Redskins.com: Are We There Yet?

[Om]

http://www.redskins.com/news/newsDetail.jsp?id=15691

Are We There Yet?

March 3, 2006

By By Mark Steven

I'd planned to indulge this week in a cheerful, tastefully boastful column about the Redskins excelling in early free agency; once again identifying, recruiting and inking the very best possible number two wideout and pass-rushing defensive end available in the first few hours.

And why not? Over the last few years at this time, we've tracked Redskins One and had ourselves a ball. Not so much this year. Instead, we've found ourselves tracking emergency contract restructures, arcane revenue-stream formulas and potential roster bloodlettings.

Witnessing the NFL's labor mess this past week was like watching your parents argue as a kid. You loved 'em both. You loved the house you lived in and the family trips. You loved being a family...even when it meant putting up with your siblings invading your space and messing with your coolest stuff. And to the extent you could even understand what it was they were arguing about, you could sort of see both sides.

But man, it was hard to watch them go at it. The longer it went on and the louder it got, the deeper it worked its way down in your gut. And right at the edge of conscious though, it was scary in a way you didn't really want to think about.

I mean, what if one time they really didn't kiss and make up?

So, here we are...NFL and Redskins fans wanting nothing more than to focus on whether our team's specific needs are best addressed this year via free agency of the draft. Wanting to focus on 40 times, yards-per-catch averages and swim moves off the edge. Instead, we're forced to focus on Cash over Cap and Big vs. Small-Market revenue streams.

Bleh.

I'll admit that I absolved myself long ago of the need to have more than a layman's understanding of the inner workings of professional labor arrangements and collective bargaining agreements in the sports world. Honestly, I don't believe a layman can ever really have much more than that.

I believe that no matter how much time one spends trying to wrap his brain around the myriad terms of art (Rule of 51, Paragraph 5, designated revenues, LTBE incentives, etc.) and how they all interplay, the fact is that when one has finally finished reading, uncrossed his eyes and chewed a family-sized bottle of aspirin, he's still not going to be close to a true understanding of how it all specifically impacts any given team.

But there are a handful of guys behind closed doors at Redskins Park this week, with files spread across their desks and multiple browser windows open on their monitors, who do know...and that is what's allowed my inner Redskin to sleep this week. Especially given that the guys in question are smart, committed and good at what they do. Were this 2001, I might not feel quite so sanguine. But it's not...this is 2006. I trust that in this company, I need not spend precious column inches enumerating the differences.

So with the caveat right up front that this is a sincere layman's opinion...allow me to make at least this one unequivocal: I reject the premise I've heard quite often this week that the Redskins' aggressive approach to team-building is somehow to blame for the possibility of having to cut players they wish to keep. The "years of mismanaging the cap" accusation I've heard thrown around is only an issue today at all is because the CBA that everyone and his brother--on all sides--thought was a slam dunk to be extended long before all the eleventh hour drama, fell apart.

Why? Because the NFLPA, and those owners who have chosen for years not to spend even up to the cap--to say nothing of effectively marketing their NFL franchise gold-mines--have run squarely up against the future of the league; aggressive, effective marketers and guys aching to win, who are unwilling to keep on subsidizing the inept or uninterested.

Under Om's Doctrine of Fundamental Fairness, an owner of a team should not have unfair spending advantages based solely on geography. If a major market team located in Megalopolis makes more money simply by virtue of it's orientation on the map, it makes sense that it should be expected to share that fortunate largess, to some reasonable extent, with the team from Lesser Podunk, East Wyoming.

But...the team owner in Lesser Podunk should not then have the luxury of sitting on his haunches collecting the handout, and not put in the same sweat equity as his counterpart in Megalopolis. He should be expected to just as actively market his franchise, and just as aggressively spend the dollars he does have actively pursuing a winning product on the field. For years, we've heard about teams being "X million dollars under the cap," being celebrated as fiscally smart and competitively wise.

Maybe it was something else. Maybe they were just cheap.

Clearly, the owners have some serious turkey to talk about this issue, and that will continue, no doubt, long after the current CBA conundrum is resolved one way or another.

As far as the issue of management versus labor...the Fundamental Fairness Doctrine dictates that the players, as the ones risking blood and bone, should be well paid and well provided for once their playing days are over, particularly those who leave the game with permanent medical concerns. But it also dictates that the players recognize that it is the owners, not they, who invest in and bear the huge financial risks of running multi-million dollar enterprises.

If I was forced at gunpoint to "take a side" at this point, given what we actually know and my general sense of how the world ought to work...at the end of the day, I'd probably consider myself a management guy.

Putting myself in Daniel Snyder's loafers, I think know how I'd feel. I'd be thinking I made myself into a multi-millionaire by busting my backside my entire life, and by proving better than my competition. I'd be thinking how I rewarded myself for that success by buying an NFL franchise, one that I happened to love as a kid, and how in just a few short years I'd turned it into the highest revenue-generating franchise in the sport. One that also happens to be on the cusp of being a regular contender again.

I'd be thinking I'd earned the right to make some money here, while also enjoying the spoils of winning. America, right?

I'd be thinking I'm fully prepared to pay my employees a fair wage, because I know a happy employee is a productive employee, and that despite what you might have heard there actually is a heart in here under my Oxford. But at the end of the day, if I believed they were set on asking for more than a fair wage, given the risks I was taking, that I might have to do what business owners all over the world have done since they first invented business -- tell my people that if they won't work for the fair wage I'm offering, I'll have to reluctantly find someone else who will.

Cold, perhaps. But very much the real world.

Think not? There are 32 NFL teams, times rosters of around 60...that's 1,920 players. Given the thousands of up and coming college players, not to mention the Arena and World leagues, think the NFL couldn't field a viable product again in a couple of years with the talent base already out there and chomping at the bit? Think there aren't literally tens upon tens of thousands of excellent young athletes out there growing up right now, who wouldn't give up a vital appendage this very minute for the chance of making even half of what the average NFL player makes today?

I'm not anti-player, just thinking that when it comes right down to it, it's the owners who hold the cards. And beyond that, I believe they're also well within their rights, within the Fundamental Fairness Doctrine, to play those cards if necessary given the financial risks they take in providing the players with brightly-lit stage upon which they can become wealthy.

Does all that mean the players should roll over and not try to squeeze what they can out of the pie? Of course not. But it does mean the current crop, or any future crop for that matter, needs to be very careful not to assume that if they were to walk, the game would walk with them. It would not.

So, back to the here and now. What I do think is going to happen? I think that come Monday morning, there will be a new CBA in place. I think that Redskins One will be aloft, and that the Redskins will head into free agency without having lost even one player they really want to keep. And I think that they will have enough cap room to have a fair shot at being a player in free agency. We'll be happy again and doing what NFL fans are supposed to be doing this time of year; dreaming about playoff runs come autumn.

No, the loud, disconcerting and ugly public argument won't have settled all the underlying issues. NFL fans are not so naive as to believe that labor peace necessarily equals a universal case of the warm and fuzzies. But both sides will have done what has to be done in any lasting marriage; having argued themselves out, they will have found a way to reach a workable middle ground, tried to explain it to the kids in way they can understand, then turned to face the future together as committed partners must.

And who knows, maybe something seriously good can come from this whole mess. You know how sometimes, when parents make up, they take their kids on vacation to celebrate?

Well, if you're listening, Mr. Snyder...we vote for Disney World.

Hail.

:helmet:

[cactitle]

Great article as always from ES!HTTR!!

[aussieskin]

this has been an excellent use of the lexicon, I actually understood what you were saying, and I agree wholeheartedly with the point of the exercise,

HAIL

[praise_gibbs]

:applause:

Great work as always Om! That last part about Disney World gave me the chills. As we all know, you generally go to Disney World after you win the SUPER BOWL!! I had to make sure that last bit did not go unnoticed.

You are dead on about the fact that Snyder did in fact work his butt off and rewarded himself by purchasing his boy-hood love, the Washington Redskins. Something that I will, someday, do the same thing! The Cardinals, Browns, amognst others seem to almost do nothing to take risks to get that big reward, the Lombardi Trophy. Afterall, risk equals reward. Why should Snyder, Kraft, Lurie, Jones, etc. have to help those guys out? Revenue Sharing is ridiculous! IMO...

[TaylorPickSix]

Excellent article. Very well written. I really enjoyed it.

[actorguy1]

Very well put, don't know if I can pick a side in this. It enrages me though when sports in general admit that it is an entity built on entertaining the fan yet when other sports decide to strike or lockout, all it really seems to hurt are the fans.The fans who have so loyaly supported their teams through every championship and every failure. The fans who root for the ''Laundry"(meaning we root only for the jersey because the same players never seem to stay in that jersey for too long these days). The NFL cannot not and will not have a work stoppage. So says one nameless fan who means nothing to professional sports, except for the money I spend on it out of my own pocket.

[elkabong82]

Bravo. My sentiments exactly. I always enjoy reading his articles on this site, and this one was no exception.

[wysknz1]

http://www.redskins.com/news/newsDetail.jsp?id=15691

Are We There Yet?

with the team from Lesser Podunk, East Wyoming.

:helmet:

______________________________________________________________

CAREFUL NOW!!

[Sknsnation]

Nice job,very good reading. I always enjoy your articles,thanks.......HTTR

[Jumbo]

Om, the thing about this one is:

You put it all out there right in the middle of the room (or at least at one end of it) for everyone to see, all at one time, all in one place. I just wish this could blanket the airwaves, even briefly.

[Jimbo]

WOW! It had action, it had drama and it kept me spellbound on the edge of my feet. Definitely two thumbs up. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Too much? How about "It has a nice beat and is easy to dance to. I give it an 85".

[Peregrine]

lol great way to end the piece, great job

[Gallen5862]

That was a great article Om. That needs to be put out in the public so that the media knows what real fans thing.

[SEZWHO]

Here, here!!Right on om

[HapHaszard]

Too much? How about "It has a nice beat and is easy to dance to. I give it an 85".

your too young to remember "Bandstand" LOL

Excellent article as allways. I look forward to seeing them.

[Macd36]

outstanding !

[wskin44]

Om, although you kind of deny an intricate knowledge of CBA & revenue sharing details, it's clear that you have an astute understading of the underlying issues.

The right of the owners to the equity in their franchises is the boundary that the Union wants to cross. Last summer Gene Upshaw was asked about the fairness of the players wanting a large piece of total gross revenues from owners. Many owners are paying a large debt service for their stadiums and this is not taken into account when dividing up gross revenues. Upshaw replied that the owners are gaining in the value of their equity in their franchises and that is not being shared with the players. As Om has deftly said, the players took no risk in that investment and don't have a right to a share of the equity. That is the essential difference between owners and employees. If Upshaw doesn't get it yet, then there will be no agreement.

[Utah]

Very nice Om.

Well done.

[TLusby]

This is what I expect from the WP and WT. Why can't they write like this? Let's see............maybe they aren't true fans!!!

[Om]

Thanks for the kind words, gents. One thing I will say in partial defense of the "real" press guys ... they have to satisfy their editors and the need to fill X number of column inches per day on this stuff. Plus they're required to try to keep track of all the shifting winds. When someone leaks that talks have broken off, that's a story and it has to be reported. When someone else leaks a half hour later that talks are back on, that too is a story that has to be reported.

As a columnist whose only "responsibility" is to produce content a certain week, w/o real constraints on length or subject matter or any "angle" imposed by an employer, I get to step back, take in the whole picture, and give my opinions---hopefully in a way that is at least semi-informed and semi-entertaining. The team has been remarkably tolerant of all the excesses I've indulged in trying to stay within those loose boundaries.

[Ax]

As a columnist whose only "responsibility" is to produce content a certain week, w/o real constraints on length or subject matter or any "angle" imposed by an employer, I get to step back, take in the whole picture, and give my opinions---hopefully in a way that is at least semi-informed and semi-entertaining. The team has been remarkably tolerant of all the excesses I've indulged in trying to stay within those loose boundaries.

More accurately, another example of a smartly run franchise taking advantage of all the assets available to it for the enjoyment of us all.

You my friend, are one of the "core players" of this franchise.

[PCS]

More accurately, another example of a smartly run franchise taking advantage of all the assets available to it for the enjoyment of us all.

You my friend, are one of the "core players" of this franchise.

Oh what a suck up. Yeeeeeesh.

*

Nice read Om. I especially like the ending.

[Ax]

Oh what a suck up. Yeeeeeesh.

*

Nice read Om. I especially like the ending.

No really, that's mud on my nose, from uh...........gardening! Yeah, that's the ticket. Gardening.

You gotta admit though, he shur do rat purty, dudn't he?

[PCS]

No really, that's mud on my nose, from uh...........gardening! Yeah, that's the ticket. Gardening.

You gotta admit though, he shur do rat purty, dudn't he?

He shur does have a pretty pen.

Oh...and um...whipe that off would ya?

[chris_c_19960]

This is a mess Here I ve been hoping for this mess to resolve and come to some sort of agreement so we can enjoy another free agency spending now we have to renogotiate and possibly have to address matters in the draft. I was really hoping for the redskins being a competitor in Antwan Randal El market now it looks like we wont be able to do that. It also looks like if Redskins cut Matt Bowen that he may be on the Dallas Cowboys who we play on Thanksgiving. Let s hope that this all works out some way.