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NFLPA enters negotiations with Commissioner Goodell Collective Bargaining Agreement

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FOX Sports' Alex Marvez reports that the NFLPA has entered negotiations with commissioner Roger Goodell on a six-year Collective Bargaining Agreement that would extend through the 2016 season.
"We’re going to negotiate a six-year deal," said NFLPA director DeMaurice Smith. Smith is "adamant" the owners show their documented financial records before a new CBA is struck, but the mere fact that there's progress so early in the process is promising. Both sides have too much money to lose from a lockout. "There will be an agreement at some point," said Goodell. "Sometimes, these things don’t happen until you get a little closer to the end (of the CBA). That’s just the reality." Expect a deal to be finalized next winter.
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www.rotoworld.com

This is great news and something every fan around the NFL should be interested in. I cannot imagine a year without football.
 
It actually pisses me off that the owners refuse to show their books in this process. If I were De Smith I would be pounding that point up and down the court of public appeal. Just keep pounding on it. These guys don't even want to come clean about what they're making in revenues. How can there be an earnest negotiation about labor price if the NFL wants to just say "You can just take our word that our revenues are X".
 
Please get this worked out. I literally would probably cry if we don't have football for a year. The offseason is dreadful enough.
 
hemidemon said:
Wanna bet the owners cook the books?
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No way man ! just because ther a monopoly with anti-trade agreements in place and just got
finished reeming the players with this no cap crap. That they used to dump salary.
Extended restricted free agency, and for the most part the free agents teams signed would have fit
under the cap anyway. Hell, I can't even spell collusion, but I bet Goodell can.
You tell me how guy like Dan Snyder of the Washington Foreskins, who spent 100 mil. on a piece
of crap like Haynesworth last year, all of a sudden gets fiscally responsable and only signs guys
on the cheap. Goodell got a new 1.5 billion bucks stadium that they can't pay for and are having
trouble selling seats in. I'm sure their going to treat the players fairly.
Like Deep Throat said. Follow the money.
seats in
 
It would suck so much to have a year without football. I remember back when they had a partial season lost and how they played with scrubs. The NFL is the top sport and national past time in this country. The owners and players have to find a way to solve their differences. I would probably just follow college football and not have anything more to do with the NFL if they go on strike again.
 
One of the only or few things I see coming out of our gloomy economy is that it should inspire these guys to get something done on this issue. Fans are going to get impaitient pretty quick when they are working for basically crumbs compared to the NFL execs and players who are making millions.
 
DphinBillkiller said:
It's hard to feel sorry for the owners in this.
But as long as there isn't a lock out is the main thing
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True, but it isnt all the owners.. The NFLPA has to agree these rookie contracts are out of hand, but they do not.. Its simple common sense.. A rookie should not be making millions more than an established veteran.. and to show i am not biased, his rookie year Long was the highest paid tackle in the league, and still is.. Long didnt deserve more money than Johnathon Odgen, or Orlando Pace, etc...
 
The NFLPA is not caving on the rookie wage scale issue until they get something in return. Otherwise the owners are just taking even more money off the table for themselves, and not giving it back to the players in any other form. Nobody among veterans likes that rookies get paid so much money. But the fact of the matter is, those draft contracts are one of the very few leverage points that the players actually have over the owners. And they're supposed to just give that up all willy nilly for nothing? You want to talk about fair, THAT is not fair.

Those rookie contracts have a benefit, too. They force other contracts to be higher, because everyone agrees that there's no way a guy who never played a down in the league should be worth more than a Jared Allen, or a Brandon Marshall. The owners feel bent over a barrel about rookie contracts and that's a GOOD thing because it's literally one of the only issues that they don't feel is firmly in their control. As a result, it comes time for Jared Allen to sign a new contract, he points to the contract of the #1 overall draft pick and he says you know what? I'm worth more than that guy. Pay me more than him. And the Vikings had to oblige.

The players work basically for free all through college so that they can get a crack at the NFL, they break their bodies, suffer brain damage literally (see Chris Henry), work harder at their jobs than most of us do at our jobs, they become the best in the world at what they do, and they DIE YOUNG (proven). They also run football camps for kids, participate in all kinds of charity events and run foundations, they make giving back to the community such a tradition that if a player's not doing anything like that he almost gets looked at funny.

What do the owners do? Sit in hot tubs, go to parties, hire bad coaches, collect tax breaks, decide where Super Bowls are going to be held in large part based on which city promises the most owner amenities, and ****** about how much money they have to give players.

And what baffles me is how many people choose to complain about the players' side of this whole thing when it's obvious that among major pro sports, NFL players have by far the least amount of power versus owners. NBA contracts? Guaranteed. MLB contracts? Guaranteed. When an NFL owner decides he's not going to honor the contract he negotiated with a player? Oh that's just cutting him. But when a player decides not to honor the contract he negotiated? He gets reamed by the fans.
 
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dolpns13 said:
True, but it isnt all the owners.. The NFLPA has to agree these rookie contracts are out of hand, but they do not.. Its simple common sense.. A rookie should not be making millions more than an established veteran.. and to show i am not biased, his rookie year Long was the highest paid tackle in the league, and still is.. Long didnt deserve more money than Johnathon Odgen, or Orlando Pace, etc...
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The NFLPA would never agree to drop salaries for anything. In their defense, NFL careers are ridiculously short and players deserve to receive fair value for their services the moment they enter the league because they may have suffered career ending injuries before they even hit FA. The real problem is not that the players in the draft are dictating their fair market value, the teams have been complicit in that too because they let the contracts get out of hand for top first rounders. At the same time, the players in the draft have very little real leverage because there is no other opportunity for them to go out and make even 6 figures. It's like in the Crabtree situation last year- eventually he accepted what the 49ers were offering because he needed them and that money more than they needed him.

If anything, I'd say the current CBA is unfair to guys drafted out of the first round in that they have no choice but to enter into long contracts for minimal salaries. Yet when they vastly outplay these salaries, there is no system to give them fair value until after they hit FA, which means that they may have played their most productive years for nothing and risked getting injured without getting a real payday. And sadly, for running backs like Chris Johnson, if he does hit FA teams are going to try and pay him as a guy whose best years are behind him because that is the lifespan of a running back. The only system in place for these guys is to hold out; sadly for them too many veteran players who signed market value contracts hold out two years later when they made the choice to sign a contract at that value for that duration, like Andre Johnson (who may not be holding out but is grumbling). These holdouts by multil-million dollar players trying to get a token couple million more completely undermines the situation of players like Johnson making tens of millions less than what they deserve.

I'm sure there is mutual interest in getting a deal done, but there are genuine questions that need to be examined like this one. What makes this negotiation difficult is that by nature the player's association can't yield a dime on salary, yet a more equal system needs to be devised which will leave less of a disparity in salary.
 
Sirspud said:
The NFLPA would never agree to drop salaries for anything. In their defense, NFL careers are ridiculously short and players deserve to receive fair value for their services the moment they enter the league because they may have suffered career ending injuries before they even hit FA. The real problem is not that the players in the draft are dictating their fair market value, the teams have been complicit in that too because they let the contracts get out of hand for top first rounders. At the same time, the players in the draft have very little real leverage because there is no other opportunity for them to go out and make even 6 figures. It's like in the Crabtree situation last year- eventually he accepted what the 49ers were offering because he needed them and that money more than they needed him.

If anything, I'd say the current CBA is unfair to guys drafted out of the first round in that they have no choice but to enter into long contracts for minimal salaries. Yet when they vastly outplay these salaries, there is no system to give them fair value until after they hit FA, which means that they may have played their most productive years for nothing and risked getting injured without getting a real payday. And sadly, for running backs like Chris Johnson, if he does hit FA teams are going to try and pay him as a guy whose best years are behind him because that is the lifespan of a running back. The only system in place for these guys is to hold out; sadly for them too many veteran players who signed market value contracts hold out two years later when they made the choice to sign a contract at that value for that duration, like Andre Johnson (who may not be holding out but is grumbling). These holdouts by multil-million dollar players trying to get a token couple million more completely undermines the situation of players like Johnson making tens of millions less than what they deserve.

I'm sure there is mutual interest in getting a deal done, but there are genuine questions that need to be examined like this one. What makes this negotiation difficult is that by nature the player's association can't yield a dime on salary, yet a more equal system needs to be devised which will leave less of a disparity in salary.
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You bring up a really excellent point.

Everyone talks about the NFL Draft contracts being set up to force the owners to give MORE money than a player is worth...but that's only a few of the players. The rest of the players are set up to be locked into contracts that pay them LESS than they are worth. That's part of a team's strategy, it's the reason draft picks became more valuable in the salary cap era. You hit on your draft picks and that means you've got four years of cheap starters, which lets you spend your cap money elsewhere.

Nobody talks about that from the perspective of fairness to players. They always just talk about the 10 of 250 guys in the draft that are overpaid.
 
ckparrothead said:
You bring up a really excellent point.

Everyone talks about the NFL Draft contracts being set up to force the owners to give MORE money than a player is worth...but that's only a few of the players. The rest of the players are set up to be locked into contracts that pay them LESS than they are worth. That's part of a team's strategy, it's the reason draft picks became more valuable in the salary cap era. You hit on your draft picks and that means you've got four years of cheap starters, which lets you spend your cap money elsewhere.

Nobody talks about that from the perspective of fairness to players. They always just talk about the 10 of 250 guys in the draft that are overpaid.
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We'll see how this plays out with CJ2k in the next few months. It's crazy to think that Tenn has any issue with paying the man he is pretty much there whole offense.
 
I have heard the players would concede to a rookie salary cap if the contracts were limited to a max 3 year tenor.
I wonder what kind of other concessions they would look to try and insert since this is one of their biggest bargaining chips:
- more guaranteed contracts
- arbitration possibilities
- retiree benefits

this will be an interesting negotiation to track
 
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