official: union decertifies

[ThunderDan]

heres the way i see this. they just gave profit or lose numbers, they didn't give the numbers on how they got there. an nfl team is just like any other business. the owner can say his team is losing money, and he can prove it. then you dig a little deeper at where all the money he brought in went. in those numbers is the compensation for employees. the team could be losing money, but these guys could be writing paychecks to themselves and their family members for very large sums of money

kind of like when a bank or other large company goes under and thousands of people lose their jobs, but the ceo gets a 20 million dollar bonus for that year

same old shit, different rich assholes trying to pull it off

oh well, the lockout is on as of midnight eastern. starting to sound like you can kiss the 2011 season goodbye

I had a client once that was a regional retailer. In his tv and radio commercial he said he would give away 10% of his profits to charity.

What he never "told" the people shopping at his store was that he took a $500,000 W-2 and paid his wife $65,000 before getting to the bottom line.

He shows a $100,000 profit and gives $10,000 to charity (which is extremely generous). Before owners comp his profit is $665,000 and the contribution should be $66,500.

That $100,000 to $650,000 disparity is what the NFLPA is worried about.

Also on the newspaper link Murphy says they were only $20,000,000 apart per team in their positions. Well $20M for 32 teams is $640M which is almost the $1B the owners were asking for.

[pbmax]

Yes, Murphy's statement was terrible fluff. When I can deconstruct it on the fly while reading, you haven't spent enough time spinning.

The Players need some help too. And Florio is posting so often at PFT, he keeps retracing his steps over the financial ground and confusing himself. But the players ultimately are not helping by continually referring to "profitability" as a general business condition and failing to mention they want to audit the numbers behind the figure.

“We were more than willing to agree to confidentiality in that,” Kendall said regarding the possibility of financial disclosure. “The results could have been blinded so we didn’t know which teams were declining in profitability.”
In other words, the players apparently would be willing to consider team-by-team profitability information without the teams being identified.
The good news? NFLPA* executive director DeMaurice Smith’s public demand for audited financial statements apparently was, as it appeared to be, grandstanding. If/when the negotiations resume, hopefully the two sides will find a middle ground as to the issue of financial transparency, so that they then can find a middle ground as to the challenge of figuring out how to share more than $9 billion per year.

That quote is of a piece of the whole confused debate right there and Florio flubs it, despite the evidence on his own site. It ranks right up there with his confusion from the 2009/10 CBA proposal when he could fathom the difference between player salary as reduction is business expense (compared to overall revenue) and the reduction represented in a paycheck (what folks would typically call a paycut).

Kendall is clearly looking for audited financial statements to back up, or refute, current claims about profitability. He is willing to concede confidentiality, seems open to it. He is not interested in profit numbers alone.

[pbmax]

I had a client once that was a regional retailer. In his tv and radio commercial he said he would give away 10% of his profits to charity.

What he never "told" the people shopping at his store was that he took a $500,000 W-2 and paid his wife $65,000 before getting to the bottom line.

He shows a $100,000 profit and gives $10,000 to charity (which is extremely generous). Before owners comp his profit is $665,000 and the contribution should be $66,500.

That $100,000 to $650,000 disparity is what the NFLPA is worried about.

Also on the newspaper link Murphy says they were only $20,000,000 apart per team in their positions. Well $20M for 32 teams is $640M which is almost the $1B the owners were asking for.

Were you still living in the same area you do now? Because I will now spend all day trying to remember who this was.

[pbmax]

No. The NFLPA is using that as an excuse when all along they knew exactly where they wanted to be... in front of a largely pro-employee part-time judge who can pass whatever stand he wants based on whatever testimony he deems relevant. The owners are far from blameless but were at least negotiating in good faith.

Ask David Stern about sharing financial data with the players. The NBA capitulated to their requests and not only did it not help but it made it worse. A vast majority of teams in the NBA are barely treading water due to the last deal and the NBA needs to be fixed or become the NHL... an afterthought.

Players need to stop thinking they are above the team. For some reason they think they are the owners when they aren't even the only employees.

Rant on unions: I was cut from my teaching job last June and still unable to find a job to replace that one. Fat lot of good my union did for me despite paying nearly $100 a month in union dues. Unions are a sham with their own priorities and don't care about individuals. The players feel entitled for some reason, which I can't stand, and the sham that is the non-existant NFLPA can kiss my big fat hairy butt.

Sorry about the job loss. However, it might salve your troubled, ranting heart to know the case has currently been assigned to Federal Judge Patrick Schiltz. Hopefully the part-time thing doesn't trouble you too much in his case.

UPDATE: Will Brinson of CBSSports.com tells us that the case already has been reassigned to Judge Patrick J. Schiltz. Nominated for the bench by George W. Bush in 2005, Judge Schiltz served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Though we currently don’t know anything about Judge Schiltz’s track record of rulings, he’s likely not a liberal, which likely plays into the league’s hands.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/03/12/initial-judge-steps-aside-from-brady-case/

[pbmax]

More on financial information offered by owners in an interview with Art Rooney II. But like all the rest, very short on details of what was offered (or if the level of detail offered changed from earlier in the week) except for the base word "audit" and the phrases "3rd party" and "what they wanted". Deep in my cynical heart, this reads like spin.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/03/13/art-rooney-assails-unions-tactic-expects-initial-hearing-this-week/

“That was one of the strange things in the negotiations, because the previous week when that subject came up, we said — after a long time of not being willing to provide anything and really feeling like it was one of those things that wasn’t going to lead to anything — then we felt like, OK, maybe if we agree to give them something and try to provide them some insight into what has happened to the teams, maybe that would lead to a breakthrough,” Rooney said. “So we offered to provide them some financial information through an auditor, we offered to go through a third party and have a third party look at the information.

“It was a very strange reaction. They didn’t take the information, after asking for it. They said it wasn’t good enough. I don’t even know how you can make that judgment without accepting what was offered. Certainly we would not have been surprised if they came back after they had seen it and had questions. But they never even looked at it. To me, that was a little bit of a tip-off as to where they were really headed with this thing.”

While Art II could be saying they agreed to the players original request (audited financial records), he could also still be referring to the already released information on profitability. But without knowing the level of detail behind profit numbers, its impossible to determine whether those numbers are accurate.

But I will say this: the League is winning the PR war on this, because everyone is writing like the owners offered to show everything to the auditor when that has not been established positively yet.

[RashanGary]

But I will say this: the League is winning the PR war on this, because everyone is writing like the owners offered to show everything to the auditor when that has not been established positively yet.

They absolutely are. They're telling the players to bend over to take one for the team, not explaining why and then throwing them under the bus for not taking one on the chin for the shield.

Just show them why, if it's grim, the players will agree. Sinking the ship does nothing for anyone. If the owners really are sinking and the players need to take a pay cut, show them so common sense can prevail. By not showing, it says everything.

[Lurker64]

Well, I think actually phrasing what the league is proposing as a "cut" or "the players writing a check to the owners" is simply buying into the rhetoric of the PA. Unlike, say, the NHL lockout where the owners actually won a reduction in all current contracts (so guys actually did have to give money back) the NFL owners are simply asking that the formula by which the salary cap is determined (which is how the players part of the pie is actually allocated) does not increase as fast on a year-to-year basis as it has in the past.

[SkinBasket]

Sinking the ship does nothing for anyone.

And yet... that's exactly what the union is trying to do.

[Lurker64]

Well, I think actually phrasing what the league is proposing as a "cut" or "the players writing a check to the owners" is simply buying into the rhetoric of the PA. Unlike, say, the NHL lockout where the owners actually won a reduction in all current contracts (so guys actually did have to give money back) the NFL owners are simply asking that the formula by which the salary cap is determined (which is how the players part of the pie is actually allocated) does not increase as fast on a year-to-year basis as it has in the past.

Specifically, the way the old system worked is "League takes $1,000,000,000 off the top, then players receive 59.6% of the remaining revenue which specifically manifests in the formula used to calculate the salary cap (and salary floor). There's no stone tablets handed down to Moses that says this is the way that things absolutely need to be. Specifically, last year, as there was no cap and teams were generally responsible with their money, players got significantly less than .596*(total revenue - $1b). This happened, and somehow the world did not end, nor did any NFL players go on the dole or go hungry.

So a potential system where the players make .58*(total revenue -$1b) or .596*(total revenue -$1.3b) wouldn't cause the world to end. Nor are the owners actually asking anybody to write a check, they're just looking to change the formula by which the salary cap and the floor are calculated. "Changing the formula" isn't really a ridiculous request, nor is it in any way worthy of the rancor with which the NFLPA approached it. I heard on ESPN once a former NFL player who argued that the players should never, ever, ever reduce the roughly 60% figure that they were able to win under Upshaw. Why? Did flaming letters in the sky appear and dictate that "If NFL players receive less than 60% of total revenue minus offsets that is an offense unto THE LORD"? Since if they did, I must have missed that.

I think that the NFL's response from the beginning of "show us your books" to any request involving changing the formula was the wrong one. A "If you want to get, you have to give back... so what will you give us if we agree to what you want?" approach would have been much more conducive to actually getting a deal.

[gbgary]

Specifically, the way the old system worked is "League takes $1,000,000 off the top, ...

i think that's supposed to be a billion dollars. no?

[Lurker64]

i think that's supposed to be a billion dollars. no?

Thank you, fixed now.

[RashanGary]

Specifically, the way the old system worked is "League takes $1,000,000,000 off the top, then players receive 59.6% of the remaining revenue which specifically manifests in the formula used to calculate the salary cap (and salary floor). There's no stone tablets handed down to Moses that says this is the way that things absolutely need to be. Specifically, last year, as there was no cap and teams were generally responsible with their money, players got significantly less than .596*(total revenue - $1b). This happened, and somehow the world did not end, nor did any NFL players go on the dole or go hungry.

So a potential system where the players make .58*(total revenue -$1b) or .596*(total revenue -$1.3b) wouldn't cause the world to end. Nor are the owners actually asking anybody to write a check, they're just looking to change the formula by which the salary cap and the floor are calculated. "Changing the formula" isn't really a ridiculous request, nor is it in any way worthy of the rancor with which the NFLPA approached it. I heard on ESPN once a former NFL player who argued that the players should never, ever, ever reduce the roughly 60% figure that they were able to win under Upshaw. Why? Did flaming letters in the sky appear and dictate that "If NFL players receive less than 60% of total revenue minus offsets that is an offense unto THE LORD"? Since if they did, I must have missed that.

I think that the NFL's response from the beginning of "show us your books" to any request involving changing the formula was the wrong one. A "If you want to get, you have to give back... so what will you give us if we agree to what you want?" approach would have been much more conducive to actually getting a deal.

Changing the amount the owners take directly changes the amount the players receive. Owners get more, players get less. It's absolutely not any more complicated than that. The owners are asking to change that number. They're saying they can't afford to pay the players. The players want to see if that is the truth. The owners refuse to show.

The last time the books were opened an agreement was made that would allow the owners to make great profits and also allow the players to make great livings for themselves. If something has changed since the last time they opened the books, open them again. If they won't, the players can't just trust good old Jerry Jones and Dan Snider to be telling the gods honest truth. They'd be idiots to just say, "OK guys, we don't need as much money. You do. We'll happily sign this lesser deal because you said so."

Asking to verify before they sign is the obvious thing to do. Any one of us could figure that out. Where this thing blew up is when the owners refused to show they're alleged dwinding profits. That screams dishonesty.

[pbmax]

Specifically, the way the old system worked is "League takes $1,000,000,000 off the top, then players receive 59.6% of the remaining revenue which specifically manifests in the formula used to calculate the salary cap (and salary floor). There's no stone tablets handed down to Moses that says this is the way that things absolutely need to be. Specifically, last year, as there was no cap and teams were generally responsible with their money, players got significantly less than .596*(total revenue - $1b). This happened, and somehow the world did not end, nor did any NFL players go on the dole or go hungry.

So a potential system where the players make .58*(total revenue -$1b) or .596*(total revenue -$1.3b) wouldn't cause the world to end. Nor are the owners actually asking anybody to write a check, they're just looking to change the formula by which the salary cap and the floor are calculated. "Changing the formula" isn't really a ridiculous request, nor is it in any way worthy of the rancor with which the NFLPA approached it. I heard on ESPN once a former NFL player who argued that the players should never, ever, ever reduce the roughly 60% figure that they were able to win under Upshaw. Why? Did flaming letters in the sky appear and dictate that "If NFL players receive less than 60% of total revenue minus offsets that is an offense unto THE LORD"? Since if they did, I must have missed that.

I think that the NFL's response from the beginning of "show us your books" to any request involving changing the formula was the wrong one. A "If you want to get, you have to give back... so what will you give us if we agree to what you want?" approach would have been much more conducive to actually getting a deal.

Your last line is the rub. If the concessions the league offered in their press release (which by the way, as a concession, listed a Rookie Wage Scale - a financial savings for the league - truly up is down) are not worth the half billion* dollar payroll reduction, then what are they to do?

Almost by definition, the league has described itself in financial peril. First it was the economy and interest rates, then stadium costs and reinvestment in the game. If they are truly in desperate straits, how much can they afford to compromise financially?

*estimate

For the sake of sanity, I wish reports would refer to all payroll considerations in terms of actual total revenues. Because then you are comparing actual dollars year to year. The Cap percentage is calculated off a non-standard number, one that changed significantly in 2006. The players have been hovering between 50 and 51.5% since 2002 **. Interestingly, that number stayed pretty consistent despite the changes in 2006. One of the players last offers was to drop between 49 and 51% dependent on looking at the books. I wonder what the league's compromise would have left them at?

** http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com...d-50-50-split/

[pbmax]

This is one of the reasons to read Florio. It seems as if the League and the Players were discussing an entirely different approach to calculating the cap that they termed "pegging the cap". Innuendo aside, they were trying to eliminate the necessity of using the owner's numbers to calculate a CBA and agreeing to a figure year to year. Two problems emerged. They were $20 million apart per team in 2011 (cap number of $131 vs $151). And when the owners moved to $141 million, they removed a possible compromise that would have increased that amount by a certain percentage of the league out performed its revenue projection.

While I understand the desire by the Players not to rely on the Owner's numbers, this seems even more convoluted and open to either manipulation or misunderstanding. And in the end the negotiated cap number still relies on projections based in part on the owners numbers. And the outperforming clause is entirely dependent on those figures.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/03/13/making-sense-of-the-financial-divide-between-the-two-sides/

[pbmax]

Two posts after hoping we could forget cap numbers in this discussion, I must ask. Does anyone remember what the cap number for teams was in 2009?