Quote Originally Posted by retailguy View Post
Me neither, and like you Dan, I've also done this for a living. But, you can look at one parallel related to ROI. I've done literally tens of thousands of tax returns, and virtually NONE had a great ROI when payroll was above 50%, much less 60%. I recognize that the NFL is not a "typical" business, but, realistically, their other expenses are also high. Everything they do is 1st class. Charter flights, the best weight rooms, the best medical care, the best facilities, the best of everything.

Something has to give somewhere, and ultimately, it's got to trickle down to the ROI. How can it not?

Keep in mind that the 59.6% salaries are really just player salaries. It doesn't include any other team salary. Even backing it back down to 50% of total revenue, which is what we are told it approximates, what about coaches, admin staff, finance, IT, grounds maintenance, training staff, building personnel, and the list goes on....

It would not surprise me if some of the lower market teams have a total loaded payroll approaching 65%. That'll put a strain on any ROI analysis and you don't really need financials to figure that part out.
a counterpoint to that would be that 59.6% is the cap. Last several years, a lot of teams were well under the cap. There's also the billion or so off the top to account for. Look at the 'A CBA Math Problem' thread.

From PFT via the NFLPA, the percent of player costs versus all revenue:

2002: 51.87%
2003: 50.23%
2004: 52.18%
2005: 50.52%
2006: 52.74%
2007: 51.84%
2008: 50.96%
2009: 50.06%
According to that, player salaries are a lot closer to 50% than 60% of Total Revenue.