I think you will like them.

There is a lot of Legal speak in the CBA that can confuse anyone who is not a lawyer, Not that I am. I hope you don’t need to worry, Roger Goodell is going to do everything in his power to prevent a lockout. Whether the owners or players agree, now that is another story.

about 6-0. From what I saw in Training Camp, I could almost visualize Josh McDaniels plan. Of course there was help from the logical minds on this site also. It’s all their fault for giving everyone here insight and seeing through the mist that the media opines.
13-3 Baby!

We know that most of them have been subsidized by Municipal Bonds that are basically loans from the taxpayers. Whether that gets repaid or not, who can say. Politicians have a way of hiding these things from the public. It is probably intermingled with the Stadium Lease.
As for your other question, that will be in one of the next posts, so you will just have to wait. =)

Hopefully, this stuff will fill the bye week and distract everyone from the fact that our Broncos won’t be playing. I’m sure the staff will create other stories to ponder.

I was going to say the same thing. Sports stadiums financed by the private sector are extremely rare — Pac Bell park is the only recent example I can think of. In general, I am extraordinarily skeptical of owners who cite stadium costs as a drag on their finances.

I support revenue sharing in principle. The problem with it has always been the cheapskate owners of the world. In this case I’d point to the Glazers in Tampa. They take their revenue sharing $$, then cut every corner possible with respect to on-field spending. I think Tampa is $40 million under the cap this year. And they basically admitted to hiring Raheem Morris in part because his age and inexperience made him cheap.

One measure that’s been floated is a minimum salary spending level that owners would have to meet to get their share of the revenue-sharing pool. That’s a measure that higher-spending owners and the NFLPA would both support.

Jerry Jones spends a lot of money and effort on his team, which translates to the success of the league. He is ticked off at the Cleveland Browns owner Mike Brown, whose frugality is legend, Brown doesn’t spend enough money to keep up his share of league promotion. Jerry doesn’t want to share the revenue pool when he’s giving, for example, 85% and Brown gives 15%. This is just an example but if you look at the two franchises, you can see who is successful and who isn’t. If you are giving more effort than a co worker, wouldn’t you want a bigger piece of the pie?

and I am a member of a Union. I have also been in business for myself, so I kind of understand both points of view. Unfortunately, it is you and I who will ultimately pay for it all.

Zappa, the owners’ complaints that the current CBA disadvantaged them would be easier to swallow if they opened their books. But they won’t. As long as we know all the details about player compensation, but little about team-level profits and escalation in franchise values, the only thing a person can do is remain skeptical.

Perfect timing on this. What better time than the bye week to get into this?

Revenue Sharing and The Salary Cap
by Mark Lawrence

Revenue sharing

About 2/3 of the NFL’s money comes from the TV deal. The players get about 2/3 of team revenue. So, more or less, the TV contract goes to pay the players. These contracts are typically for about 5 years, and every time they are renegotiated the price goes up. So do player’s salaries.

The money from the TV contract is share and share alike – the Redskins, Cowboys, Bills, and Packers get identical checks. This money is key to the success of the smaller franchises. Without the TV contract money, there is simply no way on earth that Green Bay could ever field a competitive team.

There are a lot of other sources for NFL money. NFL licensed jerseys, for example that Randy Moss jersey you put on your kid last Halloween when you dressed him up as a demon, result in license fees going to the NFL. This money is also equally shared.

When the teams play, there is a “gate,” the money people pay for seats. This is in the neighborhood of about $2.5M per game. This money is split 60-40, with the visiting team getting 40% of the gate. Because of this teams like Jacksonville and Arizona just love it when the Packers or Cowboys come to play. These are the two or three games each year these teams can count on selling out, and the money they get is very welcome. Sometimes you will find that to buy a ticket to see the Packers on the road you have to buy a package of two or three tickets. This is nothing more or less than a device to get money from Packers fans into the pockets of the other teams owners.

Unshared money

The newer stadiums have large box seats which are leased to corporations. This money is not currently shared, which gives individual teams a big incentive to get a new stadium with fewer normal seats and more corporate seats.

Some teams (read: Cowboys) are starting to make their own licensed products and refuse to share the money. They theory is that Jerry Jones is a brilliant marketer (who just happens to live next to half the country’s oil wells) so why should he share his hard-earned money with a slacker like Art Rooney (who just happens to live next to a bunch of shut-down steel mills in a solidly blue-collar town). The box seat and license money is a subject of great debate at this instant, and is the big holdup in renewing the NFL labor contract: the owners cannot sign a labor contract until they know how much money they’re taking in, and until the new revenue agreement is signed they don’t know that.

Finally, a well designed stadium can bring in other money for events like concerts, weddings, a pro shop, and the sale of $12 hot dogs. This money is not shared, again giving teams a huge incentive for a new stadium. The Packer’s stadium is a model of efficiency, and does a league-leading job of extracting money from the local residents. If Green Bay were in the Spy / Defense / Government business like Washington, or the oil business like Dallas, the Packers would almost certainly lead the league in revenue. In fact Green Bay makes placemats, napkins and toilet paper, so the Packers are about #12 in the league in revenue.

In 2005 teams will make about $110M – $140M per year in gross revenue, and the players get about $85M of that. The $85M number is the salary cap. This is an agreed upon percentage of total league revenue divided by 32. Each team may spend $85M on players, no more. Each team must spend at least 80% of the salary cap, it’s not allowed to be a complete cheapskate. However, things are much more complicated than that simple statement. First, the TV contract has escalator clauses. This has nothing to do with shopping malls and elevators, it means the contract payments increase each year. In ’06 the salary cap is likely to be over $100M, about a 20% increase. This means that the top contracts are continually going up in value, and a contract signed a couple years ago is suddenly looking pretty thin. Although the US as a whole has almost no inflation, the NFL lives in an artificial world with about a 10% inflation rate. The idea of salary indexing has not really happened in the NFL, with the result that you see people sign very competitive contracts and two or three years later comparable players are making twice as much. This promotes a lot of hard feelings and contract problems. Appendix 1 shows the historic salary cap.

All 53 team players and the 8 players on the practice squad count towards the salary cap. A team may not exceed the salary cap. If a team does exceed the cap, the NFL can waive players from the team, starting with those earning the lowest salaries, until the team’s payroll has fallen under the cap. In addition, the NFL may fine a team up to $1 million per day for exceeding the cap. In practice this doesn’t come up because if a proposed contract would put the team over the salary cap, the NFL won’t approve the contract.

Player benefits are currently capped at $12,156,000 per club above the salary cap.

Very helpful.

because the owners voided the extension. That will be resolved when the two sides agree to a new Contract.

I’m interested in the concussions/occupational health issue, too. If I were running the NFLPA (full disclosure: I’m not), I would want to wait and see what happens with health care legislation before deciding upon my bargaining goals and strategy. If the new legislation bans the use of pre-existing conditions to make people ineligible for insurance, and if it stipulates an annual out-of-pocket maximum for health costs, the players would be able to use more of their leverage on non-health-care aspects of a future CBA.

I do have a little information about the concussion issue. I don’t know if it fits with the next post or not. And ChiBronx, there is a health and welfare problem that needs to be addressed.
I’m working on it….

Both sides will push until the Eleventh hour, then strike a deal preventing an Uncapped Year. The money means too much to both sides not to adjust to the economy. Everyone else has. So should they.