Stay Granted: Lockout On Til June, Breakthrough Reported

[bobblehead]

Any average joe can cook burgers and cooking burgers doesnt take years off your life. Millions of people don't crowd around TVs and fill stadiums every Sunday to watch someone grill a burger. I see what your trying to say but it's apples and oranges.

I would argue that more people enjoy burgers than the NFL. I would also argue that if every active member of an NFL team died tomorrow they would be replaced and the league would barely miss a beat. However if the owners and architects of the NFL died it would hurt lots. If every TEAM that people have bonded to over the past 50+ years were disassembled and the league had to start anew the popularity would suffer immensely. Players come and go but the Packers endure....just ask bert.

As far as taking years off your life, I play ball for free twice a week. I wish I were talented enough to play pro. I would choose to....key word choice. Any NFL player can choose a career that is less damaging. Don't misunderstand, I want the league to do everything possible to keep players safe, and I want players well compensated; however we aren't talking about them not being payed vs. making a milliion....we are talking about 7 or 8 million.

[bobblehead]

You have to factor in injuries though. You lose your starting QB first game of the season and that fucks up the whole team's wallet. All we need is a rookie salary cap and everything else should be kept the same unless the owners can prove they are losing money. It's a reason they don't want to show their books.

The union decertified....you don't get to have everything as it was before. Now we are going for a free for all....with no rookie cap.

[bobblehead]

I understand where you are coming from but I think you are missing one important issue.

There are some jobs that require skill sets that few poeple can actually learn. No matter how hard you try you can't take a 5'10", 180lb man and stick him in at OT in the NFL.

You see this in surgeons, entertainers, athletes, artisans etc...

First, I disagree with the entertainers. Hundreds of thousands of guys could act in "two and a half men" but only a handful have created the show and write it.

You are wrong, I could play OT in the NFL....poorly. What if I started a 5' 10" and under league? Could a guy 6' sue me to play? Is it my LEAGUE or my FRANCHISE. If its a league you must allow me to set rules to make the league successful. Limiting guys by their height would seem to be an anti trust issue the way the courts have ruled so far.

You have said in the past that you own an accounting firm. What if the employees found a judge that said you had to allow them 59% of your profits? You wouldn't like it I'm betting. Whats that you say? You can find other accountants? The NFL can find other players and the talent difference would barely be noticeable to the naked eye. Moreover, within 4-5 years the top players would again be in the league.

Lets be honest, if you are going to treat the NFL as a full fledged free for all there will no longer be a draft. There will be no minimum salary. There will be no rules governing what can or can not be put into a contract. Hundreds of players will lose a TON of money while a few stars will make more. Greedy owners will make MORE money and pay LESS in total salaries than they do now. Star players will get MUCH better health care than lesser players.

The thing that kills me about the liberals position in all this is that they somehow want the best of both worlds. They want a system where the OWNERS have to play by certain rules, but the players do not. In the end, either BOTH sides have to agree to a CBA or there will be NO rules. If there is no CBA then you can't possibly intelligently argue that somehow the owners should still be required to pay any more than they choose. Bottom of the roster guys will have minimum contracts with team options as far as the eye can see. No roster size limits. A guy like Tramon who had limited interest coming out will NEVER get paid. They will be forced to sign an exclusive contract with whichever team offers them a shit lifetime deal. On the other hand guys like Ryan Leaf will still get millions.

Lets face reality, you guys don't actually want a true free market for the labor of players, you want greedy owners to be forced to pay what you think is "fair" for the talent. You want the previous CBA continued even though the union decertified. You want the owners to be forced to follow anti trust rules, but at the same time follow rules negotiated for the benefit of the league (players and all) as a whole. In short, you want them to follow the rules that you think are fair, but not the ones that harm the employees. Got news for you, they didn't create the NFL (or any business) under altruistic intentions. They do it for money.

What needs to happen is that the (not)union and the owners need to get together and work our a deal. If the players decide to attempt hardball they WILL LOSE. If we go free for all again and the league begins fielding scabs, many talented players will return in a hurry. Within a season we will forget about the guys who are still on strike. We will be cheering for "hehateme". Spencer Havner Jerseys will fly off the shelf. We won't recall Tony Gonzalez. Guys coming out of college with the prospect of making 100k to play LT or 14k to flip burgers won't fret long over choosing which way to go. Another league may or may not open to compete with the NFL, but we won't associate with the NJ Generals the way we do with the NY Giants. Face it, the owners have created a product we demand.....Charles Woodson is and will be replaced.

[MJZiggy]

At some point you have to concede that the owners are the ones making it possible for you to SEE those studs compete and bust their asses for you to watch and enjoy.

The owner of Wendy's doesn't cook the burger either, but s/he negotiates the deals that get the cow killed, ground and delivered to your local store. The franchise built the model to follow. The builders built the building its sold in....so in conclusion, most of the profits should go to the guy who threw it on the grill.

First things first. I know we all like a good burger, but don't like thinking about how it gets on the plate. Ew.

[MJZiggy]

Get a PHD in Physics off the street, so on and so on. I can tell you EXACTLY how it feels to do more and more and get my pay capped. I own a mortgage brokerage and the government just capped what I can make. The pie is still the same size just a larger portion go to the banks.

You keep saying shorten their lives...well yeah they do that is the trade off for making millions. Want a longer life teach 3rd grade and get your summers off.

Second, banks are evil. You've never taught elementary school, have you? Those little buggers'll tear you limb from limb if they get the chance. They only look innocent. It's all an act.

[get louder at lambeau]

Just because they dont "bitch" about it doesnt make it right. Every season a player spends on an NFL roster, his life expectancy decreases by almost three years. The average American male lives to be almost 75. An NFL player, whose career lasts roughly four years on average, lives to be 55.

Those are some interesting numbers. They don't add up though. If the difference between average life expectancies is 20 years different, and the average length of career is about 4 years, it would be 5 years less per year on an NFL roster- much more than what you claim.

You got a link to this stuff?

[Lurker64]

Just because they dont "bitch" about it doesnt make it right. Every season a player spends on an NFL roster, his life expectancy decreases by almost three years. The average American male lives to be almost 75. An NFL player, whose career lasts roughly four years on average, lives to be 55.

The average NFL offensive lineman or defensive tackle is more than 300 lbs, and is likely classified as obese (or morbidly obese) by the BMI scale. Just being that size will lower your life expectancy similarly dramatically. You don't see a lot of 300+ lb people who live to be 75.

Also, correlation is not causation. Years of physical abuse in football were not responsible for the auto-accidents that killed Derrick Thomas or Wayne Simmons. Who's to say how many NFL players die young because of a lifestyle of risk-taking whose only relationship with having played football is that said recklessness was enabled by the money earned by playing football?

Also, when calculating the median lifespan of an NFL player, if that number is around 55 years, then we're talking about guys who were playing football over 30 years ago. A lot of advancements in terms of player safety and medical care have been made in the last 30 years. To say that the life expectancy of modern players is lowered because guys used to play in leather helmets and nobody took them out of the game after they got a concussion is somewhat disingenuous.

[Smidgeon]

Second, banks are evil. You've never taught elementary school, have you? Those little buggers'll tear you limb from limb if they get the chance. They only look innocent. It's all an act.

The bankers or the elementary schools?

[Deputy Nutz]

Just because they dont "bitch" about it doesnt make it right. Every season a player spends on an NFL roster, his life expectancy decreases by almost three years. The average American male lives to be almost 75. An NFL player, whose career lasts roughly four years on average, lives to be 55. I as well played the game for 10 years but neither of us played at the NFL level when you have 300 pound guys who can run 4.6 40s. Also did you play football as your job? Why would you be complaining about getting paid a nickel when you didnt get paid to play in the first place.

Can you comprehend what you read? I didn't say, "I am complaining about not making money", I said " I never got paid a nickel but I ain't gonna complain about the sport I love..." There was no money paid to a college athletes, I didn't go to USC. If they are worried about their lives, they shouldn't play football at the NFL level. That is not hard to comprehend. They get paid more in those 4 years that you mentioned then most of the American working people make in a life time. Apparently I do have to mention the people that work in coal mines, soldiers that protect our country for less than 23,000 dollars a year, farmers, fire fighters, Steelworkers, crab fishermen.... they make the money that they are paid and go to work each day and amazingly enough they don't have fans that feel sorry for them.

1% of the players in the NFL that weigh 300 plus pounds can run a 4.6. I would trust my own judgement and say their is not a 300 pound guy in the NFL that run a 4.6. I did play college football against guys that were 300 pounds though. I also played against guys that were in the NFL. I don't really know what that has to do with anything but these guys are living a lot of peoples dreams mine included. Mark Schlreath said it on ESPN, that he would have done just about anything to make an NFL roster and he sacrificed his body numberous times to do it, it wasn't for the paycheck for him it was his dream. Like I said their is a number of reasons for fans to support the players, but they get an actual paycheck for a game they play, sounds like a hell of a deal to me.

Their life expectancy simply has nothing to do with this, because if that was important to them then they should have actually graduated college, and would have never played the sport. My regard to my playing days was to point the fact that I do know what these guys go through to play the game and that I understood the sacrifices made, not comparing(again you fail at compairsons) my playing level to that of the NFL players. I have gone through several surgeries and several more rehabs because of football and it wasn't even to get a paycheck, it was simply chasing a dream and playing for the love of the game.

[Deputy Nutz]

The average NFL offensive lineman or defensive tackle is more than 300 lbs, and is likely classified as obese (or morbidly obese) by the BMI scale. Just being that size will lower your life expectancy similarly dramatically. You don't see a lot of 300+ lb people who live to be 75.

Also, correlation is not causation. Years of physical abuse in football were not responsible for the auto-accidents that killed Derrick Thomas or Wayne Simmons. Who's to say how many NFL players die young because of a lifestyle of risk-taking whose only relationship with having played football is that said recklessness was enabled by the money earned by playing football?

Also, when calculating the median lifespan of an NFL player, if that number is around 55 years, then we're talking about guys who were playing football over 30 years ago. A lot of advancements in terms of player safety and medical care have been made in the last 30 years. To say that the life expectancy of modern players is lowered because guys used to play in leather helmets and nobody took them out of the game after they got a concussion is somewhat disingenuous.

To go along Brandon's theory, Brett Favre should have been dead sometime after his 13th year in the league.

[SkinBasket]

it was simply chasing a dream and playing for the love of the game.

And strippers.

[sharpe1027]

You have said in the past that you own an accounting firm. What if the employees found a judge that said you had to allow them 59% of your profits? You wouldn't like it I'm betting. Whats that you say? You can find other accountants? The NFL can find other players and the talent difference would barely be noticeable to the naked eye. Moreover, within 4-5 years the top players would again be in the league.

What judge is saying this? I don't think the players are even asking the judge to do this. Seems like a strawman argument. A closer analogy would be: What if you had an agreement to pay your employees a certain amount and when the agreement ended you disagreed about the amount for the next agreement? What if you then got all the top accounting firms in the industry to collectively refuse to pay their employees?

Lets face reality, you guys don't actually want a true free market for the labor of players, you want greedy owners to be forced to pay what you think is "fair" for the talent. You want the previous CBA continued even though the union decertified. You want the owners to be forced to follow anti trust rules, but at the same time follow rules negotiated for the benefit of the league (players and all) as a whole. In short, you want them to follow the rules that you think are fair, but not the ones that harm the employees. Got news for you, they didn't create the NFL (or any business) under altruistic intentions. They do it for money.

Has anyone said they want a true free market? Most posters seem to think that is a very bad idea. Seems like another strawman argument.

What needs to happen is that the (not)union and the owners need to get together and work our a deal. If the players decide to attempt hardball they WILL LOSE. If we go free for all again and the league begins fielding scabs, many talented players will return in a hurry. Within a season we will forget about the guys who are still on strike. We will be cheering for "hehateme". Spencer Havner Jerseys will fly off the shelf. We won't recall Tony Gonzalez. Guys coming out of college with the prospect of making 100k to play LT or 14k to flip burgers won't fret long over choosing which way to go. Another league may or may not open to compete with the NFL, but we won't associate with the NJ Generals the way we do with the NY Giants. Face it, the owners have created a product we demand.....Charles Woodson is and will be replaced.

If either side plays hardball, both sides will lose. IMO, it's pretty simple, they disagree about the final dollar amount. There is probably a point at which even you would think the players were entitled to more money. What if they were making minimum wage? Would you agree that they would be justified in asking for more? If you would, then you agree in principle to what the players are doing now, you just disagree about the dollar amount.

[bobblehead]

What judge is saying this? I don't think the players are even asking the judge to do this. Seems like a strawman argument. A closer analogy would be: What if you had an agreement to pay your employees a certain amount and when the agreement ended you disagreed about the amount for the next agreement? What if you then got all the top accounting firms in the industry to collectively refuse to pay their employees?



Has anyone said they want a true free market? Most posters seem to think that is a very bad idea. Seems like another strawman argument.



If either side plays hardball, both sides will lose. IMO, it's pretty simple, they disagree about the final dollar amount. There is probably a point at which even you would think the players were entitled to more money. What if they were making minimum wage? Would you agree that they would be justified in asking for more? If you would, then you agree in principle to what the players are doing now, you just disagree about the dollar amount.

The players and most fans seem to think that if a judge ends the lockout that somehow we will return to the previous CBA....that is not the case, the owners voided the CBA and the players decertified. It has zero bearing on the future. This is nothing like a collusion of all the top accounting firms. The CFL, arena, USFL, XFL all tried to compete with the NFL. Again, this is where a fundamental disagreement occurs. I don't view the 32 teams as competitors trying to win market share. They are ONE league trying to own market share.

As far as the true free market....no, posters want the courts to decide the rules of the market instead of the owners. My argument is anything but straw. The players (and many posters) want it both ways. No lockout, but still a collective bargaining session. It simply can't happen. Either you are a union and can be locked out and then bargain, or you are not and you have a free for all. Only 2 choices. We are not a union, but owners must negotiate with us as a whole entity (union) but not have any of the benefits of us NOT being unionized. Fun deal if you can swing it.

I also agree that both sides will lose in the short term, but long run, the owners will crush the union should it become ugly. Furthermore, I always think the players are justified in asking for more. I simply disagree as to them being able to somehow force the owners to pay a certain amount. The owners are also justified in asking for more. That is called free market. Do I think minimum wage would be fair? Talk about setting up straw man arguments. Minimum wage in the NFL right now breaks down to over 8k an hour. If you are elite its more like 300k an hour.

I have never disagreed in principle to the players asking for more. I disagree with the whole sham of decertifying and using the courts to get it instead of negotiating.

[MJZiggy]

The bankers or the elementary schools?

The bankers and the children. Vicious, all of them!!

[Deputy Nutz]

And strippers.

fuck, ya definitely strippers. Living the dream, and making it rain.