Goodell and Smith are in an epic staring contest...
                                                 Both have superglued their eyes open

Now starts the long winter of our football-less discontent.  From now until August this is a football free America.  Get used to it because come the end of next season it will be even longer.  There are columnists and sports reporters out there saying that the chances of an NFL lock out are zero.  They will tell you that there is too much money to be made and that the owners and players both have it too good to ruin the fantastic run that the NFL has received over the years.  They are wrong.  The NFL owners want a lock out.  They want to break the system.  Why?  Because they are tired of giving 59% of all revenue to million dollar players like Vince Young, Pacman Jones and JaMarcus Russell.  They don’t mind paying Donavon F. McNabb, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady but it must absolutely kill them when they have to pay the thugs that are all over the league that don’t respect the system.  Watching sixty cents of every dollar you earn walk out the door gets old; even if you count dollars in billions. 

The Collective Bargaining Agreement between the parties was strategically designed to avoid the system that will take effect on March 5, 2010.  The owners agreed to end the salary cap beginning in 2010 and the players agreed to regressive free agent terms that locked players down in the cities they played in 2009.  Both of these were to be a bitter pill that would ensure a new agreement before the 2010 season.  Those bitter pills seem to be going down pretty easy today.  The NFL even protected itself by ensuring revenue in the event of a lock out by getting TV dollars even if games are not broadcast.  Couple that with the NFLPA instituting a 25/25 system for players by having them hold back 25% of their salary during the past two seasons and you can see that both sides are mobilizing for war.  The NFLPA even upped dues from $10,000 annually to 15K.  Lockouts are expensive. 

Goodell and NFLPA president DeMaurice Smith are at impasse.  The parties met on Saturday before the Super Bowl and neither side moved according to reports.  What makes anyone think that their positions will be any different by this time next year?  I predicted ten months ago that the NFL would not have a deal by today. That was an easy prediction.  I also predicted that the NFL and NFLPA would not get a deal done in time to save the 2011 season.  Is there anything that has happened over the course of this season that has made you think that the NFL will not lock out the players?  The economy still stinks, the owners are still refusing to open their books to the players, the owners are still saying that the current CBA is too beneficial to the players, the players are still saying that once the salary cap is gone it ain’t coming back, and Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are still salivating at the chance to spend money like there is no tomorrow (because there really isn’t a tomorrow!).

Gene Upshaw said it and now Smith is saying it.  Once the salary cap is gone, it is not coming back.  When a union takes a position like that you have to believe it.  The salary cap does not help players.  It is a means by which owners can create predictability in the number one cost of doing business, players’ salaries.  In a baseball like salary cap free system the players could demand much higher salaries across the board.  Is it worth it to players to remain locked out for one year in order to lose the cap?  Abso-freaking-lutely!  Why would they come back to work with one after the start of next season?  With the lack of a salary cap owners can dump players (who do not have guaranteed contracts) without the penalty of taking a hit to the cap.  The “It is cheaper to keep him than dump him” rule is out.  Players can be dumped with impunity.  The only loss is the signing bonus.  Players and owners are not going to work this out without a serious change in how the system of acquiring and distributing talent is changed in the NFL.  That likely means the end of financial parity.  

Financial parity is what creates parity on the field.  If the NFL wants to look like baseball then they are nearly there.  Parity on the field is what has made the NFL what it is.  All that is gone.  The people who are telling you it will never happen are only saying so because they 1. Don’t understand how sports as a business works and 2. Because they are really scared that it will happen so they just pretend like it can’t happen.

It will happen and you will hate the NFL for doing it to you. 

Thanks for coming and suckling on Daddy’s Sugar Ball…

Bearcat