Faced With a Lockout, Players and Owners Are at Odds

The owners and NFLPA aren't getting along in regards to the new Collective Bargaining Agreement

On April 6, a Minneapolis judge will decide the fate of the the season for the NFL in 2012. As of now, the NFL faces a lockout because there is no new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), since the owners and NFL Players Association (NFLPA) failed to reach a consensus on numerous issues that need fixing. Many suspected that the two sides were close to completing a deal at the March 11 deadline, but sources indicated that in reality, they weren't even close.

Many different issues were the cause of failure by the two sides in making a new CBA, including revenue sharing, retirement benefits, proposal of an 18 game season, and rookie wage scales. Part of the real problem is the complete lack of trust between both sides, especially suspicions by the players that the owners are not complying because in the players opinion, it doesn't matter to the owners if there will be a season in 2012- they are already rich and face no financial consequences if a lockout happens.

After the ruling on the lockout, if it is nullified, the first and most important issue needing to be resolved immediately is revenue sharing. Both sides differ greatly in this issue, and that is why nothing has gone smoothly throughout this process. The NFL makes $9 Billion annually, the most of any professional sports league in the world. Splitting up that revenue is one of the hardest issues they face, and the most important. The percent of revenue sharing devoted to the players (contracts, benefits) is reportedly near 70%, an extremely high percentage considering that it has been around 50-55% every year for the past decade. Here is an excerpt from an article on NFL.com:

"According to the figures obtained by The AP:
» In 2005, player costs were $3.32 billion, and all revenue was $6.49 billion;
» In 2006, the first year under the just-expired CBA, player costs rose to $4.1 billion, an increase of $780 million, which is 61 percent of that year's $1.28 billion increase in all revenue to $7.77 billion;
» By 2009, player costs were $4.5 billion, while all revenues were $8.88 billion."

The players still contend that the NFL's calculations of player revenue are inflated, arguing that the owners are including costs and revenue that the players never receive, therefore inflating the numbers and skewing the data. In this case, the NFL would have to increase player revenue, which is already at an all-time high. However, the data that contains the exact numbers and revenue sharing data has not been fully released by the owners, and therefore the players are at a distinct disadvantage when playing the numbers game with the owners.

A solution would be for the NFL to completely release all financial information to an independent accounting firm so that the data can be analyzed, and a true, concrete set of data of the revenue sharing can settle this trust issue between the owners and players, and an accurate, fair deal can be put in place.
The next issue that the NFLPA and owners face is the proposal of an 18-game season. The owners have decided to try and push for this, while the players are at complete odds with the idea. In the player’s opinion, an 18-game season makes absolutely no sense. Increasing the season by two games just creates more opportunity for players to obtain serious injuries, and would drastically decrease the average career length for players in the NFL.

Many say that taking two games off the preseason makes that argument completely unrealistic, yet they do not account for the fact that the majority of starters on NFL teams do not usually play more than a 30-40 minutes of a preseason game on average. Along with that, the intensity and effort put forth in preseason games does not come anywhere near the intensity of a regular season NFL game. The NFL has a four game preseason so that they can finalize their regular season roster of 53 players, a very tedious and intricate task for most teams. Coaches optimize their rosters based on the play of backups in the preseason games, and taking two away makes the opportunity to make an NFL team much lower, due to less exposure. Therefore taking two preseason games away does absolutely no good and in no way would provide a chance to sneak in two extra regular season games.

Lastly, a rookie pay scale is the third issue needed to be resolved, and one that seems most likely to be resolved quickly. Both sides agree that a pay scale for rookies needs to be instituted. Last year, first overall pick Sam Bradford signed his rookie contract of 6yr/$78M, the biggest contract for a rookie ever. Without even playing a game. This is the issue that both sides mutually agree needs resolve, but going about structuring the rookie pay scale is what is setting the two sides at odds. It isn't clear what has stopped them from resolving this issue right away, but one can suspect it has to do with the maximum earnings on that pay scale, and the number of years allowed for a rookie to sign their rookie contract. Once the two sides see it similarly, this doesn't seem like a hard fix.

Overall, the NFL's collective bargaining agreement situation has grown into a larger issue than just about money, and egos on both sides are preventing them from finding any common ground on all of the issues needing resolve in the new CBA. The two sides are going to have to lower their guard and trust that the other side is making decisions in the best interest of the league, so that they can solve this lockout and keep the NFL rolling for another season.