Labor

Finally it is time for my NFL Labor post.

Interesting that in a year when the NFL & NBA collective bargaining agreements between the league & players expire setting up likely lockouts & court battles that my home state, Wisconsin, is also going through a controversial labor situation.  I'm not going to pretend to know the ins and outs of collective bargaining and the rights of workers vs. the rights of the employer, but I definitely have an opinion on the NFL situation.

The NFL has revenues of 9-10 billion dollars a year.  The split is currently 60/40 players/owners.  This is after a 1 billion dollar credit for expenses that the owners get to develop the league and theoretically create more revenue, which then gets split with the players.  The primary source of revenue for NFL owners, besides the enormous TV contracts is their stadiums The hilarious thing about this to that the public finances most of the stadiums across the country, sometimes in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  Including the "expense credit" it is basically a 50/50 split, however at this point the owners determine this to be a "unsustainable business model."

The argument is that if they do not get expenses under control now the league will be under financial hardship in the future and the league & players will both suffer as a result.  Most observers find this hard to believe as the NFL continues to be a powerhouse that enjoys incredible popularity among the US public.  What muddies the waters further is that the NFL is a private organization of separate entities that all operate individually and are not required to reveal their earnings like a publicly traded company.  The only team that does release and financial report every year is the publicly held Green Bay Packers.  In 2010 the Packers "only" made $9.8 million.  This was compared to $20.1 million the previous year.  The main cost for the decrease in profit was "player expenses."  The NFL is pointing to this report to show that teams are on a downward trend towards becoming fiscally unstable due to rising player costs.  The problem that the NFLPA has is that no other team will reveal their earnings statements.

Does anyone really believe that such power franchises like New England, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and the New York teams are in financial trouble?  Get serious.  Jerry Jones is not going broke.  The Rooney family is not struggling to get by.  Meanwhile the players are facing greater and greater physical risk every game that they play.  The ironic thing about this is that this past season the NFL cracked down on what is deemed to be dangerous play (ie. leading with the head as a defender) with the emphasis on taking care of players with head injuries being greater than ever before.

I don't think that anyone in this country feels bad for NFL players, nor should they.  Like their counterparts in professional sports in the USA they live a dream that few will ever realize, and get paid large sums of money for it.  But if I am an NFL player in 2011 I am sacrificing nothing to the Shield to get back on the field and resume playing.  The average career of an NFL player is 3 and a half years.  No matter how much you are making as a player, a 3 1/2 year career is insignificant.  Many of these guys end up with traumatic health issues, physically and mentally - see the recent suicide of former Bears defender Dave Duerson.  He even left a note saying that he wanted his brain studied because he knew something just wasn't right.  The longer this game which has 1700+ players every year continues to put players at the risk that they do I don't think that there is any amount of money that can make up for it.  Many average joes like myself say "I would play for free for the love of the game."  Really? You would take the equivalent of 30+ car crashes a game to your body to earn a few million dollars and die, on average, by the age of 50?  I suppose many would, and that is the culture that these players are brought up in, and is fostered by the NFL.  So quit bickering over dollars and cents, get this thing settled, and please let the NFL Billionaires old boys club of owners figure out how to settle this with their employees that rake in so much money for them.