Finally--I'm writing about a topic that truly matters. Most fans have the same attitude, "it's millionaires crying about billionaires". There's a hint of truth in that. But there are bigger issues to deal with. The Union, I'm guessing to try to sway public opinion, said they want a 50/50 split of the TOTAL REVENUE. The NFL refused. Many people are criticizing the NFL for this, but let's think about this rationally. The players received 50.06% of the total revenue this past season. The owners opted out of this current deal for a reason. It's simply unsustainable. True, player costs are relative to the amount of revenue, but some of the smaller market teams will incur rising player costs with declining total revenues. The numbers are based off of total revenue for all 32 teams. Let's make this simple...
This is all hypothetical and obviously simplified. It's not this black and white, but it is a general idea. Let's say the total revenue to be split is $1,000,000,000. 50% of that is 500,000,000...divide that by 32 and each team has to spend $15,250,000 on players. This suggests that all teams made $32,500,000. But that's not how it is. The Cowboys may have made $40,000,000 and the Panthers may have made $20,000,000. The Cowboys have $24,750,000 but the Panthers have $4,750,000. Now that money needs to be split up to pay all the executives, coaches, employees, and any stadium expenses ect PLUS player benefits (no that doesn't come out of their cap number). Yes, there is revenue sharing, but thats only SOME of the revenue not ALL of the revenue. And now you're taking money from the Cowboys and giving it to the Panthers.
The bottom line is this. The owners are taking the risks. The owners have sunk billions into capital, employees, and players. The players are just EMPLOYEES. If the league folds tomorrow, the players will walk away with whatever money they earned. The owners will still have to pay all of the employees due money, all people who loaned money to them, season ticket holders who paid upfront ect. You may scoff at the whole idea of the owners taking "risks" and you may say that it's the players risking their bodies. They are risking their bodies. They get compensated for it. They get tons more than soldiers who have a very good chance of dying if they're deployed in combat. When they're shipped off to combat, the compensation they receive for the added danger is only a couple hundred dollars. If they're lucky and live, the rest of their lives will be spent working.
There is a problem with the attitude of players. It's not a RIGHT to play football. They chose to play football, when you choose to do something, you play by the rules of the people who set it up. The owners invested money into these teams so that they can make money. They're capitalists. They set the league up to succeed. The league is huge because they set it up that way. They're as much of a reason, if not more, that the league does so well. Without the brains behind it all, these players would be jocks. Their careers would end in college and they'd go on to take normal jobs and live a normal lifestyle. These owners developed a system to not only make money off of it, but makes boatloads of money. There's a reason why in every single job, employees don't make as much as the owners. The owners are the reason you have a job.
Here's how football will continue to prosper. Make the players take a smaller piece of a bigger pie. The NFL is saying 42% is the number they want. These guys are professional capitalists. They will invest the extra money intelligently and help expand the league. With the added expansion becomes larger streams of revenue. Larger streams of revenue means a larger amount of money the 42% will get you.
If you stay where we're at or continue to raise player costs, you're only hurting the game. The owners have the profits that they want to make and they're in charge. It's the way our country is run. Let the owners run their businesses the way they want to. As long as the players get a FAIR wage, there shouldn't be a problem. The players aren't entitled to a certain percentage of the owner's money.
This past season, Laverneous Coles was signed and released by the Jets in the span of less than one week. For his duties he was given over $47,000. Put that in perspective, many Americans live off of half of that for the year. If you think that an NFL player deserves MORE for something that isn't even their own intellectual property, you need to take a seriously look at the way businesses work.
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