Contrition & Forgiveness: The Cusp of A NFL CBA

If all the reports are to be believed, the players and owners are within days, perhaps hours, of agreeing on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. All outstanding lawsuits will be settled, all remaining hatchets will be buried, the NFLPA* will recertify itself as a union, and by week’s end the engines of professional football will crank up and roar to life.

I’ve been mulling this for quite a while. I, as much as any single-team independent blogger, have spilled barrels of ink into the rift between players and owners. The first of those pieces, “The NFL, the NFLPA, the CBA, and Their Fans,” laid out all the issues as I understood them, and my feelings as both a true-blue fan and an educated chronicler:

Pushing Thirty Minivan Me is just that: pushing thirty with a minivan. I’m not pushing fifty with a Harvard MBA, and I’m not pushing twenty with a Rolls Royce Drophead Coupe. I’m not in a position to bear investment risk, or rake in dividends off the profit. I’m the schmuck in line at the gate, ready to part with fistfuls of hard-earned jack I should spend on more important things. I’m the tool with a family of five, all dressed in jerseys on gameday. I’m the fool at the bottom of the pyramid scheme, the rube all this is built upon, the mark they’re all getting rich off of . . .

. . . and I’m the kid in front of the TV set, eyes as big as saucers, watching Barry run. Owners, players, coaches, front office, staff, agents, flaks, and all the rest: please. Remember me. Remember us. Remember who really bears the financial burden here—and ultimately, who really holds the cards. Baseball, 1994? Hockey, 2005? We are the golden goose, and you have your hands around our neck.

Many radical outcomes were foretold: an 18-game regular season, the “unpinning” of the salary cap from revenue, even abolition of the draft! There were frequent public spats between members of each side—even over issues like whether or not upcoming negotiations had been scheduled. The resultant bad blood between players and the league has been disturbing (case in point: James Harrison’s comments about Commissioner Goodell). Yet, soon that’s all supposed to be water under the bridge, as the John Hancocks are applied to a new CBA.

Who won? The biggest winners were the lawyers, and big business (thanks to that 8th Circuit ruling expanding the presumed boundaries of the Norris-LaGuardia Act). The next biggest winners are Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith, each of whom was hired to deliver in this moment. To a lesser extent, everyone who loves the NFL, or makes a living off the NFL, wins: we’ll get our full annual recommended amount of football.

In terms of semantics, the players nearly ran the table. The CBA will arise from a settlement of the Brady v. NFL lawsuit, as presided over by US District Court mediator Arthur Boylen—not collective bargaining sessions with FMCS Director George Cohen. They successfully maintained their decertified trade association status. They kept the money debate focused on a percentage of all monies coming in the door, rather than splitting the hairs of what money “counts” and what doesn’t.

Yet the result of all the semantics—and layoffs, and furloughs, and prematurely induced labors, and eight digits’ worth of lawyer bills—is a tune-up, not an overhaul. Players will receive an smaller piece of the biggest possible pie, continuing the trend started with the 2006 agreement. Rookie salaries will be reigned in, and the savings will go to active and retired veterans. Those retired veterans will be vastly better taken care of, player safety rules clarified, and player health benefits improved. In lieu of an 18-game regular season, there will be a weekly Thursday  Night package to wring more TV revenue out of the existing 16-game docket.

In short, the ultimate agreement will look like a very reasonable compromise; this is both good and bad. Good, because it should lay the foundation for another decade or two of labor peace. Bad, because it means the two sides were never really that far apart. All of the grandstanding and caterwauling, all of the doomsaying invective, the lockout and the lawsuit and all the bitter words, it all could have been avoided. I repeatedly begged both sides to do what it took to come to an agreement before the CBA expired—if for no other reason than to respect the investments of the millions of fans making them rich. But no, leverage was protected by any means necessary, and we’ll have a deal in late July that should have been struck in February.

Back in college, I studied an article by a dude named Francis Fukuyama called “The End of History?” Written at the close of the Cold War, it argued that liberal democratic governments, paired with market-based capitalist economies, were the culmination of human history. Once the entire world had converted to representative democracies, History—capital H, meaning the progress of humanity towards liberty and equality of opportunity—would end.

As an extension of this idea, some argued that the Cold War itself was History’s pause button. The two superpowers’ opposing ideologies were holding an entire world in thrall; other countries either aligned themselves with one side or felt immense pressure to do so. All that time the US and USSR stood at loggerheads, viewing the rest of the globe as a giant game of Reversi, and other nations’ political and economic development were stifled. Once the Soviet Union fell many democracies sprung up, China became an economic powerhouse, Korea and India started moving to the forefront of technology and industry, and now we’re in the midst of the Arab Spring.

TO BE CLEAR: I am not equivocating my stepfather’s service in Vietnam to my being really bummed about football. But, I can’t help but feel like the last seven months have been like that for NFL fans. There have been so many sacrifices by and of so many; people have lost their jobs over this. There have been so many feelings hurt, bad blood shared, and regrettable decisions made. Yet, in the aftermath, it feels like it was all a charade. The outcome was inevitable all along, and everyone will pretty much pick back up where they left off.

In light of that, I want to say a few things. First, to Commissioner Roger Goodell, and NFL PR folks Greg Aiello and Brian McCarthy: there were some times I abused the direct pipeline of Twitter. I crossed the line with my real-time emotions on more than one occasion. I’m sorry.

To NFLPA executive director for external affairs George Atallah, many thanks. You were open, honest, transparent, and accessible throughout the process—most especially to new-media types such as myself. I also thank DeMaurice Smith for delivering some classic quotes while defending the players’ interests well.

Special thanks go to the Lions. That includes the players who’ve taken time out to talk about the issues with me—Kyle Vanden Bosch, Lawrence Jackson, Cliff Avril, etc.—and members of the organization who’ve done the same, such as Director of Media Relations Matt Barnhardt. I come out of this experience more convinced than ever that the Lions are a great group of people led by a great group of people, and a classy organization from the top down.

All that’s left is for them to get on the field and play.

Technorati Tags: nfl,nfl collective bargaining agreement,nfl cba,roger goodell,george atallah,greg aiello,brian mccarthy,nfl lockout

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The NFL Owner Liberation Army

I don’t know if you’ve heard (sarcasm), but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the owners a full stay of Judge Nelson’s enjoinder of the lockout.

I started out completely neutral in this whole mess; as many have since said, I declared myself “on the side of the fans.”  But as I dug deeper and deeper into the issues, I discovered that the league’s behavior has been, frankly, despicable. Unable to resolve their own differences on revenue sharing, the owners have spent the last four years trying to bring about this day: a judicially-enforced lockout that could last into the season, so they can exert maximum leverage on players. Their goals: to build more ridiculous billion-dollar stadiums, to play more games unnecessarily, to put franchises on other continents, and to bleed every single person on Earth for every cent they’ve got, everything else be damned. That’s what they mean when they say “grow the game,” people.

More interested, intelligent, initially neutral observers have been coming around to my way of thinking. Here's an excellent piece by Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post:

Should you find yourself drifting to the side of the players in the NFL labor dispute, it doesn’t mean you’ve gone all communist. Some fans may feel that to support the players is anti-capitalist, a little too May Day. But there is the spirit of free enterprise, and then there is the spirit with which NFL owners tend to do business. They aren’t at all the same thing.

What’s so American about gouging, price-fixing, and frankly, sucking the life out of fans?

It's an honest question to ask--and Jenkins' investigation into the answer is intelligent, well-informed, and balanced. At least half jokingly (though partly seriously) Tony Kornhieser called her piece "shrew-like" and "hysterical" during a radio show. But if Kornheiser couldn’t have made that crack with a straight face if he’d read Drew Magary of Deadspin fame setting “The Bizarre Cult of Pro-Owner Fanboys” of Pro Football Talk’s readership on blast:

It's like a group of people went directly to their computers after walking out of a screening of Atlas Shrugged. You can find retarded commenters at virtually any Internet forum (why, just scroll down!), but the idea that there are people out there who would like to see the owners succeed in PREVENTING THE PLAYING OF ACTUAL NFL GAMES to spite NFL players strikes me as … what's the word? Oh, right. F***ING INSANE.

[. . .] There's a distinctly political turn to much of these lockout arguments among fans. I guess if you think the players are right (and I do), that makes you a dirty liberal and there can't possibly be a decent case to be made. All unions are bad, which means the NFL players are ungrateful and lazy and deserve to be booted out on their ass because the owners are the beginning and end of why the NFL is successful.

It’s not just the ridiculous comments that are being made over there, or the sheer volume by which pro-owner comments outweigh pro-player ones. PFT has an upvote/downvote system, and they REALLY tell the tale. Check the comments (and votes) on these PFT posts. My favorite, though, is a post called “More Misplaced Rhetoric From De Smith,” which is Florio ripping DeMaurice Smith for his characterization of the state of affairs as the NFL “suing not to play.” The NFL commentariat almost unanimously hailed this post as Florio’s first fair and balanced article on the issue:

theangryrob says:May 18, 2011 9:08 AM

I’m having a hard time rationalizing it, but I kind of thought this was a great, even handed post. I’m strangely pleased and confused at the same time.

So, uh, nice work :D

232 upvotes, 5 downvotes    [Ed.--as of the time of this post]

Look, in a vacuum, there’s no question whose side the fans’ interests align with. The players are the ones we pay to see. The players are the ones whose jerseys we buy. The players are the ones who we see on TV, endorsing products we buy ‘cuz we love them. The players are the ones who are putting their bodies on the line, sacrificing their joints, their backs, their necks, and maybe even their long-term mental health for our entertainment. The players are the ones who come from the same places we come from—neighborhoods, high schools, colleges—and who, within a few years, either come back to those places, or put down roots in whichever city they played.

What is it that makes so many fans root so hard for the owners, then? Men or women, who typically inherited either the team itself, a business empire, a personal fortune, or any combination of the above? Why is it that working fans with mortgage payments and credit card debt are gleefully cheering for the players to be crushed by those same bills as their bosses withhold paychecks? What kind of bizarre Stockholm Syndrome is at work, here?

That’s what’s really happening here: fans are sympathizing with their captors. We’re paying $20 to park, $70 or so a head to get in the door, $7 for hot dogs, $8 for beer, $4 for water we’re not given a cap to so our kids can spill it, and uncountable dollars in jerseys, shirts, pennants, stickers, garden gnomes and other ridiculous merch, and at the end of the day these fans sneer at the players on the field and say “YOU MAKE ENOUGH MONEY! CAVE INTO THE POOR OWNERS! THEIR PROFITS AREN’T GROWING AS FAST AS THEY’D LIKE ANYMORE!” No doubt, when the lockout ends, all these fans will be happily thanking the benevolent owners—and lantern-jawed protector of the game, Commissioner Goodell—for ending they started to begin with.

Let me post-script all this with a few caveats. I do see the last deal as being player-friendly, and I do believe there’s room for fair concessions on both sides. TLiW (and elsewhere) commenter LineBusy has an interesting take exploring just that; you should read it. I do think both sides have grossly disrespected the fans by not resolving this before the expiry of the old CBA; both sides have been planning for THIS day for so long they’ve failed to stop it. However, one side is working men speaking plainly and truthfully about protecting their current and future interests, and the other side is a bunch of fabulously wealthy people in control of one of the most monstrously profitable industries in the world, strangling the golden goose while smiling and saying “We want football, too!”

Technorati Tags: nfl,nflpa,roger goodell,demaurice smith,nfl lockout,nfl lawsuit,deadspin,washington post,pro football talk

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No Noose Is Good News; No News Is Bad News

It’s been a little while since my last labor/lockout update, mostly because there’s not much to say. No mediation or negotiation has occurred—or will occur until the 16th. In the meantime, the lockout was lifted, teams reopened their facilities, the first round of the draft was held. Patrick Allen of Arrowhead Addict penned an incredible first-person account of the abuse Roger Goodell took from the NFL Draft audience—and the craven steps he took to get them off his back. Besides the boos, though, it looked as though we were in for a typical draft weekend, full of all the stuff we usually see, and maybe OTAs and free agency afterwards!

Then the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the owners a temporary stay of the injunction awarded by Judge Nelson. The NFL reinstituted the lockout while, incredibly, telling everyone who would listen that “they want football,” too. What a stinking crock.

In the meantime, everyone is waiting on the 8th Circuit Court to rule on a full stay of the injunction—and ProFootballTalk wonders if it will ever happen. The Court may simply not rule on the full stay, instead allowing the temporary stay to remain in place until June 3, when oral arguments will be heard for the appeal.

In the meantime, there will be precious little football, and precious little hope of any change. The players were in an excellent position when the lockout was lifted—but now that the lockout is back in place, both sides are back to waiting on the courts. Sure, Commissioner Goodell will talk about ‘getting back to the table’ until he’s blue in the face, but it’s all nonsense. As NFL Network reporter Albert Breer explained on Twitter, sitting down and bargaining, at this point, is:

"Almost impossible legally, without one side or other compromising legal position. Both sides burned that bridge on March 11."

Besides--and we saw this same effect in between the players decertifying and the injunction hearings, neither side is interested in talking until they know who has the legal upper hand. The owners’ plan, throughout, was to lock the players out,  make the players miss game checks, and wait for the players to knuckle under. The players’ plan, throughout, has been to decertify to avoid the lockout. Why negotiate now, when you might be able to negotiate under far more advantageous conditions soon?

Yes, “BECAUSE IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO AND BECAUSE BOTH SIDES OWE IT TO THE FANS WHOSE MONEY THEY’RE ALL ARGUING OVER,” that’s correct—but if the NFL gave two hoots about its fans, they’d have negotiated a new deal back in February.

Technorati Tags: nfl,nflpa,nfl lockout,nfl lawsuit,nfl collective bargaining agreement

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On Choosing Sides in the NFL Lockout

Last August, I wrote the following:

I’m the schmuck in line at the gate, ready to part with fistfuls of hard-earned jack I should spend on more important things. I’m the tool with a family of five, all dressed in jerseys on gameday. I’m the fool at the bottom of the pyramid scheme, the rube all this is built upon, the mark they’re all getting rich off of . . .

. . . and I’m the kid in front of the TV set, eyes as big as saucers, watching Barry run. Owners, players, coaches, front office, staff, agents, flaks, and all the rest: please. Remember me. Remember us. Remember who really bears the financial burden here—and ultimately, who really holds the cards. Baseball, 1994? Hockey, 2005? We are the golden goose, and you have your hands around our neck.

The union has now decertified, and the NFL has locked the players out.

Throughout this process, fans have had a hard time choosing a side. It’s almost impossible to identify with the players; they’re the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% of athletes. They achieve incredible levels of fame and success—in most cases, before they’re old enough to buy beer. They, likely, were the most popular kids in school from a very young age, and had grown adults following them around like puppies from high school on. They’re the ones we see on the field, week after week, making athletic feats we couldn’t dream about doing on our best-dreaming day look routine. We stand in line for hours for a chance at getting their autograph. We melt into babbling idiots when we do get that chance. They are our heroes, they are our idols, and we’d do almost anything to live life as them, even for a little while. What a charmed life, we imagine, they lead.

NFL owners are a different lot. Like politicians and bureaucrats, some seem like familiar characters: Jerry Jones, Al Davis, Dan Snyder. We know how they look, how they talk, what they like, the decisions they tend to make. Others, like William Clay Ford, practically never talk to the public, but we put words in their mouths anyway. Between the very public business decisions they make, and their few public statements, we come to know these men as caricatures: like Donald Trump or Bill Gates, we make them accessible—human—by reducing them to the ridiculous.

I’d like to credit our American ideals, our society’s ingrained belief that every single one of us is just some elbow grease and a lucky break away from being fabulously wealthy. The fact of the matter is that many of these men either built enormous businesses from the ground up, or had wealth—and the team itself—gifted to them. We simply cannot imagine how far removed we are from that world. Witness the public outrage when The Big 3 CEOs flew in private jets to Washington to ask for a bailout! Oh my goodness! As if that wasn’t the way they normally got around!

But NFL athletes? Most of them live in the same world we do for most of their lives. As I’ve said before, I went to college at Michigan State, in an athletes' dorm. I hung out with a lot of football players—and while I got to see just how Big of Men on Campus they were, I’ve also heard where they came from, and seen what’s happened to them since. Most knew they didn’t have a shot at playing on Sundays. Some couldn’t finish school. Some bounced around the Arena League, NFL Europe, and the CFL before getting regular jobs. One even signed with the Lions as a UDFA, went through one day of training camp, and hung ‘em up; through a mutual friend I heard he figured being a gym teacher was easier than two-a-days. One got drafted #2 overall by the Lions . . . now he’s got a horde of mouths to feed and an eight-digit settlement hanging over his head.

Of course, players like Matthew Stafford and Ndamukong Suh had supportive parents, charmed high school and college careers, and signed enormous NFL contracts that will set them up for life. But, for every single one of them, there are thousands that played D-I college ball, had a cup of coffee in the big leagues, and now punch a clock.

Throughout this process, the NFLPA has honest and communicative with me and the fans. Yes, they've tried to get "their message" out—but whenever they've stated facts, they've been facts. The players have repeatedly reached out to bloggers and fans on Twitter, through email, and via phone to explain what’s going on from their perspective. Meanwhile, I’ve written several open letters to the Commissioner, and privately tried to contact NFL spokespeople multiple times; I might as well be talking to a wall.

NFL lead counsel Jeff Pash said yesterday that “the absence of an agreement is a shared failure," and I wholeheartedly agree. But the Commissioner’s latest letter to fans does nothing but explain why it’s all the players’ fault. Meanwhile, DeMaurice Smith’s statement apologizes, at length, to the fans and players, while recognizing the efforts of past players who fought to build the league into what it is today. Whose statement rings more true to you?

What’s that?  It’s an internal NFL flowchart, created to explain their decision-making process. It’s one of the key pieces of evidence Judge Doty referred to when ruling that the NFL violated the CBA. It’s proof that they decided to lock the players out years ago, and jury-rigged the last round of TV contracts to fund a “lockout insurance” war chest. Maybe that just sounds like prudent planning to you—so here’s an analogy.

Imagine if Ford decided the current UAW contract gave too much money to the workers, and that they’d seek major concessions at the next renewal. So, they went to their dealerships and said, “Hey, will you guys agree to keep paying for cars, even if we’re not making any? We’ll sell the cars to you now at a discount.” Then, they sell the cars (that workers built) to the dealers at a discount, thereby making themselves less profitable. Then, they tell the UAW they’re less profitable these days, and demand major concessions. When the union asks for proof, they lock them out—then line their pockets with the money dealers are paying them for non-existent cars. Meanwhile, the workers with mouths to feed and mortgage payments to make have little but their personal savings.

There’s a reason Judge Doty ruled this trick violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement: it’s low-down, dirty stuff. First they shortchanged the players of deserved revenue, then they set up a war chest that would ensure the players caved first . . . all because they weren’t quite wildly profitable enough. This tactic puts the lie to all of the “give a little, get a little” talk the NFL office has been spouting from the get-go, and to all of the “the players decided to walk away for no reason” talk they’re spouting now.

Of course, it certainly appears as though the league made significant movement as the last minute. Today, the NFL and the Trade Association Formerly Known As The NFLPA have wildly differing opinions as to what the NFL’s last offer entailed. So now, a lockout, and the battle will be settled in the courts. Likely, free agency will start sometime before the draft, and business in the NFL will proceed in something kind-of resembling normal fashion.

There’s an argument to be made that we shouldn’t even be paying attention; that all sides admit there will certainly be NFL football in 2011. That it’s a dispute between two groups we cannot influence, who don’t care about us. That we should shrug our shoulders and focus on free agency and the draft and everything else we normally do, and plug our ears and go LA LA LA LA LA about everything labor-related until there’s football again. I flatly can’t do that; I’m too invested in these players and these teams. Plus, it tickles my Justice Thing.

I don’t know what makes people root for the most fortunate to get more fortunate. I don’t know why working folks repeatedly side with the people exploiting them. I don’t know why, after the owners opted out of the CBA, demanded a billion dollar give-back, and refused to justify it with financial data, almost 40% of ProFootballTalk readers think this is the “players’ fault.” If you want to ignore all of this and wait for football, that’s fine. But if you’re inclined to choose sides, stop and think about who really needs your support—the wealthy old men who’ve harvested billions from fans for decades? Or the young guys who’ll likely be selling cars or teaching gym in five years?

Technorati Tags: nfl,nflpa,nfl lockout,nfl cba,roger goodell,demaurice smith

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Commissioner Goodell: Prove it.

Dear Commissioner Goodell:

Last night, I took my children out to a local Chinese restaurant. At the end of the meal, I opened up my fortune cookie. This is what it said:

You are capable, competent, creative, careful.

Prove it.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Fortune cookies contain meaningless, lexically confused quasi-proverbs that predict or affirm wildly positive things for you, the diner. They don’t call you out. They don’t challenge you to rise to meet your potential. They certainly don’t deploy devices like alliteration and line breaks to maximize beauty and impact.

My next thought, with the expiry of the NFL collective bargaining agreement about 28 hours away, was that this fortune wasn’t just for me. I thought of Peter King’s biopic of you, and all the superlatives he piled upon you: “fit,” “a tough cop,” a “problem-solver,” a “communicator,” a “listener,” and a “rising star.” King spoke of your boldness, and your human touch. He relayed multiple stories describing your wisdom and fairness in solving unsolvable problems. Yet, King’s piece ended with a chilling quote from NBC Sports impresario Dick Ebersol:

""At his heart Roger can be a cold son of a bitch. I think the people on the other side of the negotiating table are going to hear that in the coming months. He's going to show mettle, and he's going to do what he thinks is best for the National Football League. It's what he's always done."

Commissioner, it’s time to show your mettle.

Locking out the players, the administrators, the secretaries, the concession workers, the janitors, the scouts, the trainers, the equipment managers, the parking lot attendees, the beat writers, and all of the thousands upon thousands of other people across the nation who rely on the NFL for their income? It’s not the best thing for the National Football League—in fact, it’s the only thing that could truly derail the NFL’s incredible success.

Three months ago, you sent me, and millions of other fans, an email. Let me remind you of your words:

The NFL is great because fans care deeply about it. Economic conditions, however, have changed dramatically inside and outside the NFL since 2006 when we negotiated the last CBA. A 10 percent unemployment rate hurts us all. Fans have limited budgets and rightly want the most for their money. I get it.

Do you get it? Do you really? Do you really understand that the NFL has grown explosively in the midst of a long, deep, and extended recession? Do you understand how far people stretch to afford tickets and jerseys? Do you understand the time, energy, and money invested by millions of Americans in following the sport you control? Even in the midst of double-digit unemployment, sky-high personal debt, and exploding health care and energy costs, fans are investing more in the NFL than ever before. It's got to be a point of great pride for you and the rest of the league . . .

. . . but it’s still our time, our energy, and our money. We gave it to you, and we can take it away. We can, and will, stop caring so much. We can, and will, stop watching so much. We can, and will, stop buying merchandise. The endless haggling and bickering you’re doing over our money will seem silly if it goes away. In my prior email to you, I said this:

It wasn’t long ago that Major League Baseball was our national pastime and passion, and it wasn’t long ago that NHL hockey stood on equal footing with the NFL, MLB, and NBA. Work stoppages were the catalysts for a precipitous drop in interest, passion, ratings, merchandise sales, and revenue for both leagues—and neither has returned to its previous place in the American sports landscape. If you, the owners, and the players cannot find a timely way to divvy up the monstrous sum we fans donate to you every year, the rainbow will vanish—and that pot of gold with it.

Nothing’s changed. It’s time, Commissioner. As I post this, you have twenty-three hours left. If what I’ve read about you is true, you are capable, competent, creative, and careful.

Now prove it.

Technorati Tags: nfl,roger goodell,nfl collective bargaining agreement,nfl lockout,nflpa

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Can the NFL pay for Zygiworld?

A little while ago, I wrote a post called “What Jerry Jones and the NFL Can Learn from Detroit,” comparing the gorgeous-but-abandoned Michigan Central Station to the new Cowboys Stadium. I explained that the push to build more Jerryworlds was a major factor in the CBA negotations:

In the mid-90s, teams explored the brave new salary-cap world, and realized that unshared revenue like luxury suites and concessions not only didn’t have to be shared with other owners, it didn’t have to be shared with the players! This kicked off almost two decades of teams building new stadiums filled with luxury suites and swank accommodations. Teams, for the most part, took advantage of easy credit and/or public financing. Jones used $325 million worth of public funds, secured $625 million of credit—and received a $150 million loan from the NFL.

That's the money the owners are looking to keep from the players: nearly a billion dollars a year to help build the Vikings’ Zygiworld, the Bills’ Ralphworld, and many others. Even the Panthers, a team whose stadium is was built in 1996, are already talking about building another one. Over the next ten-to-twenty years, most NFL cities will feel the pressure to either build a similar monuments to unbridled growth and fantastic excess—or risk their teams’ Ownerworld being built in another town.

Kevin Siefert, at the ESPN NFC North blog, passed  along the work of Cory Merrifield from SavetheVikes.org, who estimates the bill for Zygiworld at somewhere between $900 million and $1.2 billion.

This, right here, is what I was talking about. The economics of billion-dollar stadiums are unsustainable. Teams can’t pay for them; the average NFL franchise is worth $1.02 billion. Cities can’t pay for them; municipalities nationwide are scraping the bottom of the barrel. So, the NFL is hoping to skim a billionish off the top of all the money the NFL generates, and set it aside to help build these stadiums nobody can afford—essentially, the players and fans of all 32 teams will be building these new stadiums, one at at time.

As I said in my prior post, this directly contradicts the letter Commissioner Goodell wrote to fans, explaining why owners were asking the players for big financial concessions from the players:

“Economic conditions, however, have changed dramatically inside and outside the NFL since 2006 when we negotiated the last CBA. A 10 percent unemployment rate hurts us all. Fans have limited budgets and rightly want the most for their money. I get it.”

Either Commissioner Goodell doesn't get it, or he’s lying through his teeth. Current “economic conditions” make building a round of billion-dollar temples to football and consumerism illogical, if not impossible. Who will fill these stadiums, if ticket prices are hiked to pay off the debts incurred? What businesses will flush millions down the toilet for naming rights? I already call New Meadowlands Stadium “Your Company Name Here Stadium” because they haven’t been able to find an eight-digit taker.

The NFL might be able to swing this in their negotiations with the players.  They might be able to build Zygiworld, and a few more after that. But, to what end? What happens when the NFL’s bubble bursts, and these multibillion-dollar megaüberdomes are playing to half-empty crowds? What happens when franchises start going insolvent because their revenue isn’t covering their debt payments?  The NFL will only be able to cover that up with league money for so long.

Goodell says that these negotiations are about structuring the league’s finances in a responsible way, so to accommodate the huge piles of new revenue surely coming around the corner. But the NFL has to bring its visions of unrelenting double-digit-percent-every-year growth in line with the struggling-to-hold-steady local and national economies it’s part of. I hope, for all of our sake, that time is now, while things are stable—not when franchises are moving left and right to try and finagle one last sweetheart deal.

Technorati Tags: nfl,minnesota vikings,zygi wilf,roger goodell,nfl collective bargaining agreement,nfl cba,nfl lockout

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What Jerry Jones, & the NFL, Can Learn from Detroit

This is the Michigan Central Station. It’s familiar to Detroiters as the avatar of the city’s decline. Any national “Woe is Detroit” story has to be accompanied by an image of this beautiful, awful edifice.  Designed by the same firm that penned New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the Beaux-Arts Classical visage of this 18-story monolith contains a message for the NFL.

The MCS was built to accommodate a large volume of rail traffic, part of a grand vision to unite the station and the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel to Canada along the main Detroit-Chicago railway line. The 18-story tower was to provide office space for the future businesses sure to spring up around the new transportation hub.

That’s right, the city’s new main train depot was not in the heart of the city. Situated along the main line, as opposed to the branch that ran through downtown, passengers got to and from the station via intercity trains and shuttles, at least until 1938. Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Depression, that development never really came—and the original designers hadn’t planned on people driving there, so there was no passenger parking lot.

After World War II, the automotive revolution that fueled the growth of the Motor City sapped the MCS of much of its relevance. At various points throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies, the station was put up for sale, partially shut down, sold off, partially re-opened, shut down, and sold off again, until 1988, when the last Amtrak train rolled out of Michigan Central Station. It cost fifteen million dollars to build in 1913. It was put up for sale (with no takers) for five million in 1961, and eventually changed hands several times for undisclosed sums in the 80s and 90s, with rumored prices as low as $80,000.

Now it sits empty. Now looters have stripped it of wiring and fixtures. Now it’s a quietly decaying monument to a bygone era of unbridled growth and fantastic excess: too far gone to revive, far too beautiful to tear down, and far too ugly to let stand.

“Unbridled growth” and “fantastic excess” are apt descriptions of the state of the NFL. While America’s economic belt has been slowly tightening for several years, the NFL’s revenues have exploded. In a time when cable and satellite offer hundreds of viewing options, and America has never split its TV focus so wildly, the NFL’s ratings continue to smash records. Attendance has been flat at nearly the maximum possible numbers; even the Lions sold out all but one of their home games.

The NFL and NFLPA scheduled two negotiating sessions this week, and the first one went so poorly that the second one was cancelled. The rumored dividing point was the most basic one, the one that started it all: how to divide all the money that the NFL earns. The owners already receive the first billion of revenue off the top, to cover expenses.  The owners want to increase that by 18%, to cover anticipated capital investments in the game that will bring in more revenue. What capital investments—designed to bring in revenue—could require that much money?

This is Cowboys Stadium. This $1.1 billion-dollar edifice sits on a 140-acre site a 45 minute drive from downtown Dallas. Its 300 luxury suites, along with its concessions stands, bars, and restaurants—not to mention auxiliary attractions like a football-inspired art gallery—provide huge streams of revenue that have little to do with watching a live football game. In fact, “live” might not be the best way to watch a football game inside Cowboys Stadium: there are 2,900 TVs scattered throughout the dome, plus the infamous titan that hangs over the field, a sixty-yard HD monitor able to display a blue whale at a 1:1 scale.

Nicknamed “Jerryworld” after the Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, this stadium marks the endpoint of one stadium-building craze, and perhaps the beginning of another. In the mid-90s, teams explored the brave new salary-cap world, and realized that unshared revenue like luxury suites and concessions not only didn’t have to be shared with other owners, it didn’t have to be shared with the players! This kicked off almost two decades of teams building new stadiums filled with luxury suites and swank accommodations. Teams, for the most part, took advantage of easy credit and/or public financing. Jones used $325 million worth of public funds, secured $625 million of credit—and received a $150 million loan from the NFL.

That's the money the owners are looking to keep from the players: nearly a billion dollars a year to help build the Vikings’ Zygiworld, the Bills’ Ralphworld, and many others. Even the Panthers, a team whose stadium is was built in 1996, are already talking about building another one. Over the next ten-to-twenty years, most NFL cities will feel the pressure to either build a similar monuments to unbridled growth and fantastic excess—or risk their teams’ Ownerworld being built in another town.

The problem is, it’s not sustainable. Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post wrote, brilliantly, that Super Bowl XLV’s rough edges hint at the fault lines running through the “billionization” of the NFL:

It's not clear what the pain threshold of the average NFL fan is: Thirty-two owners digging relentlessly in our pockets haven't found the bottom yet. But the NFL would be advised to recognize that it's getting close. Those folks who found themselves without seats? Many were among the league's most loyal paying customers, season ticket holders. Yet they were treated like afterthoughts, awarded half-built, jerry-rigged seats, folding chairs on auxiliary platforms. Which begs the question of what the "NFL fan experience" really means anymore.

The NFL’s surge in popularity has granted it great profits in the face of an economic downturn—but that downturn is real. Municipalities are out of stadium-building funds; free stadiums, like the one Hamilton County built the Bengals, don’t come with sixty-yard TVs. The credit bubble has burst; loans are much tougher to secure—and imagine how big Jerry’s mortgage payments must be on his borrowed $725 million! Roger Goodell said it himself, in his email to fans:

“Economic conditions, however, have changed dramatically inside and outside the NFL since 2006 when we negotiated the last CBA. A 10 percent unemployment rate hurts us all. Fans have limited budgets and rightly want the most for their money. I get it.”

If Jerryworld is the template for new stadiums going forward, I don’t think he does. He—and the owners—need to learn a lesson from Michigan Central Station. It cost about  $335 million in today’s dollars—almost exactly the same amount the city of Arlington paid for Jerryworld. If the CBA is not extended, that massive revenue pie owners and players are fighting over will shrink. Even with the public thirst for football, the Cowboys pushed the envelope. If that thirst is quenched by other sports during a needless lockout, they’ll be unable to fill Jerryworld, or Zygiworld, or Stephenworld once play begins again.

America’s cities can’t afford to drain their public coffers again. Americans can’t afford to blow their personal budgets on even-more-expensive tickets, parking, and concessions. America—for our entertainment, and for the thousands, maybe millions whose livelihood depends directly or indirectly on professional sports—needs the NFL to keep chugging along.

Technorati Tags: nfl,cba,lockout,stadiums,cowboys,jerryworld,roger goodell

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The NFL's Proposed 18-game Regular Season Schedule

If' you read this blog regularly, then you know about the NFL’s proposed “enhanced 20-game schedule,” consisting of two 2 preseason games and 18 regular season games.  Commissioner Goodell, in more places than I care to link, has stated that they’re listening to the fans’ concerns about the lackluster preseason games. To his credit, those are real—remember the Lions’ sparsely-attended preseason closer against Buffalo? The fourth preseason games are played almost entirely by spots 54-72 on the roster, the guys who aren’t making the team.  For the most part, they’re completely futile.

However, eighteen regular season games are simply too many. It increases risk of injury—and when the NFL is supposed to be more concerned about player health than ever, it’s hypocritical. It’s also part of an obvious cash grab by the owners—attendance is clearly going to be better for two games that count than for two games that don’t, and TV deals for an 18-game season are going to be richer. However, neither of those problems are my biggest concern.

The game of football has always been based on the idea that it’s the best against the best.  At first, even the specialization of offense and defense didn’t exist; it was simply the best eleven against the best eleven.  When U-M head coach Fritz Crisler invented “two-platoon football” to give his Wolverines a chance against mighty Army, players’ skills could be maximized, and they could stay fresher longer. Over the next sixty years, specialization, rotation, and have slowly, gradually played an increased role in football—but always, there’s been an inviolable depth chart.  It’s your best against their best, every single Sunday—and your best third-down back will get rotational reps over your second-best third down back.

This is unusual in the sports world.  See MLB’s 162-game season, the NHL and NBA’s 82-game seasons, or the MLS’s 45-game season: you don’t always get best against best. Jim Leyland regularly infuriates Tigers fans by resting his players on a set schedule; no matter how badly the Tigers need a given game is, if  it’s Magglio Ordonez’ day off, he sits.  Imagine this applied to the NFL: the Patriots come to town for Thanksgiving—the Lions’ only national showcase game!—and Tom Brady (secretly battling a stress fracture) sits.  After all, it’s only the Lions, right?

Imagine all the fans who bought tickets expecting to see Brady play! Imagine if Brian Hoyer couldn’t engineer the same fourth-quarter explosion Brady did and the Lions won—the victory would have been hollow.  Meanwhile, the NFL’s most marketable superstar would have been on the bench in a baseball cap, helplessly watching his team take an “L” so that he can be fresh for the middle of February.  It goes against everything we’ve ever seen as football fans, and it will ruin the whole point of the NFL.

This is the key point: the NFL is king because it has the best product. Watching the NFL, at home or on TV, is the best sports experience going. If they expand to 18 games, they’ll have to expand the rosters, too—and those players in roster slots 54 to 72? They’ll be playing in games that will determine playoff berths in January, not functionally scrimmaging against each other in September. An eighteen game schedule dilutes the quality of the NFL.

It takes the NFL’s two key selling points, its superstars and its parity, and waters them down.  Nobody wants to pay seventy bucks to see scrubs against scrubs in a meaningless game, but nobody wants to pay seventy bucks to see scrubs against scrubs in a game that counts, either.

Recently, the NFLPA hosted a conference call (and I promise you, I’ll have more about that in upcoming posts). I the panel asked about this very thing, and Jets safety Jim Leonhard—on the shelf for these playoffs due to a season-ending injury—reflected my own thoughts on the issue:

“We love to play football, that’s what we want to do. Whatever the decision comes down to be, we’re going to do it and we’re going to be glad to do it . . . amongst fans, there’s a lot of debate, even with the current system, that the Super Bowl champion, the champion of this league, doesn’t necessarily go the best team, but the team that can stay the healthiest throughout the season.  If you add two more games I think it just adds to that debate. It’s such a long season, and to play at a high level for four or five months is extremely difficult, and the longer you make the season, you’re going to see more ups and downs with the level of play.”

Again, look at baseball: the teams that seem like locks for the World Series in April and May rarely meet in October.  In basketball, we need only look at our own 2005-06 Detroit Pistons, who started off the season 35-5, murdering just about everyone along the way.  They went 29-13 in the back half of the season, though, and were knocked out of the playoffs by the eventual champions, the Miami Heat (who went 23-17 in the first half). 

We’ve even seen it, just the edge of it, in the NFL.  In 2007, the New England Patriots dominated the NFL like never before seen: 38-14, 38-14, 38-7, 34-13, 34-17, 48-27, 49-28, 52-7, 24-20, 56-10 . . . the Patriots, with Randy Moss and Tom Brady, had neatly solved the NFL.  They were the most dominant, two-phase-of-the-game team I’ve ever seen, and I grew up worshipping the Montana-era 49ers.  In the Super Bowl, though, they of course failed to finish their incredible 19-0 run.  They lost that Super Bowl to the New York Giants—who two months before had been lucky to escape Ford Field with a W after one of the more abysmal football games I’d ever seen two teams play.  Even now, in a season where Lovie Smith was supposed to be coaching for his job this year, the Bears’ astonishing total lack of injuries have propelled them to the NFC Championship Game—where the injury-decimated Packers will probably beat them. anyway.

So, NFL, I implore you: don't ruin the football. Don't make it so starters are healthy scratches. Don't make the sport of football more about "who's hot" heading into the playoffs than who the best team is. You have the most balanced, competitive regular season in sports; it’s a big reason for your success.  Don't make wins hollow and losses acceptable.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,nfl cba,18-game season,nflpa,jim leonhard,new england patriots,chicago bears,green bay packers

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An Email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

Dear Commissioner Goodell--

It was a surprise and pleasure to receive your recent email.  I appreciate your initiative in communicating to fans current status of the CBA negotiations.  As you said, we fans care deeply about the league, our teams, and the players; anything that threatens our ability to enjoy NFL football as usual is a matter of great concern.

I assume your statement, “I know we can and will reach an agreement,” was meant to allay that concern.  Unfortunately, it does not.  You made no mention of whether agreement will come before the expiry of the current CBA, before the NFL Draft, before training camp, before the 2011 regular season, or even within our lifetimes.  Of course, an agreement will eventually be reached.  What fans want to know is if you are committed to reaching an agreement in a fashion and timeframe that respects our investment in the game.

Yes, despite the tough economic times you reference, America (and the world)’s investment in NFL football has never been greater.  The NFL dominates the sports landscape in terms of mindshare, media coverage, television ratings, and merchandise sales.  More and more of the average American’s shrinking budget is being spent in support of their favorite NFL team.  More and more of their hurried minutes are spent watching NFL games three, four, or even five(!) nights a week, and consuming NFL news, stats and analysis across every conceivable media and information platform every waking second.

As a result, the NFL has never been more prosperous.  As you know, the NFL will bring in nearly nine billion dollars in revenue this season.  As I write this, word is breaking that ESPN will increase their fee for Monday Night Football, already $1.1 billion annually, by forty percent.  It is at best disingenuous—and at worst, insulting—to suggest that NFL franchises are feeling the same financial pressures as their legions of ardent fans.

You are absolutely correct in stating your job is to represent the game, and to protect its integrity.  It’s unfortunate that at this critical juncture, the actions you cite as harbingers of progress—pushing for an 18-game schedule, stricter enforcement of on-field safety rules, and massively increased fines and suspensions for excessive violence—are doing the most to compromise that integrity.

You state that the NFL is “listening to fans” about uncompetitive preseason games.  However, the NFL is studiously ignoring the overwhelming majority of fans who don’t want an 18-game regular season.  Fans would rather see players who occupy camp roster spots 54 through 80 playing in uncompetitive preseason games, than in uncompetitive regular season games that determine playoff berths and seeding.

The stricter—and wildly inconsistent—enforcement of penalties for dangerous tactics has been a lightning rod for fan anger.  Penalties seem to be called based on player reputation—both that of the defender, and that of his target—more than an objective standard of risk.  This inconsistency is compounded by the NFL levying suspensions and massive fines, independently of whether the plays in question drew flags.  Further, these penalties and suspensions affect the outcome of games, which leads fans to (erroneously, but understandably) question the integrity of the referees, yourself, and the NFL as a whole.

I applaud the league for taking a stand for player safety—but the referees are either incapable of enforcing these rules uniformly, or the rules are too vague to be uniformly enforced.  I also applaud the league for paying much greater attention to concussions and other head injuries; changing the “play through it culture” to protect athletes’ long-term health is vital to the sustainability of the NFL.  Recognize, though, that the “play through it culture” includes fans; we need to be educated about the risks players are exposing themselves to for our entertainment.

I also support the NFL’s effort to reduce rookie salaries.  The out-of-whack salary structure for top rookies has undermined the NFL Draft’s primary purpose: to give struggling teams the best young talent.  Further, these massive, increasingly guaranteed salaries for unproven players are reducing our teams’ ability to keep top veterans in town, or attract new ones—again affecting competitive balance.  Dollars saved by these restructured deals should be redirected to said veterans, and/or to retired players who laid the foundation for today’s NFL.

I’ve also enjoyed the league’s creativity in providing new ways to enjoy the NFL.  The NFL Network, the RedZone Channel, a continually-improving NFL.com and NFL Rush Zone, mobile and wireless viewing and listening options, and a dizzying array of team merchandise make it possible for a fan like myself to immerse themselves like never before.  My children’s experiences as fans have been far more satisfying, involving, and fulfilling than mine was—and I didn’t have any complaints!

However, as you say, this isn’t about the here and now.  It isn’t about the NFL as it is, it’s about the future; about the NFL as it will be ten, twenty, and thirty years from now.  While the NFL seems to think a “responsible” CBA will be the difference between a wildly profitable, world-conquering NFL, and an incredibly wildly profitable, why-stop-at-just-Earth-the-moon’s-right-over-there conquering NFL, something’s being forgotten.

The revenues the league is splitting with the players?  The revenues the owners are sharing amongst themselves?  Those dollars are ours.  They come from our pockets—yes, us, the fans in the stands with the 10% unemployment and the debt up to our eyeballs.  We work our tails off to earn that money, and we probably ought to be spending it on other things, saving it for our retirement, or trying to keep up with our health care costs.  But no, we give all that money to you, either directly or as a dividend of our passion.

Let me be clear: the $9 billion-per-year the NFL currently pulls in, and the $25 billion-per-year you hope to rake by 2027, will be unattainable pipe dreams if there is a lockout.  Throughout this process, you and the owners have assumed that the only direction the NFL can go from these lofty heights is up—instead, it’s more reasonable to state that the NFL is overdue for a return to Earth.

It wasn’t long ago that Major League Baseball was our national pastime and passion, and it wasn’t long ago that NHL hockey stood on equal footing with the NFL, MLB, and NBA.  Work stoppages were the catalysts for a precipitous drop in interest, passion, ratings, merchandise sales, and revenue for both leagues—and neither has returned to its previous place in the American sports landscape.  If you, the owners, and the players cannot find a timely way to divvy up the monstrous sum we fans donate to you every year, the rainbow will vanish—and that pot of gold with it.

As I said the last time I wrote about the CBA, we fans are the golden goose, and you have your hands around our neck.  Remember us.  Respect us.  Do not take our football away.  Complete these negotiations before the current CBA expires, or we will all pay the price.  If you commit to doing so, 2011 will be a Happy New Year, for you and everyone else involved in, or a fan of, the NFL.

Peace,

Ty

Technorati Tags: nfl,nflpa,cba,nfl cba,collective bargaining agreement,roger goodell

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three cups deep

Those of you who’ve been reading since the very beginning—or, incredibly, crawled back through the archives--know of my abiding love of coffee.  I love nearly everything about the stuff.  I love the steam rising out of a hot mug of joe, and I love the smell wafting up out of a porcelain cup of espresso.  I love the taste of a nice clean cup of brewed preground, and I love the taste of a meticulously prepared macchiato.  I love the crema surging to the top of a shot of espresso, and I love the absolutely singular smell of fresh roasted coffee beans.  Out of everything I love about coffee, one of the qualities I treasure most is the warmth. The relaxing, soothing, radiation from a thick porcelain mug, the jolt of heat from a thin paper cup, the bracing flood of warmth rushing over my tongue, and the hot weight in my gut, warming me from the inside out like a little liquid furnace.

On Mondays, it takes little bit more of the good stuff to get me going.  The first desperately-needed cup is often not until nine o'clock or so, often because I’m such a complete zombie that I forget to go get coffee.  I’m lucky to make it back to my desk with that first cup before I’m trekking back to the office Bunn—desperately hoping I won’t be the sucker who kills the joe, and therefore beholden to make some mo’.

The second cup I down steadily, solidly, workmanlike.  By the end of that second helping, I’m starting to get the tingl; my eyes aren’t drooping quite so much.  I realize I’m slouching so badly in my chair that the backrest is supporting my head instead, and move to an upright position.  But the third cup . . . ahh, the third cup.  The initial sip of the third cup is like Zeus’s lighting; a bolt from the heavens igniting my nervous system!  I lean forward in my chair, attacking the problems of the day with emphatic keyboard strikes, pummeling my dreary to-do list into submission.  It is now, at the beginning of that third cup, that I write this.

Today marks the first day of an experiment.  I’ve written serial posts before (“Meet the Cubs”, “To Whom It May Concern”, etc.), but those get posted as I complete them, never on a regular, scheduled basis.  With training camp looming, and the preseason after that, and—no way—the regular season immediately after that, the flow of information will soon widen from a trickle to a torrent.  Since I often write over the weekend, but rarely post, and since the analytics show that a majority of you folks only check in Monday through Friday, I—and you—are in need of a rundown of everything that happened in Lions-land over the weekend.  And so:

•    Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote an extremely scary piece comparing Matt Stafford with the last multi-year starter at Georgia, David Greene.  This is every Lions fan’s worst nightmare: that Matt Stafford can’t translate his success in the SEC to the NFL.  That his arm, such a great weapon against college defensive backs, will be nullified by the fiercer pass rushes, the nightmarish blitz schemes, and the complicated coverages.  That the dramatic quickening of the game, the dictionary-thick playbooks, and the blizzard of new terminology and nomenclature snow him under before he even has a chance to warm up.  Unfortunately, there’s no silver lining to this story.  Outside of the fact that more NFL teams fell in love with Stafford’s physical tools than Greene’s (Greene was a third-round pick), and the Lions' coaching staff’s glowing initial reports, there’s nothing that points to Stafford succeeding where Greene so completely failed.  In fact, as Football Outsiders’s Bill Barnwell pointed out before the draft, Greene actually outproduced Stafford’s numbers at Georgia—same system, same coaching staff, Greene was better.  Yikes.
•    New Lion Jon Jansen spoke to Carlos Monarrez of the Detroit Free Press, and spoke, very candidly, about the upcoming labor situation.  He dropped some serious wisdom with the following quote:  

  "I don't think we're heading for anything like that. Yeah, we're going to threaten it, they're going to threaten. At some point everybody's going to be like, 'Oh, my gosh. This is going to happen.'  But when it comes down to it, if there's a strike, the owners are in this, obviously they're in it for winning, but they're all also in it to make money. And if we're not on the field, no one's making money. ... If we're not on the field, we're not making money. We don't want that. When it comes down to it, we'll figure it out."

    I dearly hope that the movers and shakers of both sides figure this out sooner rather than later.  One of the NFL’s greatest strengths has been the ongoing labor peace—alternately blamed on and credited to a close working relationship between former Commission Tagliabue and former NFLPA President, the late Gene Upshaw.  Now that Roger Goodell sits so strongly at the commissioner’s desk, and trial lawyer DeMaurice Smith heads up the NFLPA, I hope both sides can reach this common understanding: that the fans’ love of football is what pays all of their salaries, and they owe it to their employees/members to work together in a spirit of not killing what might be America’s last great golden goose.
•    The Lions are finally starting to knock out a few of these rookie contracts, with TCU RB Aaron Brown getting locked up on Friday afternoon.  With a lingering hamstring problem keeping third-rounder Derrick Williams on figurative and literal ice throughout OTAs and minicamps, Brown has a great chance to establish himself as a valuable return option.  He’ll compete with Williams and the newest Lion, WR Dennis Northcutt, throughout training camp.

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