CBA Status - Eyeing a Deal by July 21

[fyo]

Let the whoring continue... there'll be no vote today.

One new detail that leaked out was an agreement to seriously bump up the minimum wage over the life of the 10-year CBA. For the rookie minimum, it would be a 10% increase every year. That's a bump of around half a million, from $325k last year to $842k in 2020. The increase for second-year players would be even greater at 12% a year, from $400k last year to $1.24M in 2020.

For reference, that's TWICE the rate of increase of the old CBA (at 5%). Since this is cumulative, that means the old plan called for a 1.6 fold increase in salary over 10 years (for rookies), whereas the new CBA increases this to 2.6 fold.

Considering that over half the players in the league make some kind of minimum (not necessarily rookie or 2nd-year) and that the increase really targets the "lowest" income group (hard to call people making well over $300k/year "low income"), it's really something that will affect players.

[MikeO]

^^It was the owners who were unhappy with the old deal and wanted this lockout..lol. And if what you wrote above is true they are so clueless it sounds like they are giving themselves a worse deal. I know on the rookie wage scale from picks 16 on down, nothnig changed. All they did was change the pay structure of the Top 15 picks, which is where the problem really was. But this rookie wage sacale everyone was barking about for years, isn't the grand overhaul everyone thought it would be. It changes, yes. But not to the extent everyone thought it would.

The best thing the players did out of all of this was raise the salary cap floor forcing teams to spend. So now teams like Tampa Bay can't be $40 mill under the cap like they have in the past.

The players were united from day 1 and it will show when they come out ahead in this deal. While it was always owner vs owner and their in-fighting that caused this lockout it will come back to haunt them since they weren't united and the deal they probably strike won't please all the owners. But now the owners are backed in a corner and don't want to look like the really bad guys and prolong this anymore. And be the league that had to cancel games on the 10 year anniversiry of 9-11..etc They are in the position to "CAVE IN" and just end this debacle that they started!

[fyo]

^^It was the owners who were unhappy with the old deal and wanted this lockout..lol. And if what you wrote above is true they are so clueless it sounds like they are giving themselves a worse deal.

Sigh... sometimes you just seize on something like a little terrier with absolutely no regard for the bigger picture.

The owners don't care what rookie players are paid. It doesn't matter. It all comes out of the same pool of money, so more for the rookies just leaves less for the vets. This is mainly an internal players' issue. It's a question of how they want to distribute the finite compensation they get.

it was always owner vs owner and their in-fighting

I've seen exactly no evidence of owners infighting in this dispute.

Let's look at what has happened:

In the uncapped year, 2010, the NFL "underspent" by $160M+ on salaries and saved $320M on benefits (that the players are now trying to get anyway). That's about half a BILLION straight into the owners pockets.

If you actually read the coverage, the players' cut in the new deal is 3-4 percentage points LESS than the old deal.

So what the owners are getting is close to $500M in savings already in the bank, plus $300M to $400M more a year at current revenue levels.

As revenue increases, the deal gets WORSE for the players. The old deal called for 60% for the players after $1B off the top, whereas the new deal calls for less than 50% of everything (depends on some deductions off the top that they've already agreed to, but whose amounts depend on some stadium builds that haven't actually happened yet - could be anywhere from 46.5% to 48%). Plug in some numbers and if revenue increases by 50%, that means players will lose out on a whopping 1 BILLION dollars a year compared to the old deal.

[fyo]

The best thing the players did out of all of this was raise the salary cap floor forcing teams to spend. So now teams like Tampa Bay can't be $40 mill under the cap like they have in the past.

No team has EVER been $40M under the cap. The maximum allowed by the old CBA was about half that for the 2009 season and much less in all the others.

The new minimum introduced is a payroll floor, "guaranteed spend", which is being widely reported as 90%, e.g. by ESPN, which is surprising considering rumors of between 95% and 99% -- I suspect there might be some confusion of terms, since there might also be an actual cap minimum and they're confusing "guaranteed spend" with "cap floor".

In terms of payroll spend, yes, there are teams that have been significantly under (and over) the cap. That's the nature of the beast.

The myth of the constantly underspending team is just that, a myth. The Buccaneers (only beaten out, slightly, by the Chiefs in spending the least on payroll from 2000 - 2009) had a total payroll expenditure of 89% of the total salary cap over the past 10 capped years (2000 - 2009). And the only reason it's so "low" is that the Bucs, like a lot of teams, moved salary expenses from the capped 2009 into 2010. Looking at 2000 - 2008, the Bucs had total salary expenditures of about 93% of the total salary cap, well above the cap floor.

In other words, depending on exactly what the "guaranteed spend" winds up at, the lowest-spending teams might have to fork out a little extra, but the main effect will be to smooth out the salary payouts. A lot of teams used to "save up" cap for a few years and blow it on a playoff run (about half of all SB participants were among the top teams in salary expense that year). A good example would be after the 2008 season when the Steelers and Cardinals met in the SB. The salary cap that year was just shy of $117M, yet the Cardinals spent $122M and the Steelers $129M. That's not going to be possible in the future. The one recent exception to this was when the Giants won after the 2007 season, despite a team payroll of less than $76M (compared to a salary cap of $109M, a floor of $93, and the Patriots' expenditure of $118M). The Bears the year before that were pretty cheap as well, although not nearly as extreme, but no one got even remotely close to the SB champs of that year, the Colts ($131M, compared to a $102M cap, $86M floor, and $92M spent by the Bears).

[Pats2006]

Lets see what happens at 8pm!!

[fyo]

At least the owners have voted to approve. Now we need the 32 player reps to vote, then the 10 named defendants to agree, then the NFLPA to recertify, and then vote to actually approve the deal. Hopefully, the rumors of a lockout lift after the named defendants agree is real and we won't have to wait for the NFLPA to regain union status.

[Pats2006]

At least the owners have voted to approve. Now we need the 32 player reps to vote, then the 10 named defendants to agree, then the NFLPA to recertify, and then vote to actually approve the deal. Hopefully, the rumors of a lockout lift after the named defendants agree is real and we won't have to wait for the NFLPA to regain union status.

I know...this has been a long summer with just the thought of no football.. they need to get this done tonight so we can all get ready for the season!

[Landshark]

At least the owners have voted to approve. Now we need the 32 player reps to vote, then the 10 named defendants to agree, then the NFLPA to recertify, and then vote to actually approve the deal. Hopefully, the rumors of a lockout lift after the named defendants agree is real and we won't have to wait for the NFLPA to regain union status.

Does the union have to recertify for the lockout to end?  I don't think so.  If I recall correctly there were times when the union was not certified back in the 80's. 

Boys, get your pads on and get ready to sweat!!!!!

[fyo]

Does the union have to recertify for the lockout to end?  I don't think so.  If I recall correctly there were times when the union was not certified back in the 80's.

The owners can lift the lockout whenever they damn well please.

They initially insisted on the NFLPA reestablishing itself as a union first, but then the NFLPA said that it could takes a few weeks to do... especially if they had to mail those ballots out... it would be a lot faster if the players could just get them at team facilities *cough* *cough*

Anyway, if the NFL trusts the NFLPA to recommend a "yes", they'll probably lift the lockout.

[fyo]

The latest rumors are ugly.

[MikeO]

From what I am seeing on TV and all the reports, you won't see players in NFL Facilites till Wednesday at the earliest. They won't agree to anything until the union is back in place. Which will take a few days. They don't trust the owners and I can't blame them.

[fyo]

They won't agree to anything until the union is back in place. Which will take a few days. They don't trust the owners and I can't blame them.

They can't agree to anything until the union is in place. By definition. If there is no union, the individual teams must negotiate individually with players according the local laws of the state the team is located in.

[fyo]

Like I said above, the latest rumors are ugly. It's completely impossible to know WTF is going on with all the spin out there. Looks like it'll be tomorrow before we have any idea what happened (other than no deal). Lots of players are apparently pissed that owners voted on a new revenue-sharing agreement. Hello! That's revenue shared between teams... wtf do you care? It doesn't affect total revenue, it doesn't affect your cut.

[fyo]

thats what I said 

good lord

Jesus... you just don't get things sometimes. The player reps have to agree to things first. Until that happens, nothing can progress. I detailed the process above. Go read it.

[fyo]

Well, yesterday was a clusterf*ck of epic proportions.

I'm going to blame communication most of all, especially on the player-side of things. You had the leaked NFLPA lawyer email saying that the proposal voted on by the owners contained some extra stuff that the players hadn't agreed to and some details on that extra stuff. Later, the player reps claimed they hadn't even seen the proposal, which clearly their lawyers had. Then you had player reps complaining about specifics, like 2-a-days, claiming that this was unresolved when both negotiating parties clearly said that they would be banned.

It really seems like the player reps didn't get the information they needed from their negotiating committee. If you look at the stuff that's being said (mainly on Twitter), the player reps who were in on the negotiations are the ones making sense, so there really appears to have been a dramatic lack of communication.

Now, all that said, it's certainly possible that the owners tried to pull a fast one on the players. None of us have the full document, so we really don't know.

What we do know is that the owners ratified the deal with certain strings (just as the player rep will, if they ratify at all):

- The player reps have to agree before Saturday in order for the lockout to be lifted Saturday.
- The Union has to recertify by Wednesday morning in order for free agency to begin Wednesday.

Those are really "no shit, Sherlock" and any outrage at this is ridiculous.

Then there's the string that the players might reasonably have objections to: All the remaining items, the stuff that cannot legally be negotiated before the recertification (mainly workers' comp and drug testing), will need to be negotiated and agreed to by both sides by next Friday at the latest. If no agreement is reached, the corresponding terms of the last CBA will be in effect.

To me, that's not entirely unreasonable, but I'm assuming this has been touched on in negotiations -- or at least during the several calls between Goodell and Smith late Wednesday.

Lawyers for the NFLPA are also complaining (in leaked emails), and this is being picked up by player reps, that they were not a party to negotiations between NFL clubs and a new system for redistributing revenue to help small-market teams. Basically, I'm not sure why the players care or feel they should have any say in the matter. Hopefully, it's just the lawyers getting in the way, as has been the case on both sides numerous times during the lockout.