Why are NFL owners really locking out the players?
TUESDAY, 26 APRIL 2011 08:10
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/why-are-nfl-owners-really-locking-out-the-players
The National Football League has been pretending that all is well in the land of the 32 franchises and the league's more than 1,600 employees. Teams are conducting cheerleader tryouts. The league released the 2011 pre-season schedule, then came the regular season schedule announcement and the exciting month of NFL football reaches a climax with three days worth of what is essentially a major restraint of trade, the college draft. That exercise, which starts on Thursday, is made legal thanks to the 2006 National Football League-National Football League Players Association collective bargaining agreement which gives the NFL the right to offer college players a chance to join the players ranks through that mechanism even though the college players have no say in the 2006 agreement.
So all is wonderful in the land of the NFL except for one minor detail. NFL owners have locked out the employees who perform on the field — the players and no new negotiations on the collective bargaining agreement are scheduled until May 16 after a flurry of court decisions will be made on the legality of the lockout and whether the owners can use TV monies from 2011 rights from FOX, NBC, CBS, Disney's ESPN and DirecTV for football operations even if there is no product.
The lockout was lifted by a Minnesota judge on Monday afternoon; the NFL will appeal the ruling which means both sides are back to the bargaining table with no rules for business for 2011. It could be that 2010 rules apply which is not necessarily good for either side. Players will have to wait six years, not four for free agency and the owners have no salary cap to control players costs.
A win for the players perhaps, a win for fans perhaps. A loss for the owners perhaps. But one thing is certain, a lot of the money problems, real or imaginary, that NFL owners are having come from municipalities building new stadiums for teams and that taxpayers dollars which went for palatial stadiums in 1990 are longer good because 21st stadiums are so much better.
The owners have contended that their side was forced into a lockout because the players cannot see that they are financially hurting or that the business model no longer works or that the stars aren't in the right place because the moon isn't in the seventh house and Jupiter hasn't aligned with Mars or something else.
There actually is a reason that the owners do have but for some reason the owners side has not spelled out the problem. Simply, every time a new stadium comes on line (in the most recent cycle, it has been Jerry Jones' Cowboys home in Arlington, Texas and the new Meadowlands facility), the stakes for lesser revenue teams become higher because the new stadiums raises league revenues (all those shiny luxury boxes, club seats, and personal seat licenses) because old facilities just don't have the whistles and gadgets the new places have. The salary cap ceiling goes up as well as the salary cap floor and spending to the minimum has caused owners with fewer revenues streams problems. Teams have to pay for players and probably debt service (for either buying a franchise or throwing money at a new stadium — Cowboys, Giants-Jets, New England Patriots to name some of the franchises that have kicked money into new facilities) and have to cut other areas and that may include the number of coaches on a staff, scouts and other front office personal including sales and marketing employees.
That seems to be the "broken economic model" that NFL owners through Commissioner Roger Goodell are talking about. The owners just have not spelled it out publicly. It goes back to owners versus owners and whether big market owners want to share revenues with smaller market owners.
Oakland, Minnesota, St. Louis, Atlanta, Charlotte (Carolina), Buffalo, Jacksonville, San Francisco and San Diego apparently in that leaky boat (old stadiums) with no upward ability to raise revenues. A little more than 15 years ago, Atlanta along with Jacksonville opened new stadiums and St. Louis officials built a domed stadium that satisfied Los Angeles (actually Anaheim) Rams owner Georgia Frontiere who moved her Rams from the second largest TV market (albeit Anaheim) to Missouri.
The present dispute between the owners and players has roots in the 1960s when Irving, Texas built Dallas Cowboys owner Clint Murchinson a stadium complete with luxury boxes which gave Murchinson extra revenue. In the early 1970s, New Jersey decided to become "big-league" and built the Meadowlands which also had luxury boxes which added to the Mara family's revenue stream.
By 1983, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was complaining that the "luxury box" was the bane to his existence. NFL owners wanted new stadiums and started playing the field. Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom began plotting the move of his franchise to Anaheim in 1978 although he didn't live to see the team play in a rebuilt Anaheim Stadium in 1980. The Minnesota Vikings ownership shopped around but eventually got a new stadium in Minneapolis. Al Davis ended up in Los Angeles in 1982 in a move that also was spurred by the possibility of more TV money. Even Leonard Tose thought about moving his Philadelphia Eagles to Phoenix although that was to get out of millions of dollars of legal gambling debts and get some money back into his coffers. The NFL didn't want to leave Philadelphia because of an owner's financial trouble caused by gambling at Atlantic City casinos.
Perhaps the NFL owners can explain their position which was caused by government subsidized stadiums being opened in select cities by using an example from New Orleans in 1999. In that year Saints owner Tom Benson started looking for either a rebuilt Superdome or a new New Orleans stadium. Benson was miffed when Louisiana officials did not follow the leads of Jacksonville, St. Louis, Baltimore, Nashville, Cleveland and Oakland which put up piles of cash to attract either an expansion or relocation team to their cities. Jacksonville got an expansion team in 1993, St. Louis wooed Frontiere and got married to the Rams in 1995, Davis took his Raiders back to Oakland in 1995. Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams grew tired of the Houston Astrodome (he first suffered Astrodome fatigue in the late 1980s) and took Nashville offer in 1996. Cleveland came up with funding for a new stadium after Art Modell announced his Cleveland Browns franchise would move to Baltimore in 1996. Cleveland came back online in 1999 in the NFL. Also in 1999, Los Angeles and Houston were bidding for an NFL expansion franchise which would start play in 2002. Houston voters approved a referendum and built a new facility which is what Adams wanted all along and didn't get.
Benson played the stadium game because his football revenues were failing as new taxpayers funded stadiums were opening around the country. In spring 1999, Benson began his attempt to renegotiate the team's lease with Louisiana Governor Mike Foster and the Louisiana legislature. The issue then was the naming rights to the Superdome. Benson did not want the structure named after former Governor John McKeithan who pushed to build the stadium in the 1970s. Benson said renaming the Superdome by calling it the McKeithan Dome would cost his team millions of dollars annually.
The legislature wanted to honor the former Governor while Benson wanted the naming rights to the facility so he could sell it to a business who would pay millions for the privilege.
By 1999, the New Orleans economy had slipped as businesses closed offices in the city and New Orleans population was on the decline. One Saints official said that the team once had the fourth best revenue generating lease in the business. However that official added that once St. Louis, Nashville and Baltimore started enticing team owners with virtual rent-free stadiums, the Saints franchise quickly plummeted to near the bottom of the league.
Benson could no longer keep up with the big boys in what was supposed to be a socialist society which is the NFL's business model.
On January 10, 2001, Benson and the Saints filed a "letter of default" alleging that the state and Superdome officials violated the Saints lease at the dome. Benson had other options which he used despite the fact he had a lease until 2017 with the state for his team to play football at the Superdome. Mississippi officials talked about building a multi-sports complex some 45 minutes from downtown along Interstate 10. Benson owned a car dealership in San Antonio, Texas and seemed to have an interest in the then eight-year-old Alamodome which seated 65,000 people. But the Alamodome was already outdated by 2001. San Antonio Mayor Howard Peak admitted that the Alamodome needed "more suites even though we have 65,000 seats, we have to have club seating and other types of seating."
San Antonio had a new building but the wrong type of seating.
Benson did play the game masterfully. He got an agreement with the state that gave him $186.5 million in state handouts between 2002-2010 and his recent agreement came with a Superdome revenue for more bells and whistles and up to $6 million in annual state handouts if certain benchmarks are not hit. Additionally Benson took control of a building near the dome and is renting offices to the state as part of the new Superdome agreement.
New Orleans may be a small and financially challenged market by Governor Bobby Jindal has no problems providing subsidies to a private business — an NFL team.
Benson can compete because of taxpayers dollars. Other owners aren’t as fortunate in getting a block grant from state or city governments although they do well in other government related tax break areas.
St. Louis has an interesting lease, the Rams-St. Louis agreement calls for the team to be in the top 25 percent of stadium generated revenues in the NFL. With newer stadiums opened, the revenues are probably not in the top 25 percent and an owner can opt out of the lease agreement which ends in 2014. Will Missouri follow Louisiana lead and throw money at Rams ownership?
Right now, Santa Clara, California officials are trying to figure out how to transfer money into an account to build a stadium for the York family's San Francisco 49ers. In Los Angeles, competing groups want an NFL team and in one case, AEG's downturn stadium proposal, the company looks to be trying to pull off a land grab.
The owners want to cut players salaries yet have not given a reason why. It seems hard to believe any NFL owner has financial difficulties with a team. In 1993, Jerry Richardson and Wayne Weaver paid about $140 million for expansion teams in Charlotte (Richardson's Panthers) and Jacksonville (Weaver's Jaguars). By the end of the decade, Houston's Robert McNair paid five times as much for an expansion team. TV monies exploded when Rupert Murdoch bid for NFL rights for his weak FOX syndication alliance of TV stations in late 1993. The owners have done a poor job of articulating their side of the story but apparently there is a side. The lesser markets cannot keep up with the big boys who drive the revenues and in a league that has prided itself with a "leaguethink" philosophy where the weakest link (or smallest market) is equal to New York, Dallas, New England, Washington, Houston and Philadelphia this has become a major problem.
The owners are financially hurting, so they say.
But all of these problems will be swept aside for the draft, just the same way the problems disappeared when the league announced the regular season schedule. It is Kafka-like, black is white, up is down, the NFL is operating as if it is business as usual.
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 Draft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NFL Draft. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The NFL Draft: A Celebration of the Restraint of Trade
The NFL Draft: A Celebration of the Restraint of Trade
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 04/22/10 at 1:43 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/04/22/the-nfl-draft-a-celebration-of-the-restraint-of-trade/2/
(New York, N. Y.) -- Sometime after 7:00 EST on Thursday night, the celebration of something totally un-American, a restraint of trade, will start when the National Football League’s St. Louis Rams announce which player they want as the first pick in the annual NFL Draft.
Corporate America, everyday Americans and Sunday afternoon couch potatoes celebrate the NFL Draft. It is an off-season party for football fans. Once the season ends, the NFL’s worst team is “on the clock,” and a more than four-month long publicity blitz starts with the league’s worst team in the spotlight, as the talent evaluators from that franchise rate the best college talent ready to join the workforce.
It all culminates in the big party in New York, “The Draft,” a celebration of the stopping of the free market. But it’s all part of the sports package.
Normally, the best 225 college graduates can talk to a number of companies and businesses looking for their services and shop around for a job, but that is not the case for the most talented people coming out of college. The flip side is that the best 225 can look forward to making anywhere in a range of hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions annually during the life of the contract they sign. But the contracts are not guaranteed, and the freshly out-of-college players may end up with a really nice bonus, sometimes in the millions. But if they are cut or fired, they will have to look for another job in a relatively closed field with less than 1,900 positions, many of which have already been taken.
The odds of landing a full-time job in the NFL are slim for a good many of those whose names will be called on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, even if they are the top 225.
The NFL Draft is an accepted part of American life (as are the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and National Hockey League drafts). But no one ever really questions the mechanism. In a few weeks, the non-football members of the class of 2010 will hit the streets looking for jobs. The graduates will be able to look for positions wherever they want, whether it is in Seattle, Washington or Dallas, Texas or Miami, Florida or down the northeast I-95 corridor from Foxboro, Massachusetts to East Rutherford, New Jersey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D. C.
They can apply for jobs and go for interviews and hope they get an opportunity and possibly leverage the offers. College football players have a slightly different entry into their profession. NFL teams begin scouting players as soon as they hit college campuses, although they know about the players from high school.
NFL personnel people watch them for at least three years (the NFL requires players to play college football for three years and be on a college campus; whether the individual goes to classes or not is immaterial, despite the presence of the Wonderlic test, which allegedly measures a players intelligence). The college football games are the SATs for NFL scouts. But there are other factors that go into deciding whether the individual coming out of college is good enough. The players go to what is called a scouting combine in Indianapolis in the final semester of their four or five year college career for interviews and to see what the player looks like in a t-shirt and shorts. The players also run a variety of sprints.
Then a team makes a decision and puts names on a list. Only 225 or so get drafted. The 230th-rated player has more bargaining power than the last few players taken in the draft. There are some really good players who aren’t drafted, and they can shop around their services and get more money than, say, the “Lowsman Trophy” winner, the last player taken in the grab bag. The NFL slots money for each pick, but the players in the upper echelon of the draft can negotiate a higher bonus, the money they can keep if there are fired.
Very few players can beat the system and play where they want. John Elway wanted no part of playing in Baltimore in 1983 and signed a contract with the New York Yankees to play baseball and used that as leverage to get his way and forced a trade to Denver. Bo Jackson decided to play baseball instead of signing with Tampa Bay in 1986. Jackson would eventually play football for the Los Angeles Raiders after the Major League Baseball season ended. Eli Manning didn’t want to play for the San Diego Chargers even though he was the NFL and the Chargers’ first pick in the 2004 draft and was immediately traded to the New York Giants.
There are just a few players who can work the system.
The “free-agents” or non-drafted players carry a stigma, though. They are “free-agents” and they have to work harder to get a permanent job. Just because a player is drafted, that doesn’t guarantee a permanent position.
The National Football League is what one-time NFL quarterback and the 1996 Republican Vice-President candidate Jack Kemp once called, “the gold standard” in the industry. There are other football businesses, the United Football League, the Canadian Football League and various indoor football leagues but, and this is meant with no disrespect, for football players getting out of college, that is like working at a fast food restaurant.
It is a job, but not the job they want. The UFL, CFL and other leagues might give some players a second opportunity,but NFL teams know within three to four weeks of the opening of training camp how many of the top 225 are legitimate employees. The NFL personnel guys make very few mistakes; the vetting process is pretty good. Most of the 225 won’t have a career that lasts more than three years.
The NFL Draft is a legally sanctioned restriction of the free market, as it is collectively bargained between the NFL owners and the National Football League Players Association. The draft is a celebration for football fans, Christmas in April, as each NFL team selects players that are gift-wrapped for the fans of each of the 32 teams and come with the promise of making the team perform better.
The actual draft in New York is a rather boring affair. The NFL jazzes up the proceedings with smoke and mirrors, literally, as there are video presentations and loud music while fans dress in their “Sunday” (most NFL games are played on Sunday) best complete with the colors of their favorite teams, uniforms and face paint. But the actual selection of players is a boring and tedious process with a lot of wasted time as NFL personnel directors, coaches and general managers’ fight with scouts in a “war-room” at the team’s headquarters scattered around the country. They call into league headquarters the name of the player they want.
On Thursday night, the heavily choreographed NFL Draft kicks off with a big “tailgate” party inside Radio City Music Hall on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Of course, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not going to close off a major artery like Sixth Avenue, so the festivities have to take place inside. ESPN, with more people on camera than were available for either the Democratic or Republican Party national conventions, is capturing every nuance of the crowd as the talking heads assess the gravity of the situation. The NFL Network, also armed with an array of experts, provides another point of view although it is virtually the same as ESPN, just with different talking heads.
As the revelers revel, their thoughts will turn to the St. Louis Rams. Will Sam Bradford, the Oklahoma quarterback or will Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh get the call? National Football League Commissioner will make his appearance; there will be a hush over the crowd. Bradford or Suh? Or will it be someone else?
It is high drama at the old building in midtown Manhattan.
Eventually the hometown Giants and Jets will get their chance. Giants fans booed the selection of quarterback Phil Simms in 1979. And then there’s the “J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets” chant that waffles through the building.
The three day affair leads to rookie mini-camp, which features the lower round picks and players looking to just get a chance to get onto the 80-man training camp roster as the top picks skip the sessions because they haven’t signed a contract. Then there will be the training camp “holdouts” with some rookies haggling for better signing bonus, and eventually the players gear up for a 16 game season.
But that takes place after the best three days of the off-season for the fans. The celebration of an illegal restraint of trade, made legal by two parties (the owners and players) with no relationship to the injured party (the incoming college grads, well not grads except they graduate the football system either after three, four or five years). Football celebrates a system that is really un-American — but no one really seems to care or notice.
After all, it’s only football.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, columnist, author and lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 04/22/10 at 1:43 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/04/22/the-nfl-draft-a-celebration-of-the-restraint-of-trade/2/
(New York, N. Y.) -- Sometime after 7:00 EST on Thursday night, the celebration of something totally un-American, a restraint of trade, will start when the National Football League’s St. Louis Rams announce which player they want as the first pick in the annual NFL Draft.
Corporate America, everyday Americans and Sunday afternoon couch potatoes celebrate the NFL Draft. It is an off-season party for football fans. Once the season ends, the NFL’s worst team is “on the clock,” and a more than four-month long publicity blitz starts with the league’s worst team in the spotlight, as the talent evaluators from that franchise rate the best college talent ready to join the workforce.
It all culminates in the big party in New York, “The Draft,” a celebration of the stopping of the free market. But it’s all part of the sports package.
Normally, the best 225 college graduates can talk to a number of companies and businesses looking for their services and shop around for a job, but that is not the case for the most talented people coming out of college. The flip side is that the best 225 can look forward to making anywhere in a range of hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions annually during the life of the contract they sign. But the contracts are not guaranteed, and the freshly out-of-college players may end up with a really nice bonus, sometimes in the millions. But if they are cut or fired, they will have to look for another job in a relatively closed field with less than 1,900 positions, many of which have already been taken.
The odds of landing a full-time job in the NFL are slim for a good many of those whose names will be called on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, even if they are the top 225.
The NFL Draft is an accepted part of American life (as are the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and National Hockey League drafts). But no one ever really questions the mechanism. In a few weeks, the non-football members of the class of 2010 will hit the streets looking for jobs. The graduates will be able to look for positions wherever they want, whether it is in Seattle, Washington or Dallas, Texas or Miami, Florida or down the northeast I-95 corridor from Foxboro, Massachusetts to East Rutherford, New Jersey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D. C.
They can apply for jobs and go for interviews and hope they get an opportunity and possibly leverage the offers. College football players have a slightly different entry into their profession. NFL teams begin scouting players as soon as they hit college campuses, although they know about the players from high school.
NFL personnel people watch them for at least three years (the NFL requires players to play college football for three years and be on a college campus; whether the individual goes to classes or not is immaterial, despite the presence of the Wonderlic test, which allegedly measures a players intelligence). The college football games are the SATs for NFL scouts. But there are other factors that go into deciding whether the individual coming out of college is good enough. The players go to what is called a scouting combine in Indianapolis in the final semester of their four or five year college career for interviews and to see what the player looks like in a t-shirt and shorts. The players also run a variety of sprints.
Then a team makes a decision and puts names on a list. Only 225 or so get drafted. The 230th-rated player has more bargaining power than the last few players taken in the draft. There are some really good players who aren’t drafted, and they can shop around their services and get more money than, say, the “Lowsman Trophy” winner, the last player taken in the grab bag. The NFL slots money for each pick, but the players in the upper echelon of the draft can negotiate a higher bonus, the money they can keep if there are fired.
Very few players can beat the system and play where they want. John Elway wanted no part of playing in Baltimore in 1983 and signed a contract with the New York Yankees to play baseball and used that as leverage to get his way and forced a trade to Denver. Bo Jackson decided to play baseball instead of signing with Tampa Bay in 1986. Jackson would eventually play football for the Los Angeles Raiders after the Major League Baseball season ended. Eli Manning didn’t want to play for the San Diego Chargers even though he was the NFL and the Chargers’ first pick in the 2004 draft and was immediately traded to the New York Giants.
There are just a few players who can work the system.
The “free-agents” or non-drafted players carry a stigma, though. They are “free-agents” and they have to work harder to get a permanent job. Just because a player is drafted, that doesn’t guarantee a permanent position.
The National Football League is what one-time NFL quarterback and the 1996 Republican Vice-President candidate Jack Kemp once called, “the gold standard” in the industry. There are other football businesses, the United Football League, the Canadian Football League and various indoor football leagues but, and this is meant with no disrespect, for football players getting out of college, that is like working at a fast food restaurant.
It is a job, but not the job they want. The UFL, CFL and other leagues might give some players a second opportunity,but NFL teams know within three to four weeks of the opening of training camp how many of the top 225 are legitimate employees. The NFL personnel guys make very few mistakes; the vetting process is pretty good. Most of the 225 won’t have a career that lasts more than three years.
The NFL Draft is a legally sanctioned restriction of the free market, as it is collectively bargained between the NFL owners and the National Football League Players Association. The draft is a celebration for football fans, Christmas in April, as each NFL team selects players that are gift-wrapped for the fans of each of the 32 teams and come with the promise of making the team perform better.
The actual draft in New York is a rather boring affair. The NFL jazzes up the proceedings with smoke and mirrors, literally, as there are video presentations and loud music while fans dress in their “Sunday” (most NFL games are played on Sunday) best complete with the colors of their favorite teams, uniforms and face paint. But the actual selection of players is a boring and tedious process with a lot of wasted time as NFL personnel directors, coaches and general managers’ fight with scouts in a “war-room” at the team’s headquarters scattered around the country. They call into league headquarters the name of the player they want.
On Thursday night, the heavily choreographed NFL Draft kicks off with a big “tailgate” party inside Radio City Music Hall on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Of course, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not going to close off a major artery like Sixth Avenue, so the festivities have to take place inside. ESPN, with more people on camera than were available for either the Democratic or Republican Party national conventions, is capturing every nuance of the crowd as the talking heads assess the gravity of the situation. The NFL Network, also armed with an array of experts, provides another point of view although it is virtually the same as ESPN, just with different talking heads.
As the revelers revel, their thoughts will turn to the St. Louis Rams. Will Sam Bradford, the Oklahoma quarterback or will Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh get the call? National Football League Commissioner will make his appearance; there will be a hush over the crowd. Bradford or Suh? Or will it be someone else?
It is high drama at the old building in midtown Manhattan.
Eventually the hometown Giants and Jets will get their chance. Giants fans booed the selection of quarterback Phil Simms in 1979. And then there’s the “J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets” chant that waffles through the building.
The three day affair leads to rookie mini-camp, which features the lower round picks and players looking to just get a chance to get onto the 80-man training camp roster as the top picks skip the sessions because they haven’t signed a contract. Then there will be the training camp “holdouts” with some rookies haggling for better signing bonus, and eventually the players gear up for a 16 game season.
But that takes place after the best three days of the off-season for the fans. The celebration of an illegal restraint of trade, made legal by two parties (the owners and players) with no relationship to the injured party (the incoming college grads, well not grads except they graduate the football system either after three, four or five years). Football celebrates a system that is really un-American — but no one really seems to care or notice.
After all, it’s only football.
Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, columnist, author and lecturer on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Is the NFL Draft really representative of American business values?
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m4d22-Is-the-NFL-Draft-really-representative-of-American-business-valuesIs the NFL Draft really representative of American business values?
April 22, 4:57 PM · Add a Comment
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You hear a lot of about how that President Barack Obama is a socialist, how he wants to share the wealth or how he wants to cap the salaries of say bank executives or automaker execs which is against all free market principles according to certain segments of the chatter society, but here is a question for those shrill voices and writers. How many of you will be celebrating this Saturday when National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell steps to the podium at Radio City Music Hall over on 6th Avenue in midtown Manhattan, not far from Wall Street which is the heart of the capitalist society, and announces that the Detroit Lions are "on the clock" as Goodell kicks off the 2009 NFL Draft?
Probably a good many of them who are rooting that their favorite NFL team picks up some valuable new employees to help their team advance in the regular season and the playoffs.
You see the members of the radio and cable TV noise chamber and their followers who vehemently despise socialism and salary caps are cheering for the very thing they cannot stand. The National Football League has a cap on player salaries, practices something called "leaguethink" which is really socialism as the 32 owners share the wealth from TV and other revenue sources equally and the NFL Draft itself keeps most of the qualified applicants from shopping their services to the 32 NFL teams. There is no free market for the players ranked from #2 to about #230 in the pool of people qualified to work as a player in the National Football League. The draft also rewards failure; the best of the new employees end up with bad teams like William Clay Ford’s Detroit Lions. The poorly managed teams like Ford’s Lions which was winless in 16 games last year get a bailout, a potential great player.
The conservative columnist and TV pundit George Will is a baseball fan and a free market advocate until it comes to baseball and sports. A number of years ago when Will was a member of the Baseball Blue Ribbon Committee looking at ways of keeping all teams on a level financail playing field, he told me that baseball should and could not be subjected to free market principles. Will had been on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Padres and the Baltimore Orioles so he knew what he was talking about in the sports industry. Sports needs to be regulated by Congress and sports owners need a willing players association that allows what amounts to an illegal business practice. An annual draft of players which takes away an individual player's right to negotiate with multiple potential employers instead one just one.
Think of what the noise chamber would sound like if a college graduate in normal economic times was drafted by a company and sent to an area of the country far from home and was told this is the only job opportunity that you are allowed at a slotted salary. There would be huge cries of that is not fair. This is how it is with the NFL Draft. NFL fans are rooting for something that is against American principles. A legal restraint of trade. But it is only football and why should people care when these college grads, although most of them are not graduating, are offered millions of dollars to play a game?
George Will is, of course, a hypocrite. Free market proponents claim that people should let the market dictate the value of an employee or a business. An entry draft like this Saturday's NFL event is choreographed. Players are slotted into a pay scale based on where they are chosen in the draft. The players except for a very select few at the top of the draft cannot necessarily get their ideal job in their ideal part of the country. They cannot shop around their services and the owners are very happy about that because the players cannot initiate a bidding war between the owners, a good many of whom are free market supporters in their other businesses. It is all legal too under the United States labor laws which allow two parties in collective bargaining, in this case the owners and a willing players association, to cut a deal allowing the draft even though a third party, the draftees, lose the right to sell their services to 32 prospect employers.
The number 1 pick is the only player that has some leverage to chose his team like John Elway tried to do in 1983. Elway did not want to be taken by the Baltimore Colts with the first pick 26 years ago. Elway told Colts owner Robert Irsay not to bother and if Irsay choose him, he would continue his baseball career as a minor league player in George Steinbrenner's New York Yankees organization. Irsay took Elway but ended up trading him to Denver. Elway accepted Denver's offer.
Bo Jackson did not necessarily want to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1986 even though Tampa Bay selected him as the top pick in the 1986 draft. Jackson decided to play baseball instead with the Kansas City Royals organization. He had leverage and used it. In 1987, Los Angeles Raiders owner Al Davis took Jackson in the seventh round and that started Jackson's dual baseball-football career.
In 2004, Eli Manning told San Diego Chargers officials not to bother drafting him. But San Diego worked the phones and found an attractive trade package and took Manning anyway. San Diego then sent the quarterback to the New York Giants which was fine with Manning. If Elway, Jackson or Manning were rated lower, they would not have had any leverage.
Potential NFL players coming out of college who are drafted have few choices if they want to make the NFL a career. They could sit out a year and hope they get drafted elsewhere, they can play in Canada or they can go home and find another line of work. Or they can sign a contract with the proposed United Football League and hope the league lasts. Oddly enough the undrafted players have some leverage as they can negotiate with multiple teams and perhaps get bonuses that are better than those drafted in the seventh and final round of annual NFL grab bag.
The NFL owners have a salary cap, which keeps players salaries from skyrocketing and on top of that, NFL players contracts are not guaranteed. A player who gets cut, a fancy word for being fired, keeps his bonus and gets a severance package. NFL owners share enormous national TV revenues although some bigger markets raise more capital than smaller markets because of how much the market will bear for tickets and marketing partnerships. That causes a divide between rich and poorer financed teams but that doesn't affect players as there is a salary cap and a salary floor in the league. Owners have to spend a minimum amount for players and that is a substantial number. The divide is in how much an owner spends on football staff and marketing.
The NFL Draft is now a slice of Americana. Countless hours of TV and radio shows are devoted to this event, numerous stories fill newspapers, blogs and magazines. This is a huge day for football fans and for those fans in the chattering society who decry socialism, spreading the wealth and salary caps. They hope their team gets better but overlook how the draft is so anti-free market capitalism. As the noted philosopher Don King once said. "Only in America."
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
April 22, 4:57 PM · Add a Comment
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You hear a lot of about how that President Barack Obama is a socialist, how he wants to share the wealth or how he wants to cap the salaries of say bank executives or automaker execs which is against all free market principles according to certain segments of the chatter society, but here is a question for those shrill voices and writers. How many of you will be celebrating this Saturday when National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell steps to the podium at Radio City Music Hall over on 6th Avenue in midtown Manhattan, not far from Wall Street which is the heart of the capitalist society, and announces that the Detroit Lions are "on the clock" as Goodell kicks off the 2009 NFL Draft?
Probably a good many of them who are rooting that their favorite NFL team picks up some valuable new employees to help their team advance in the regular season and the playoffs.
You see the members of the radio and cable TV noise chamber and their followers who vehemently despise socialism and salary caps are cheering for the very thing they cannot stand. The National Football League has a cap on player salaries, practices something called "leaguethink" which is really socialism as the 32 owners share the wealth from TV and other revenue sources equally and the NFL Draft itself keeps most of the qualified applicants from shopping their services to the 32 NFL teams. There is no free market for the players ranked from #2 to about #230 in the pool of people qualified to work as a player in the National Football League. The draft also rewards failure; the best of the new employees end up with bad teams like William Clay Ford’s Detroit Lions. The poorly managed teams like Ford’s Lions which was winless in 16 games last year get a bailout, a potential great player.
The conservative columnist and TV pundit George Will is a baseball fan and a free market advocate until it comes to baseball and sports. A number of years ago when Will was a member of the Baseball Blue Ribbon Committee looking at ways of keeping all teams on a level financail playing field, he told me that baseball should and could not be subjected to free market principles. Will had been on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Padres and the Baltimore Orioles so he knew what he was talking about in the sports industry. Sports needs to be regulated by Congress and sports owners need a willing players association that allows what amounts to an illegal business practice. An annual draft of players which takes away an individual player's right to negotiate with multiple potential employers instead one just one.
Think of what the noise chamber would sound like if a college graduate in normal economic times was drafted by a company and sent to an area of the country far from home and was told this is the only job opportunity that you are allowed at a slotted salary. There would be huge cries of that is not fair. This is how it is with the NFL Draft. NFL fans are rooting for something that is against American principles. A legal restraint of trade. But it is only football and why should people care when these college grads, although most of them are not graduating, are offered millions of dollars to play a game?
George Will is, of course, a hypocrite. Free market proponents claim that people should let the market dictate the value of an employee or a business. An entry draft like this Saturday's NFL event is choreographed. Players are slotted into a pay scale based on where they are chosen in the draft. The players except for a very select few at the top of the draft cannot necessarily get their ideal job in their ideal part of the country. They cannot shop around their services and the owners are very happy about that because the players cannot initiate a bidding war between the owners, a good many of whom are free market supporters in their other businesses. It is all legal too under the United States labor laws which allow two parties in collective bargaining, in this case the owners and a willing players association, to cut a deal allowing the draft even though a third party, the draftees, lose the right to sell their services to 32 prospect employers.
The number 1 pick is the only player that has some leverage to chose his team like John Elway tried to do in 1983. Elway did not want to be taken by the Baltimore Colts with the first pick 26 years ago. Elway told Colts owner Robert Irsay not to bother and if Irsay choose him, he would continue his baseball career as a minor league player in George Steinbrenner's New York Yankees organization. Irsay took Elway but ended up trading him to Denver. Elway accepted Denver's offer.
Bo Jackson did not necessarily want to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1986 even though Tampa Bay selected him as the top pick in the 1986 draft. Jackson decided to play baseball instead with the Kansas City Royals organization. He had leverage and used it. In 1987, Los Angeles Raiders owner Al Davis took Jackson in the seventh round and that started Jackson's dual baseball-football career.
In 2004, Eli Manning told San Diego Chargers officials not to bother drafting him. But San Diego worked the phones and found an attractive trade package and took Manning anyway. San Diego then sent the quarterback to the New York Giants which was fine with Manning. If Elway, Jackson or Manning were rated lower, they would not have had any leverage.
Potential NFL players coming out of college who are drafted have few choices if they want to make the NFL a career. They could sit out a year and hope they get drafted elsewhere, they can play in Canada or they can go home and find another line of work. Or they can sign a contract with the proposed United Football League and hope the league lasts. Oddly enough the undrafted players have some leverage as they can negotiate with multiple teams and perhaps get bonuses that are better than those drafted in the seventh and final round of annual NFL grab bag.
The NFL owners have a salary cap, which keeps players salaries from skyrocketing and on top of that, NFL players contracts are not guaranteed. A player who gets cut, a fancy word for being fired, keeps his bonus and gets a severance package. NFL owners share enormous national TV revenues although some bigger markets raise more capital than smaller markets because of how much the market will bear for tickets and marketing partnerships. That causes a divide between rich and poorer financed teams but that doesn't affect players as there is a salary cap and a salary floor in the league. Owners have to spend a minimum amount for players and that is a substantial number. The divide is in how much an owner spends on football staff and marketing.
The NFL Draft is now a slice of Americana. Countless hours of TV and radio shows are devoted to this event, numerous stories fill newspapers, blogs and magazines. This is a huge day for football fans and for those fans in the chattering society who decry socialism, spreading the wealth and salary caps. They hope their team gets better but overlook how the draft is so anti-free market capitalism. As the noted philosopher Don King once said. "Only in America."
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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