Are teams like the Bills responsible for the CBA impasse?

[Dozerdog]

Owners holding up CBA extension
<script> function BlogThisStoryTools() { var headline = "Owners holding up CBA extension"; var url = document.location.href; var destination = "http://blogs.foxsports.com/BlogThis.aspx?r_title=" + escape(headline) + "&r_url=" + url; //alert(destination); //return; window.location.href = destination; } </script> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr align="center"> <td style="padding-right: 5px;" align="left">
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<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="440"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td> John Czarnecki (http://msn.foxsports.com/writer/archive?authorId=211) / FOXSports.com
<!-- Meta Tag For Search --> <!-- meta name="author" content="John Czarnecki"--> <!-- meta name="source" content="FS"--> <!-- meta name="eventId" content=""--> <!-- meta name="contentTypeCode" content="1"--> <!-- meta name="editorContentCode" content="1"--> <!-- meta name="blurb" content="Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and union head Gene Upshaw may have already agreed on an extension of the collective bargaining agreement, but John Czarnecki says the major holdup is with the small-market owners, who want to limit the spending of their rich counterparts."--> <!-- meta name="modDate" content="March 4, 2006 20:57:15 GMT"--> Posted: 1 hour ago <script> // front-end hack to remove postedTime from Rumors page until a better way can be determined if (document.URL.indexOf("/name/FS/rumors") != -1) document.getElementById("postedTime").style.display = 'none'; </script> </td> <td width="10"> </td> <td align="right"> <!--this is for sponsorships or brandings--> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td><!-- workingCategoryId: 5-->
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</td></tr> </tbody></table> <table style="width: 499px; height: 518px;" class="bdy" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td width="10">
</td> <td width="440"> <!-- search:</noindex> --> <script> if(fanid.length > 0 && typeof(nflDefaultLeague)!= "undefined") { leagueId = nflDefaultLeague; //find teamId of default league (if exists) for(var i=0; i < teamsInfo.length; i++){ if(teamsInfo[i][4] == leagueId){ defaultTeamId = teamsInfo[i][0]; } } var fantasyLeaguePlayerJsPath = 'http://msnfantasy.foxsports.com' + '/nugget/200002_' + leagueId + '|||' + fanid; } </script> It depends on the day and whom you are talking with, but there are many within the NFL who believe that commissioner Paul Tagliabue and union boss Gene Upshaw have a handshake deal, but that the commissioner simply can't get enough support from ownership for his extension to the current collective bargaining agreement.The rationale behind such thinking is that Tagliabue and Upshaw are smart men with a total understanding of the financial bottom line and that they both find it idiotic to spend the rest of their few remaining years on the job arguing about salary-cap issues considering the billion-dollar enterprise that keeps them wealthy and employed.
Basically, this past week has seen a lot of posturing on both sides of this huge financial issue but the word is that Upshaw wants to finalize an agreement and that it doesn't necessarily have to start with 60 percent of the total league-wide revenue. Interestingly, whatever he has discussed with Tagliabue he hasn't shared with his union members.
The players have no idea about what benefits and salary levels may be part of any potential long-range package.









http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/5380160

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[Michael82]

yeah they are and I'm glad that Ralph and the small market teams are stopping it. IMO the real problem is not the 60% like the NFL wants us to think. it's all about the Revenue sharing. Ralph and the other small market teams know that they need even more sharing to be able to compete with Synder, Jones, Davis, Kraft, and the other top 10 rich greedy bastard big market owners.

[DraftBoy]

yeah they are and I'm glad that Ralph and the small market teams are stopping it. IMO the real problem is not the 60% like the NFL wants us to think. it's all about the Revenue sharing. Ralph and the other small market teams know that they need even more sharing to be able to compete with Synder, Jones, Davis, Kraft, and the other top 10 rich greedy bastard big market owners.


Jesus Mikey can you spell split personality one thread your ripping the players and owners for not getting a deal done already and then here you praise Ralph and small market teams for holding up the deal? Which is it? You can play both sides to the middle.

[L.A. Playa]

how can you call the big market teams greedy when they are willing to spend their money to field a great team ?? I think the small market teams taht make tons of money from advertising and the TV deal are the real greedy owners, they want to keep as much money as possible crying they cant raise as much revenue.

Here is a novel idea put a competitive team on the field and you will sell out your stadiums and make money.

If you want an example of a soft salary cap working look at the NBA the small market San Antonio Spurs are an elite team in the NBA while the big market NY Knicks and LA Lakers with all their money to spend are struggling or will miss the playoffs all together.

San Antonio spends money and wisely and sells out games and wins championships the same model can be found in the NFL the greedy owners are the small market ones not the big market owners.

[Michael82]

Jesus Mikey can you spell split personality one thread your ripping the players and owners for not getting a deal done already and then here you praise Ralph and small market teams for holding up the deal? Which is it? You can play both sides to the middle.
yeah i can. it's fun. That way i'm always right. :snicker:


okay, i guess i worded it wrong. I do want this ****ing deal done, but a huge part of it has to be 100% revenue sharing, so the small market teams can stay competitive. And the greedy owners that I blame are the Jones, Kraft, Synders of the league. Not the Wilson, Rooneys of the league. Those guys know that we need a true revenue sharing to help split the money more evenly so the low income teams can still afford to spend a ton of money on the players and coaches like the high income ones can.

[Michael82]

how can you call the big market teams greedy when they are willing to spend their money to field a great team ?? I think the small market teams taht make tons of money from advertising and the TV deal are the real greedy owners, they want to keep as much money as possible crying they cant raise as much revenue.

Here is a novel idea put a competitive team on the field and you will sell out your stadiums and make money.

If you want an example of a soft salary cap working look at the NBA the small market San Antonio Spurs are an elite team in the NBA while the big market NY Knicks and LA Lakers with all their money to spend are struggling or will miss the playoffs all together.

San Antonio spends money and wisely and sells out games and wins championships the same model can be found in the NFL the greedy owners are the small market ones not the big market owners.
i totally disagree. The small market teams can't make as much money because they are in the small market cities. Just imagine if Ralph Wilson started charging the same price for tickets and merchandise that Kraft and Jones does. The fans would revolt. No way could i afford seasons if they were $1000 a piece. The small market teams no this, so they try to keep the prices sowhat low so they don't scare away their fan base.

[Michael82]

Oh and Playa...the large market teams make TONS more money than the small market teams...that's why it's call LARGE market. They have a richer, bigger fan base and can charge more money and market to richer people. With a city like Buffalo, it's a lot harder. Same thing with Pittsburgh and Jacksonville.

[L.A. Playa]

so you think the NBA is different than the NFL ?? How can a small market team like San Antonio suceed and win and a large market team like NY spend and spend and spend and still be in last place??

They all make lots of money dont fool yourself Mikey its all bull****

[RedEyE]

Oddly enough, small market teams like the Bills, the Jaguars and the Packers don't seem to be having any problems selling out games. It's more about maintaining affordable prices in small market economies. Fans can't afford to put up big bucks when their local economy doesn't afford them better opportunities.

Big market teams like Dallas and Washingto have an in-fill of corporations surrounding their metro areas. Teams like Dallas increase ticket prices because their local economy allows their fans more financial opportunities.

[Dozerdog]

so you think the NBA is different than the NFL ?? How can a small market team like San Antonio suceed and win and a large market team like NY spend and spend and spend and still be in last place?? For the same reasons - cost certanty. In the NBA and NFL bad management has teams like the Knicks in last place every year- not the economics of the game


The players should get a set amount of the pie- This is why the NFL, NBA, and now NHL can have a level playing field when it comes to winning a championship. Now thew best GMs and coaches win, not the best owner with deepest wallets (like MLB)


The question seems to be what gets included in that pie- There are 5-6 owners making a ton more than the rest- and they don't want to split a portion with it with those teams that help put these owners in their current position in the first place.


Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are going to ruin the NFL for the rest of us.

[Michael82]

so you think the NBA is different than the NFL ?? How can a small market team like San Antonio suceed and win and a large market team like NY spend and spend and spend and still be in last place??

They all make lots of money dont fool yourself Mikey its all bull****
Because the large market team in NY spent VERY VERY stupidly, kinda like what Synder used to do in Washington. :ill:

[Michael82]

For the same reasons - cost certanty. In the NBA and NFL bad management has teams like the Knicks in last place every year- not the economics of the game


The players should get a set amount of the pie- This is why the NFL, NBA, and now NHL can have a level playing field when it comes to winning a championship. Now thew best GMs and coaches win, not the best owner with deepest wallets (like MLB)


The question seems to be what gets included in that pie- There are 5-6 owners making a ton more than the rest- and they don't want to split a portion with it with those teams that help put these owners in their current position in the first place.


Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are going to ruin the NFL for the rest of us.
Good post, Dozer! That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm just surprised that Jones and Synder were able to convince another 6-7 teams to be on their side. :ill:

[L.A. Playa]

the one thing that can level the playing field is a cap on what you can front office staff and coaching staffs, this doesnt allow teams to make high priced front offices or coaching staffs, if you are going to cap the player salaries cap these also.

I am not against a salary cap, but they need to either make a hard cap and stick to it with no "loopholes" or if you want to level revenue sharing make it a soft cap where if you go over the cap any team taht goes over pays a dollar for dollar cap penalty that is then distributed to the other 31 team equally.

Also, guaranteed contracts to players would eliminate a 35 year old player from getting a 10 year $50 mil contract where $45 mil will be paid out over the last 7 years.

There are solutions to everything the owners and players just dont want to give to get

[!Papacrunk!]

.....Bengals owner Mike Brown would rather not pursue stadium-naming rights and keep Cincinnati's stadium named after his father, Paul Brown. The Bengals lose revenue because of that honor toward Paul Brown, but why should the rich owners make up the revenue difference because of money lost in such a circumstance?
An honarable thing to do, but it is a good point--why should other owners, making shrewd decisions to remain competitive, have to pick up the slack when other teams don't utilize such opportunites that are at their disposal? I am torn, I hate seeing traditions fall by the wayside of advertising, but it's simply the nature of the beast.

I really do hope they can get this done, call me selfish, but to a lot of people's dismay on this site, the Phins could use a bit more of the salary cap. Big props to the previous regimes putting us in this postion, on a side note--why oh why oh why did they give Reggie Howard such a fat contract, REGGIE FREAKIN HOWARD. Yet another example of brilliance by WannSpiel.

[Bert102176]

Mikey I agree with ya

[ICE74129]

You bet your ass they are holding it up. 60% of 300 mill is easier to swallow than 60% of 100 mill.

[TigerJ]

I agree that revenue sharing among owners is a far more sticky issue than revenue sharing with players. It's all pretty complicated, and some franchizes may indeed be in trouble because of mismanagement, but the ability of certain large market franchises like Dallas and Washington to generate huge streams of local revenue skew the revenue picture in the NFL rather badly, and aggravate the revenue sharing difficulties between the league and players. If the owners were more amenable to a compromise with each other, than an agreement with the players gets a lot easier to accomplish. I don't blame Ralph Wilson and other small market owners for being to stubborn because they realize that regardless of their teams' fiscal soundness at present, any agreement that doesn't enforce sharing of a good chunk of local revenue means the ultimate demise of small market teams.

[Michael82]

the one thing that can level the playing field is a cap on what you can front office staff and coaching staffs, this doesnt allow teams to make high priced front offices or coaching staffs, if you are going to cap the player salaries cap these also.

I am not against a salary cap, but they need to either make a hard cap and stick to it with no "loopholes" or if you want to level revenue sharing make it a soft cap where if you go over the cap any team taht goes over pays a dollar for dollar cap penalty that is then distributed to the other 31 team equally.

Also, guaranteed contracts to players would eliminate a 35 year old player from getting a 10 year $50 mil contract where $45 mil will be paid out over the last 7 years.

There are solutions to everything the owners and players just dont want to give to get
guaranteed contract? Oh no. You don't want that. That's one of the best things about the NFL is that they are not guaranteed. The way the NBA has it, it's a ****ing mess. It's going to take years and years before the Knicks will be good again and thats because of the guaranteed contracts. :ill:

[Michael82]

I agree that revenue sharing among owners is a far more sticky issue than revenue sharing with players. It's all pretty complicated, and some franchizes may indeed be in trouble because of mismanagement, but the ability of certain large market franchises like Dallas and Washington to generate huge streams of local revenue skew the revenue picture in the NFL rather badly, and aggravate the revenue sharing difficulties between the league and players. If the owners were more amenable to a compromise with each other, than an agreement with the players gets a lot easier to accomplish. I don't blame Ralph Wilson and other small market owners for being to stubborn because they realize that regardless of their teams' fiscal soundness at present, any agreement that doesn't enforce sharing of a good chunk of local revenue means the ultimate demise of small market teams.
Great post! :bf1:

[Historian]

I agree that revenue sharing among owners is a far more sticky issue than revenue sharing with players. It's all pretty complicated, and some franchizes may indeed be in trouble because of mismanagement, but the ability of certain large market franchises like Dallas and Washington to generate huge streams of local revenue skew the revenue picture in the NFL rather badly, and aggravate the revenue sharing difficulties between the league and players. If the owners were more amenable to a compromise with each other, than an agreement with the players gets a lot easier to accomplish. I don't blame Ralph Wilson and other small market owners for being to stubborn because they realize that regardless of their teams' fiscal soundness at present, any agreement that doesn't enforce sharing of a good chunk of local revenue means the ultimate demise of small market teams.

Well put.

And remember...it was Jerry Jones who first came up with the idea of circumventing his own cap with huge signing bonuses, as well as cutting his own side deals with Pepsi, etc..

[Dozerdog]

Jones is the new breed of owner that puts the intrest of his own team before the intrests of the league- a league that voted approval to bring him in in the first place.

[Jan Reimers]

I'm all for sharing among the owners, but realistically, stadium naming revenues should be excluded, or "imputed" to each team as if they were receiving some amount of such revenue.

If Mike Brown wants the Bengals' Stadium to be a monument to his father, or Ralph wants ours to be a tribute to him, fine. But why should the owners who sell the rights to the highest bidder have to pay for Ralph's vanity?

[chernobylwraiths]

I'm all for sharing among the owners, but realistically, stadium naming revenues should be excluded, or "imputed" to each team as if they were receiving some amount of such revenue.

If Mike Brown wants the Bengals' Stadium to be a monument to his father, or Ralph wants ours to be a tribute to him, fine. But why should the owners who sell the rights to the highest bidder have to pay for Ralph's vanity?

I can agree with this. I would also want guaranteed contracts that would restrict these backloaded deals. Maybe there could be wording in the contract that would eliminated the cap figure for retired/injured players but I don't think an owner should be the only one to benefit from signing a contract and then just cut ties and not have to honor the whole contract. Additionaly, I could agree with a soft cap over a longer length before a player becomes a free agent. That way a team could make a little better offer to keep a player on their team instead of losing a player to FA because they could not match the offer of another team. Teams should be allowed a little more leeway to sign their good young players while not using up too much of their cap space (this is what I am assuming is a soft cap).

Lastly, I believe there should be complete revenue sharing, except in cases like the one I quoted where the team refuses to take advantage of the situation, however, in cases like that, these cases could be done in different line items. If Cincy and Buffalo don't want to use their naming rights for money, then they don't get to share in with the rest of the league, it shouldn't penalize the rest of the teams that do use their naming rights but don't get near the same amount of money that some of the bigger teams do. I'm not sure, but I would bet that Jacksonvillie doesn't get the same amount for naming rights that Washington does. Of course I'm not really sure how many teams actually do sell their naming rights, Lambeau Field, Giants Stadium (and what about the Jets), Soldier Field, RWS, seems like a lot of teams would opt out. Back to revenue sharing though, Buffalo sells out a lot of games, but many times over the past two years were sellouts only because Ralph let a lot of the last couple thousand tickets go out to Boys and girls groups or sold them to the TV station on the cheap. If this team were to become bad for a few years, you would see many games with only 50,000 or so fans. It is not like it is in a large city where you have a waiting list of people ready to buy season tickets and the city is big enough for there to be other things to do other than watch football on Sunday. Without revenue sharing, it would be the LA Bills (or whatever they end up calling it) in just a few short years.

[Michael82]

:sadwalk:

[Historian]

I'd like to know if the Bills shared the revenue they received from Rich Products for 25 years.

My guess would be yes.

[Michael82]

I'd like to know if the Bills shared the revenue they received from Rich Products for 25 years.

My guess would be yes.
That would be my guess too. Actually, isnt it ironic that Buffalo was one of the first teams who sold the naming rights to their stadium and they happily shared the money...yet now when it's become a cool thing to do among the rich greedy bastards, they don't share. :shakeno:

[TigerJ]

It may be a moot point as the league and players seem to be about ready to end the dispute, but I had an idea.

The problem has been, I think, that the players want a percentage of all revenue, including the so called local revenue. Large market teams can generate larger amounts of so called local revenue. If the cap is to serve its purpose, help stabilize economic viability of smaller franchises while maintaining a level playing field (allowing all teams to be competitive), it must be retained at reasonable levels for small market teams. Thus, to boil it down, players want more money while small market teams can't afford to pay too much more.

Here's the solution: Owners continue to share all the revenue they are currently sharing, not including "local revenue" that they don't now share. The league taxes teams on their local revenue. This money goes into a separate pool and is then divided between salary supplements for all players and contributions to player pensions according to a negotiate formula between the league and players union.

This avoids big market owners having to share local revenue directly with small market owners. It keeps a hard [and I think] fair cap on what teams can spend on their rosters, yet it addresses the union's desire to get a share of local revenue.

Whaddaya think?

[Mitchy moo]

That would be my guess too. Actually, isnt it ironic that Buffalo was one of the first teams who sold the naming rights to their stadium and they happily shared the money...yet now when it's become a cool thing to do among the rich greedy bastards, they don't share. :shakeno:

How ironic they took RW's idea and found big corporations that want to advertise. Who in Buffalo is big enough right now to pony up some big money for their name on the stadium?

[Kerr]

jerry jones is a ninny.