones, Philadelphia’s Jeffrey Lurie, Houston’s McNair, and New England’s Kraft. Schumer was hoping the weight of his office, along with his effort to gather the bipartisan support of colleagues from several states that NFL teams call home, would pressure NFL owners into coming up with a revenue-sharing formula that satisfies owners from both the high and low-revenue end.
The Democrat Schumer and his fellow Senators — including Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, and others from Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin tried to put the heat on the league’s owners to get on the same page.
They failed.
In the absolute extreme, the Senate could attempt to undo the 1966 AFL–NFL merger which combined the leagues by 1970 (retaining the name of the latter). Or they could unravel the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act, which made legal a team’s sale of television and broadcasting rights packages to the networks. Both measures helped fuel the NFL’s popularity and owner profitability; a move to disrupt them would be the equivalent of throwing a Hail Mary pass with seconds left on the clock.
The new NFL player recruitment season starts next Monday but the real Super Bowl for the NFL owners, players, fans, non-fans and others connected with the NFL is still a year away.
Evan Weiner is a columnist, radio-TV commentator, author and lecturer on “the politics and business of sports.”
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The 18 percent solution won't fly
The 18 percent solution won't fly
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m1d27-The-18-percent-solution-wont-fly#
By Evan Weiner
January 27, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- Peter King has been around the National Football League as a reporter for a long time so there should not be any reason to doubt his January 18, 2010 CNNSI.com column which stated that National Football League Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith sent out an e-mail to his players that ownership wants to cut players compensation 18 percent and that a management source confirmed the figure. The 18 percent figure has not filtered down to the teams yet but it sounded about right according to one NFL person who is not involved in the day-to-day talks. Not every owner is filled in daily on the bargaining, which is a normal business standard.
The owners and players have about 13 months until the present collective bargaining agreement ends and it is highly unlikely that the players would even consider an 18 percent pay decrease but this is the starting point in the negotiations.
The owners want change, the players want status quo. Something will have to give or the National Football League owners will simply lockout the players sometime after February 28, 2011 and the work stoppage which ensue meaning that some or all of the 2011 NFL season will be canceled.
The players in some way are collateral damage in an on going fight between the high revenue teams and the low-end teams and economic realities. Before Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the New York Giants/Jets ownership decided to build new stadiums, the high revenue owners like Dallas’ Jones, Washington’s Daniel Snyder, New England’s Robert Kraft, Houston’s Robert McNair and Philadelphia’s Jeffrey Lurie were arguing that the owners revenue sharing system needed to be changed and that Jones, Snyder, Kraft, McNair and Lurie among others should be keeping a lion’s share of locally produced revenue so they could use that money on their teams. Small market owners like Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson and Cincinnati’s Mike Brown reminded the big revenue guys that the National Football League was built on a sharing system that made sure the small market Green Bay Packers could compete (in the 1960s and beyond) with New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Wilson and Brown wanted to keep the revenue sharing rules in line with league financial history since the 1960s but times have changed. Wilson paid $25,000 for his American Football League franchise in 1960 and does not have the debt problems as other owners but his market, Buffalo, is one of the NFL’s smallest and his local revenue potential is limited compared to New York, Washington, New England, Philadelphia and Dallas. Brown’s Bengals cost was about $7.5 million in 1967 when the team joined the American Football League, presumably the franchise is in good financial shape in terms of debt but Cincinnati is another revenue limited market.
Brown’s Bengals have played in two publicly funded facilities; Wilson’s Bills also play in a facility that used a lot of taxpayers’ dollars for a renovation in the late 1990s. But Jones, Snyder, Kraft, McNair and Lurie have put up a lot of money to either buy the franchise or build new facilities and in some cases have had to put a lot of their own money into the new venues. Jones paid for about half of his new Cowboys Stadium (Arlington, Texas taxpayers have kicked in the other half through a sales tax hike) and one of Jones’ plans to help pay down the debt of the new place fell through. He was unable to sell naming rights to the stadium.
Snyder paid a bundle for the Redskins and while one magazine claims the team is the most valuable franchise in North American sports, Snyder still has to pay off the debt. Kraft used a lot of his own money to build his new Foxboro, Massachusetts stadium, Lanier paid well over $700 million for the Texans expansion franchise in 1999 although he got a taxpayers funded stadium and Lurie had to kick in money for his new Eagles stadium.
There will be more owners tales of woe in the future. The combination Mara/Tisch family-Woody Johnson new East Rutherford, New Jersey football palace is costing according to estimates at least $1.3 billion and while New Jersey is picking up infrastructure costs and given Mara/Tisch/Johnson all sorts of tax breaks and incentives, there is still a debt that needs to be paid and the new stadium naming rights are still up for sale.
The York family’s San Francisco 49ers franchise may be singing off of the same music sheet sometime this year. The Yorks would like to build a new football venue in Santa Clara, about 40 miles south from Candlestick Park in San Francisco and the plan is to get minimal taxpayers support for the facility.
The NFL and the Yorks have been in contact with the Raiders Al Davis about possibly being a partner in the venture to help the financial burden.
The 18 percent solution according to King’s column comes out to about a billion dollars in additional revenue for the owners.
There is one area that the owners and players probably can agree upon for cost reductions.
Entry-level contracts.
First round draft picks cost a lot of money and players like the New York Jets Vernon Gholston is a perfect example of where costs can be reduced. Gholston was the sixth overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft. He signed a five-year contract for a reported $32.5 million and was guaranteed over $20 million. Gholston has been a bust so far but he will get his bonus money whether he is with the Jets or out of football.
The Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell was the top pick in the 2007 NFL Draft. Russell has done little in his career to justify the deal which reported was for six years and $68 million with a guarantee of $31.5 million.
The NFL and the NFLPA can negotiate a rookie wage and not worry about the consequences of harming a third party, in this case entry level players, because of labor laws. But veteran players would want the money shifted from the rookies to them.
The owners will have some leverage in the battle with the players. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (FOX), General Electric’s NBCUniversal, Sumner Redstone’s CBS, Disney’s ESPN and Liberty Media’s DirecTV (NFL Sunday Ticket) will continue paying the owners under the terms of their broadcast/cable/satellite agreements with the league whether the league locks out the players or not.
The NFL’s deals with News Corp, NBCUniversal and CBS end after the 2011 season. The TV deals bring in more than $3 billion annually for the 32 owners.
NFL players went on strike in 1987 but the NFL owners had a backup plan and offered replacement players contests. The games went on after the league shut down for a week. A number of top names including the New York Giants Lawrence Taylor, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, the Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Randy White along with Seattle Seahawks receiver (and future US Congressman) Steve Largent crossed the picket lines and the strike collapsed after four weeks. The NFLPA had no war chest to support the players, not learning any lessons from the 1981 Major League Baseball strike, the players and owners had a strike fund or insurance in that battle, or the 1982 NFL Players strike. The players picked up a little money in 1982 from two NFLPA “All-Star Games” in Washington and Los Angeles.
“In 1982, Ted Turner and Turner Broadcasting stepped forward and funded the strike games and put the two games on TBS which allowed the players to go forward. There was enough money raised at that time to field a mini season of 10 teams with the teams owned by the players had the strike continued. But the players voted against having their own league,” said Sheldon Saltman, the NLFPATV consultant who created and organized the two All-Star Games under the aegis of then NLFPA Executive Director Ed Garvey and former Redskins All-Pro defensive back Brig Owens.
After the players crumbled, the NFLPA decertified and the players led by New York Jets running back Freeman McNeil sued the NFL, challenging the league’s free agency rules. By 1993, the owners and players settled their disputes.
The game has changed though for the owners and players. Three prominent people are no longer at the negotiating table, Paul Tagliabue, the former NFL Commissioner who retired, the late Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the association and former Pittsburgh Steelers boss Dan Rooney who rode off into the sunset and is now the United States Ambassador to Ireland. Tagliabue and Upshaw had a very unique relationship that was unlike other league commissioners/negotiators and players associations’ executive directors in that they worked together in an amicable fashion and resolved differences and extended the 1993 agreement five times. The players trusted Rooney as a voice of reason.
The owners’ 18 percent solution is not going to fly this time around.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m1d27-The-18-percent-solution-wont-fly#
By Evan Weiner
January 27, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- Peter King has been around the National Football League as a reporter for a long time so there should not be any reason to doubt his January 18, 2010 CNNSI.com column which stated that National Football League Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith sent out an e-mail to his players that ownership wants to cut players compensation 18 percent and that a management source confirmed the figure. The 18 percent figure has not filtered down to the teams yet but it sounded about right according to one NFL person who is not involved in the day-to-day talks. Not every owner is filled in daily on the bargaining, which is a normal business standard.
The owners and players have about 13 months until the present collective bargaining agreement ends and it is highly unlikely that the players would even consider an 18 percent pay decrease but this is the starting point in the negotiations.
The owners want change, the players want status quo. Something will have to give or the National Football League owners will simply lockout the players sometime after February 28, 2011 and the work stoppage which ensue meaning that some or all of the 2011 NFL season will be canceled.
The players in some way are collateral damage in an on going fight between the high revenue teams and the low-end teams and economic realities. Before Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the New York Giants/Jets ownership decided to build new stadiums, the high revenue owners like Dallas’ Jones, Washington’s Daniel Snyder, New England’s Robert Kraft, Houston’s Robert McNair and Philadelphia’s Jeffrey Lurie were arguing that the owners revenue sharing system needed to be changed and that Jones, Snyder, Kraft, McNair and Lurie among others should be keeping a lion’s share of locally produced revenue so they could use that money on their teams. Small market owners like Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson and Cincinnati’s Mike Brown reminded the big revenue guys that the National Football League was built on a sharing system that made sure the small market Green Bay Packers could compete (in the 1960s and beyond) with New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Wilson and Brown wanted to keep the revenue sharing rules in line with league financial history since the 1960s but times have changed. Wilson paid $25,000 for his American Football League franchise in 1960 and does not have the debt problems as other owners but his market, Buffalo, is one of the NFL’s smallest and his local revenue potential is limited compared to New York, Washington, New England, Philadelphia and Dallas. Brown’s Bengals cost was about $7.5 million in 1967 when the team joined the American Football League, presumably the franchise is in good financial shape in terms of debt but Cincinnati is another revenue limited market.
Brown’s Bengals have played in two publicly funded facilities; Wilson’s Bills also play in a facility that used a lot of taxpayers’ dollars for a renovation in the late 1990s. But Jones, Snyder, Kraft, McNair and Lurie have put up a lot of money to either buy the franchise or build new facilities and in some cases have had to put a lot of their own money into the new venues. Jones paid for about half of his new Cowboys Stadium (Arlington, Texas taxpayers have kicked in the other half through a sales tax hike) and one of Jones’ plans to help pay down the debt of the new place fell through. He was unable to sell naming rights to the stadium.
Snyder paid a bundle for the Redskins and while one magazine claims the team is the most valuable franchise in North American sports, Snyder still has to pay off the debt. Kraft used a lot of his own money to build his new Foxboro, Massachusetts stadium, Lanier paid well over $700 million for the Texans expansion franchise in 1999 although he got a taxpayers funded stadium and Lurie had to kick in money for his new Eagles stadium.
There will be more owners tales of woe in the future. The combination Mara/Tisch family-Woody Johnson new East Rutherford, New Jersey football palace is costing according to estimates at least $1.3 billion and while New Jersey is picking up infrastructure costs and given Mara/Tisch/Johnson all sorts of tax breaks and incentives, there is still a debt that needs to be paid and the new stadium naming rights are still up for sale.
The York family’s San Francisco 49ers franchise may be singing off of the same music sheet sometime this year. The Yorks would like to build a new football venue in Santa Clara, about 40 miles south from Candlestick Park in San Francisco and the plan is to get minimal taxpayers support for the facility.
The NFL and the Yorks have been in contact with the Raiders Al Davis about possibly being a partner in the venture to help the financial burden.
The 18 percent solution according to King’s column comes out to about a billion dollars in additional revenue for the owners.
There is one area that the owners and players probably can agree upon for cost reductions.
Entry-level contracts.
First round draft picks cost a lot of money and players like the New York Jets Vernon Gholston is a perfect example of where costs can be reduced. Gholston was the sixth overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft. He signed a five-year contract for a reported $32.5 million and was guaranteed over $20 million. Gholston has been a bust so far but he will get his bonus money whether he is with the Jets or out of football.
The Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell was the top pick in the 2007 NFL Draft. Russell has done little in his career to justify the deal which reported was for six years and $68 million with a guarantee of $31.5 million.
The NFL and the NFLPA can negotiate a rookie wage and not worry about the consequences of harming a third party, in this case entry level players, because of labor laws. But veteran players would want the money shifted from the rookies to them.
The owners will have some leverage in the battle with the players. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (FOX), General Electric’s NBCUniversal, Sumner Redstone’s CBS, Disney’s ESPN and Liberty Media’s DirecTV (NFL Sunday Ticket) will continue paying the owners under the terms of their broadcast/cable/satellite agreements with the league whether the league locks out the players or not.
The NFL’s deals with News Corp, NBCUniversal and CBS end after the 2011 season. The TV deals bring in more than $3 billion annually for the 32 owners.
NFL players went on strike in 1987 but the NFL owners had a backup plan and offered replacement players contests. The games went on after the league shut down for a week. A number of top names including the New York Giants Lawrence Taylor, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, the Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Randy White along with Seattle Seahawks receiver (and future US Congressman) Steve Largent crossed the picket lines and the strike collapsed after four weeks. The NFLPA had no war chest to support the players, not learning any lessons from the 1981 Major League Baseball strike, the players and owners had a strike fund or insurance in that battle, or the 1982 NFL Players strike. The players picked up a little money in 1982 from two NFLPA “All-Star Games” in Washington and Los Angeles.
“In 1982, Ted Turner and Turner Broadcasting stepped forward and funded the strike games and put the two games on TBS which allowed the players to go forward. There was enough money raised at that time to field a mini season of 10 teams with the teams owned by the players had the strike continued. But the players voted against having their own league,” said Sheldon Saltman, the NLFPATV consultant who created and organized the two All-Star Games under the aegis of then NLFPA Executive Director Ed Garvey and former Redskins All-Pro defensive back Brig Owens.
After the players crumbled, the NFLPA decertified and the players led by New York Jets running back Freeman McNeil sued the NFL, challenging the league’s free agency rules. By 1993, the owners and players settled their disputes.
The game has changed though for the owners and players. Three prominent people are no longer at the negotiating table, Paul Tagliabue, the former NFL Commissioner who retired, the late Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the association and former Pittsburgh Steelers boss Dan Rooney who rode off into the sunset and is now the United States Ambassador to Ireland. Tagliabue and Upshaw had a very unique relationship that was unlike other league commissioners/negotiators and players associations’ executive directors in that they worked together in an amicable fashion and resolved differences and extended the 1993 agreement five times. The players trusted Rooney as a voice of reason.
The owners’ 18 percent solution is not going to fly this time around.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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