tbd: NFL lockout: Redskins player rep Vonnie Holliday still not confident it will be avoided (MET)

[texasthunder]

Holliday said “I fully believe there will be a season next year,” but because there isn’t a sense of urgency on the owners’ part at this time, he doesn’t believe a deal will be reached even by March, which would be the start of the NFL’s next calendar year and would be the deadline by which CBA must be reached allow teams to conduct business as usual

http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-skins/2011/01/nfl-lockout-redskins-player-rep-vonnie-holliday-still-not-confident-it-will-be-avoided-6833.html

And from Roger Goodell- January 3rd

With one of the most exciting regular seasons now completed and the playoffs about to begin, let me first thank you and all NFL fans for your incredible support. Many fans have been asking me where we stand on signing a new collective bargaining agreement with the players union. Let me update you and be clear at the outset:

I know we can and will reach an agreement.

A significant change would be to resolve fan complaints about preseason by modifying our 20-game format. Fans tell us they don’t like the quality of the preseason games, and we’re listening. An enhanced season of 18 regular season and two preseason games would not add a single game for the players collectively, but would give fans more meaningful, high-quality football.

http://view.ed4.net/v/IIFVAZM/B580/08LV8P8/55SG4K/MAILACTION=1&FORMAT=H

Click on links to read the whole articles

[KingGibbs]

Goodell comes off as a patronizing shmuck IMO.

[MartinC]

The argument by owners that switching two preseason games to two regular season games does not add more football for the players does not fly with me and I'm sure the players. First the starters don't play a down in the last preseason game anyway under normal circumstances and you simply can not equate the physicality and intensity of a regular season game with a typical preseason game.

The only argument they cam make is increased revenues which would filter down into player salaries via the revenue sharing formula.

It makes too much sense for a deal to be done for both sides, provided egos and lawyers are kept on chains a deal will get done but probably at the last possible opportunity.

[Riggo#44]

I don't think fans really want an 18-game schedule either...I know I don't

[Mark The Homer]

10. Please adhere to the following policies when using content from outside sources:

If you are posting an article from an outside source, title your thread in the following format: "SHORTFORM SOURCE: HEADLINE" (Ex.: "WP: Redskins Name Mike Shanahan New Head Coach") without editorializing the headline with your own version.

Note to OP: If you had cut and pasted the headline, you wouldn't have misspelled the player's name.

[Crazy Levi]

I don't think fans really want an 18-game schedule either...I know I don't

I don't. What's the point? The good teams will just rest their starters 2 more weeks. The bad teams will just give up 2 weeks earlier.

The only ones who really benefit from this are season ticket holders, who will have one fewer worthless ticket per season.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

I don't. What's the point? The good teams will just rest their starters 2 more weeks. The bad teams will just give up 2 weeks earlier.

I don't understand this reasoning. Full disclosure, I'm neither for or against 18 games...I don't really care. But, why do people always assume that teams will rest their starters for 2 extra weeks? How many teams would have been able to begin resting their starters in game 16 of this year if there were still 2 more games to go? Not Chicago, not Philly, not Atlanta, not New Orleans, not Pittsburgh...maybe New England. The 2 extra weeks actually gives you 2 more weeks of meaningful football at the top.

Now, there will be some cases of bad teams playing 2 more meaningless games...but a 3-10 team has that down the stretch no matter how many games are left in the season.

[The Tris]

The only ones who really benefit from this are season ticket holders, who will have one fewer worthless ticket per season.

And the owners.

As far as the compromise, 18 games is going to be a part of it, as well as a rookie wage scale and no more franchise tags.

Whether bigger issues like media and internet revenue sharing, and improved pension plan for retired players is addressed, that is another story.

As far as predicting whether a lockout or not, last week I said the following:

There are going to be two big benchmarks that will indicate our odds of a lockout or not.

First, come Monday, 20 team will be taking stock of their season, and making decisions about the future of the coaching staff. With multiple interm coaches, and a handful of teams who may or may not fire their HCs, we should look to what happens there as our first indication.

If the owners end up firing a lot of the hot seat coaches and/or choose not to retain their interim guys, this should be a strong indicator that they are optimistic they can reach a compromise (as it is really in their hands). No owner is going to hire and pay a new coach to install new schemes then lock him and out and prevent that.

Second, January 15th is the date underclassmen have to declare by. They will be smartly advised as to the prospects of a lockout. I'd go as far as saying if Andrew Luck declares, there is a better chance of a 2011 season than not. If we see a mass return to school...look out.

So we have the next two weeks to read what is happening before we freak out. Goodell has said new CBA in place by the Super Bowl. I doubt that, but I do think that we will have a very good indication of which direction we are going before the Conference Championship games.

Thus far, many underclassmen have declared for the draft, including Kyle Rudolph, who early in the year was vocal in stating he would not declare if there was a chance of a lockout. Again, this suggests that they are being advised that there will be no lockout.

and OTOH,with Frazier and Garrett no longer interim, Kubiak, Del Rio, Lewis and (for now) Fisher staying put, this tells me that the owners are thinking more that there might not be a season next year.

So who knows where we are headed. But most players sound like they are preparing for the worst:

"We're about to be locked out of the building. Our key cards are not going to work anymore. That's what it is. We've got to prepare for that."

[Popeman38]

The argument by owners that switching two preseason games to two regular season games does not add more football for the players does not fly with me and I'm sure the players. First the starters don't play a down in the last preseason game anyway under normal circumstances and you simply can not equate the physicality and intensity of a regular season game with a typical preseason game.

The only argument they cam make is increased revenues which would filter down into player salaries via the revenue sharing formula.

It makes too much sense for a deal to be done for both sides, provided egos and lawyers are kept on chains a deal will get done but probably at the last possible opportunity.

The owners/commish have already stated that if the season was 18 games, existing contracts would have a prorated 2 game increase. Assume a player is making $1.6M, that is $100K/game. The contract would be prorated to $1.8M

Additionally, I would only have to pay for 1 BS game instead of 2. The owners would have no ground to raise prices, since we already pay for a 10 home games. Since we do not receive a discount for preseason, moving a game from pre to regular season should not impact the fans bottom line a bit.

[onedrop]

There is not going to be a lockout. The nfl will not risk the lost revenue, immediate and due to grudges. This is just their way of trying to scare everyone into accepting the 18 game season change that goodell obviously wants so badly.

[SKINSFAN87]

I don't think fans really want an 18-game schedule either...I know I don't

I'm all for an 18 game season as long as it means getting rid of 2 worthless preseason games. I think that getting rid of preseason games is something that all fans would really want.

---------- Post added January-5th-2011 at 08:26 PM ----------

People call the owners greedy and they are the ones that destroy the game. If you haven't looked lately they are the reason and the only reason that there is a NFL. Without owners of teams, willing to put up millions of dollars several times over, we fans wouldn't be able to watch the game that we love. I hope that this cba thing gets done, cuz I wanna watch games next year, but I think that the players and the union should bend alot more than what the owners do, since it's the owners that are allowing these players to make millions of dollars. Just IMO.

[texasthunder]

I would be in favor of getting rid of the two preseason games and having two more regular season games.

Could make things more interesting with teams trying to qualify for the playoffs,and

it would give us Redskin fans two more games before they are eliminated.

[HigSkin]

This is a really good article because it breaks out the financial side of the issues.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576066153465352540.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

Will the Lights Go Out in the NFL?

The great Washington Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgensen once likened his job to "holding group therapy for 50,000 people a week." By that measure, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell holds in his hands the mental health of tens of millions of Americans. Which is quite a burden—especially since he may soon have to deliver some very bad news.

The 51-year-old Mr. Goodell represents the owners of the most valuable sports league in the world, which today begins its playoffs. For the moment, fan attention is on the road to the Super Bowl—on the perennially favored New England Patriots, the defending champion New Orleans Saints, the resurgent Philadelphia Eagles and their quarterback, Michael Vick, of dog-fighting infamy.

But the highest-stakes action isn't taking place on the gridiron. It's out of sight, in boardrooms and over telephones, as Mr. Goodell and league owners are trying to get the players union to agree to a new collective-bargaining agreement. Negotiations have gone on for two years and if they're not settled by March 3, the NFL will suffer a work stoppage. The roughly $9 billion-a-year enterprise, in other words, might take next season off.

It's come to this, Mr. Goodell says as we sit in his midtown Manhattan office, because the owners made the mistake of signing a bad collective-bargaining agreement in 2006. The deal, he says, raised players' pay more than was healthy for the league, and left owners with insufficient cash to invest in their product. From 2006 to 2008—when owners decided to opt out of the deal, setting up this showdown—player costs outpaced revenue growth and owners' cash flow declined by $200 million.

On top of that, the commissioner says, new revenue sources are hard to find. The prime example he offers is the cost of building stadiums now that credit is hard to come by and high-tech amenities are increasingly needed to lure fans from their 60-inch, high-def home televisions.

"We signed this new collective-bargaining agreement in 2006—we haven't had a stadium built since then," says Mr. Goodell. The new complexes in New York and Dallas, he notes, were already under construction before 2006. Since then, owners have considered new stadiums to be too much of a strain on their scarcer resources. "That's not good for the players, it's not good for the game, it's not good for the fans," he says.

The difficulty of building new stadiums, Mr. Goodell argues, is why for 15 years there hasn't been an NFL franchise in Los Angeles—the country's second-largest market. "We need to get back to a system that allows us to make those investments to grow the game," he says.

Another impediment to growth, the commissioner says, is that the 2006 deal failed to address the exorbitant compensation of rookies. Too often, top draft picks get enormous sums of guaranteed money only to underperform at the professional level. "I don't like to name names," Mr. Goodell says with characteristic politesse, but readers may think of JaMarcus Russell, the quarterback drafted first overall by the Oakland Raiders in 2007. The Raiders guaranteed Mr. Russell $31 million, and after three disappointing years he was no longer playing in the NFL.

In an open letter to fans this week, Mr. Goodell cited a recently published list of the 50 highest-paid American athletes. Five were NFL rookies. "Every other athlete on the list was a proven veteran," he lamented. He also noted that "in 2009, NFL clubs contracted $1.2 billion to 256 drafted rookies with $585 million guaranteed before they had stepped on an NFL field."

"The money that we're paying to rookies in our current [salary] cap system should be going to proven veterans," he tells me.

Proposing to revise the collective-bargaining agreement in order to shift the pay scale toward veterans and away from rookies is, as far as labor negotiations go, relatively inoffensive. More controversial is Mr. Goodell's desire to extend the NFL season to 18 games from 16, by shortening the preseason to two games from four.

"The one clear message we get from our fans is they don't like four preseason games. . . . As they're challenged from their own financial standpoint, they don't want to pay for lesser-quality product—that's preseason games," Mr. Goodell says. The league estimates that going to an 18-game season could generate $500 million in additional revenue.

But it could also increase injuries to players, which is why the idea is generally unpopular in locker rooms. As is, the average NFL career lasts barely more than three years. "We're not automobiles; we're not machines; we're humans," said Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis last year. "You've got to ask yourself how many people are truly healthy in 18 games." For players to accept a longer season, union officials have said, the league would have to offer concessions like reduced off-season workouts and increased health-care benefits.

Click on the link to read the entire article

[wildbill1952]

First, when a corporation (the NFL owners) says that finances are the reason it is adopting a certain policy (reducing the amount of compnsation to the players in this instance), the public and the employees should not be required to accept the corporations word at face value. Yet the NFL owners and Mr. Goodell are asking the football fans to accept their word at face value. The American public has learned a hard lesson that corproate America's leaders are every bit as corrupt as the politicians they bribe. If they want us to beleve they're having financial difficulies, then open up their books for public scrutiny, something the union has requested several times. So far, all have refused.

Second. personally, I don't care if rookies get a restricted salary cap if the money actually goes to the veterans. But I want to see the money in the hands of the veterans before I think it's a good idea. Trusting the owners to put it in the hands of the veterans, and not in their own pockets, requires trusting the owners. From Jerruh to Snyder, and at every board room in between, I don't trust any of them. Put it in writing.

[HigSkin]

First, when a corporation (the NFL owners) says that finances are the reason it is adopting a certain policy (reducing the amount of compnsation to the players in this instance), the public and the employees should not be required to accept the corporations word at face value. Yet the NFL owners and Mr. Goodell are asking the football fans to accept their word at face value. The American public has learned a hard lesson that corproate America's leaders are every bit as corrupt as the politicians they bribe. If they want us to beleve they're having financial difficulies, then open up their books for public scrutiny, something the union has requested several times. So far, all have refused.

Second. personally, I don't care if rookies get a restricted salary cap if the money actually goes to the veterans. But I want to see the money in the hands of the veterans before I think it's a good idea. Trusting the owners to put it in the hands of the veterans, and not in their own pockets, requires trusting the owners. From Jerruh to Snyder, and at every board room in between, I don't trust any of them. Put it in writing.

Maybe I'm being naive but wouldn't an increase in salary cap take care of spreading that money to Vets? At least in DC, Snyder seems willing to push the dollars that way. :pfft:

---------- Post added January-8th-2011 at 09:12 AM ----------

Here's something else interesting about life after the SB....

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=schefter_adam&page=10spot/10wildcard

Playoffs are a last bit of normal NFL

By Adam Schefter

We interrupt debate about the intriguing postseason matchups to drop in a dose of stone-cold reality.

These could be football's finest final days for a long time -- a very long time.

Welcome to the new world order, where offseason football rules will not be what they've been.

Until there is a new collective bargaining agreement -- which almost no one is expecting for months -- there will be no free agency. Teams will not be allowed to shop for new players, players will not be allowed to sign with new teams and any player movement will be shut down.

Until there is a new agreement, there will be no trades. Washington cannot trade Donovan McNabb or Albert Haynesworth; Denver cannot trade Kyle Orton; no trades of existing contracts will be permitted until a new agreement is signed -- whenever that is.

Until there is a new deal, injured players such as Packers running back Ryan Grant, Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams or Jets safety Jim Leonhard cannot rehab at team training facilities. Each is on his own, forced to supervise his own rehabilitation to make sure he is on track for next season.

And should any player working out on his own suffer an injury that prevents him from playing next season, then he we will not be paid for that season. This will affect the way every player trains -- never mind that no one knows when or even if next season will kick off.

There will be a draft, April 28-30. But after Super Bowl XLV in Arlington, Texas, on Feb. 6, the draft will be the only way teams can try to improve themselves until there is a new agreement.

The offseason as usual will not exist. The rules are not what they once were. It's hard to imagine it not operating the same way now.

But short of a new collective bargaining agreement that almost no one is expecting anytime soon, it won't.

A new year, and new world, are upon us.