For both casual and devoted fans of any given sport, there’s no more frightening word to enter the discussion than “lockout.” Sports seasons are supposed to come and go like actual seasons, not go and then wait for extremely rich people to shake hands every couple of years.
(Also a problem - the NFLPA’s executive director apparently has a basketball in his office. Sir, do you know what sport you’re representing?)
But that’s what the NFL is headed toward, according to the executive director of the NFLPA, De Smith*. Smith was at Colts camp today and told reporters that’s what he’s expecting when the current collective bargaining agreement expires in 2011. Oh, good.
Per PRO FOOTBALL TALK:
NFLPA Executive Director De Smith told reporters in Indianapolis on Monday that he’s convinced that owners will lock out the players after the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires following the 2010 season.
Smith said he still wants to know why owners opted to reopen the current labor deal two years early. For the past several months, one of the primary NFLPA talking points has centered on the refusal of the NFL to generally open the books regarding whether and to what extent the franchises are making money.
Smith also voiced his desire to find out why the owners exercised their ability to opt out of the current CBA as of the 2011 season. Maybe it’s because “because we can” isn’t a good enough reason in his eyes, though an arbitration judge would tend to disagree with Smith.
The scary aspect of this is that football could potentially not be here waiting for us with open arms in the fall of 2011, though - sorry, Mr. Smith - it’s way too early to begin raising that spectre and expect to be taken seriously. There’s a good two years to work with before a lockout can begin affecting things like rosters and practices, and the only way the lockout happens is if both sides spend the vast majority of the time not hammering out a deal.
All that said, as Florio correctly notes, there’s more that stands in the way than mere inactivity. Despite generally refusing to open up their books, owners insist that they’re either not making a profit or not making enough of a profit for a league to be worth their while. Unless they’re somehow hiding high-eight- or even nine-figure profits (and let’s be honest: that’s probably not happening), the argument holds a little clout.
At the same time, though, the NFL’s labor policies are already among the unfriendliest in professional sports. Granted, the league would probably be a financial wreck (and some teams wholly unwatchable) if contracts were guaranteed like in baseball and basketball. But at the same time, pension and disability insurance doesn’t seem to be up to par for what it would normally take to care for a longtime veteran who’s decades into retirement. And God help us all if the concussion issue keeps turning out worse for the league and its players.
It may be the case that, in an era of highly expensive health care and stadium upkeep, the days of nine-figure contracts may be in their twilight. But it may also be the case that the owners’ shrinking pockets are results of their own free-spending actions and acquisitions, not a problem that needs to be foisted back upon labor.
It’s impossible to know which side is right and which side needs to make the majority of the concessions without greater transparency from owners. It doesn’t need to turn into a PR war or even be made fully public, but the NFLPA’s got to be able to protect themselves from unverifiable claims and demands from ownership, otherwise there’s no way to prevent an objectively exploitative situation.
*It’s short for “DeMaurice,” by the way; it’s not like the nurse began writing “Desmond” on the birth certificate then fell asleep two letters into it.
11:09 am on August 18th, 2009
Sports team owners always grumble about not making an operating profit whenever they want somebody else to give them more money - players, fans, taxpayers. But the system isn’t structured to make an operating profit. That’s not the point.
First, owners of sports teams get their return on their investment in non-monetary ways. They get in the news a lot. They have people fawning over them, jumping to accomodate their every desire. They get the best seats in the house on game day, and guaranteed attendance at invitiation-only championship events such as the Superbowl and the weeks of parties leading up to it. They can send politicians and thousands of fans quaking in their shoes just by hinting that they might want to relocate the team if at any point they don’t feel “unloved”.
Secondly, an operating profit can be pretty easily manipulated into a loss if the owners have a reason to do so (and vice-versa). It’s just a question of whether they move their expenses forward in time or defer them to later. And the team expenses usually include a rather large amount of “owner’s expense”, from salaries to travel to some very expensive perks.
Third, the owners make their profit (usually a huge one) when they sell or relocate their teams - not from year-to-year operations.
Finally, if the financial situation was so bad for the owners, you would think that NOBODY in their right mind would want to be one. But there seems to be a lot of people who are quite ready to step into the job if it becomes available.
So the whole idea of getting the owners to open up their books is a red herring. It’s being proposed because they want to deflect the owners from using the “poor me” approach publically. But it’s also an incredible nuisance factor for the owners - they don’t want their personal expenses which are included in the team books to be made public, so they will never submit the books to open scrutiny.