Fleur-de-Links September 11, 2010 : Savoring the Sweet Taste of Victory

Gotta side with the players 100%. Owners wanting more money, and wanting them to play more games? How would that work in the real world legally? And yeah, I keep worrying football is going to turn into the baseball of the late 80s, early 90s. To go OT, greed was not the reason the country got into trouble, it is called instant-gratification. It got into every level of life, personal, business, government. Because of that, we got into a crisis that kept getting bigger because we kept delaying the inevitable in order to get a good feeling now.

Throw in St Louis and Carolina, too.

the only games that we scored less than 20 points in last year, we lost (Dallas, TB II, Carolina II).

So as for a low-scoring slugfest like the one Thursday night that we actually WON last year, there were none.

But I agree that those wins you mention were quite ugly in their own rights, but just not low-scoring slugfests.

I think both sides have been pretty dishonest. The owners are by no means “squeaky clean” here, but neither are the players. For example, the union has been harping on the owners “not opening the books”. And unfortunately some people have believed that, when it really isn’t the whole story. Sure, the owners aren’t handing over every single line of their accounting records. But the union also don’t have any legitimate reason to ask for that. And the information that the union DOES have the right to, the owners HAVE actually given them already.

On the other hand, Drew’s comment isn’t entirely without merit either. Because remember that no matter what new insurance laws say going forward, they can’t change the past. Previous NFL players who are already bankrupt won’t be helped by new insurance legislation if their medical bills caused their bankruptcy.

Also, there are some things that the players should be fighting for and I’m not sure why they aren’t. Maybe they don’t realize that they’re getting screwed by certain parts of the old system. Maybe they don’t care about anything but raw numbers (which, IMO, is stupidly short-sighted if so). Don’t know. But the trading rules, for one, are one area where if the players gave up, say, 1% to get some more generous rules here they would actually come out WAY ahead in the long run if they play it right. If, for example, a team could continue to prorate the old signing bonus money after a trade, that alone would make trading players a LOT easier to do. This would greatly increase the movement ability for players, which could greatly benefit both sides.

And there are plenty of other ideas that could be worked on to improve life for everybody. I hope the union is looking for those to try to find ways to compromise instead of trying to “win” at all costs. I hope both sides are. Because if either side is determined to “win” at all costs, even if they “succeed” they will quickly find it was a very Pyrrhic victory indeed.

It’s a really complicated mess. As I said, neither side is entirely right. But neither side is entirely wrong either. Both need to admit that and try to work together. And we need to try to avoid taking sides without knowing the whole story.

On a budget of $200-300 million, even being only about, say, $5 million from being “in the red” (as you put it) is tactically unsound and considered “extremely high risk” from an investment standpoint. $5 million sounds like a ton of money to peons like you and me, but a $200 million business skating that close to the red is considered in “very poor shape”.

I know Tom pissed a lot of people off in the past. But we really do NOT know how much of that was serious and how much of that was negotiating bull crap trying to wheedle the state into giving him a better deal. We really don’t “know”. Obviously you think it was one way. Others, however, may not. And nobody can “prove” any of it.

Yeah some owners are full of bull crap. Others are annoying or twits or plenty of other things. Jones and a few others spring to mind in a half-second on some the above. But some aren’t that way. It’s important to consider all angles in these things, and not jump to confusions just because of a personal animus for one particular owner.

Oh and the Forbes valuation of the team doesn’t mean anything if that money is locked up in an unsalable asset that can’t produce cash for the use of the owner. To give a blatantly unrealistic and extreme example, let’s say you have a run-down house, medical bills, and other financial problems. Worse, you need your car to get to work because there is no public transportation option. But your car has something special about it — maybe it was hand-made by a particularly famous person during some special historical event or something — such that it’s valued at an extremely high “book value” (one which nobody would actually pay) by Forbes, making you look like you’re a millionaire. If you actually sold the car off you could barely cover all your other financial needs (yet in the long run would now become destitute because now you couldn’t work). In this admittedly overblown example, you’re kinda screwed no matter how much your car’s “book value” makes your “estimated net worth” seem really high. And while the example is blatantly unrealistic, it’s not THAT far from reality for some small-market NFL owners.

That article is mostly a slam on Colin Cowherd and his anti-union stance. Taibbi makes some good arguments, and the way he takes Cowherd to task is hilarious. But he’s falling into exactly the trap that I noted above. He’s writing as though the NFLPA is no different than SEIU or the ALPA. The similarities between unions for professional athletes and professional laborers (skilled or not) are superficial at best. What’s surprising is that the players not only seem to think they will be able to get the public on their side with that kind of stance, but that it would somehow help them in their negotiations.

it isnt fair for them to complain when i make x-amount of dollars a year.

Right. The injustice is the increasing share for the owners and the decreasing share for the players. The REAL injustice is the increase in costs to the fan, and to the taxpayer for publicly financed stadiums.

I really hate it when regular people compare themselves to billionaires or millionaires saying that it isnt fair for them to complain when i make x-amount of dollars a year. these guys worked their a***** off to get where they are now, so dont think for a second that they were lucky

Really? How many non-millionaires do you think worked their asses off their entire lives just to scrape out a hand-to-mouth living? Do you really think professional athletes don’t enjoy an incredible dose of luck in their genes? Do you really think those with the luck to have teaching skills in their genes don’t deserve the same compensation? Or the luck to have mathematical skills in their genes deserve that compensation? What America is it that you envision in which the luck of genetically gifted athletes can prosper at the expense of genetically gifted mathematicians?