Pro Football Chick

by: Darran Davis

We began the 2011 NFL season with a level of excitement that had not been seen in years. After a summer of doom and gloom with regards to the lockout and the negotiations of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the owners and the NFLPA finally hammered out an agreement that ensured ten years of labor peace. The previous CBA, which was negotiated by the late Gene Upshaw, was one which allowed the players to earn a larger chunk of the now 9 billion (with a B) dollar pie that is the NFL revenue. Contracts were larger than ever, and the consensus among owners was that the players were taking too much off of the bottom line. Owners cried out the profits weren’t what they once were, and some teams like Tampa Bay, Jacksonville and even Green Bay claimed not to have profited at all in 2010. My personal sense is that the unwillingness to open up the books to the NFLPA to validate these claims should have been the first red flag for the players that “the billionaires” had something up their sleeves.

The Lockout Strategy worked to perfection by preventing players from receiving off season bonuses and creating a large amount of nervousness among average NFL players. The average NFL player is
NOT a millionaire, and your Drew Brees’ and Larry Fitzgerald’s weren’t in a position to get nervous as the season approached in the summer of 2011. So the players were seemingly forced into a position to where they had the choice either to not sign the CBA offer and forfeit their salaries and bonuses or agree and lose out on a percentage of the pie they once had in the previous agreement. They chose the latter.

For the first time we are seeing the cons of the new agreement through the players eyes. For the first time the salary cap was not slated to increase in 2012, but the NFLPA borrowed against the future to ensure a slight increase this year. The Players Association also agreed to the sanctions against the Cowboys and Redskins in order to redistribute the cap space amongst the other 28 teams not sighted for taking part in collusion to keep spending down in the “uncapped” year. It seems the NFLPA is now at the mercy of the league’s stance on many issues because of what many consider to be loses in the new CBA. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft even made a statement saying that there would be slow and steady growth in the cap number over the next 10 years. UH OH players. New television contracts go into affect in the next couple of years, which means the 9 billion dollar industry is about to grow by a sizeable chunk in a VERY short period of time but players’ salaries wont. Despite this, the players willingness to give a percentage of the pie back to the owners seems to have locked them into a more steady cap environment that will prevent a majority of the deserving stars like Matt Forte, Ray Rice, Wes Welker, and Drew Brees from cashing in the way they thought they would. These players will undoubtedly be paid, but it may not be to their expectations

This is not to say that the players will not be paid well in the coming years, but in the words of the great Andrew Brandt “contractually—NFL players are sitting at the children’s table”.