Interesting Albert Breer Tweet

[FuzzyLumpkins]

They didn't report losses - Forbes estimated the losses. With the following caveat: "And the Dolphins appear to have sacrificed profits in 2009 to better position themselves for the future." That suggests pretty strongly that this was a one-year financial maneuver for a generally profitable enterprise.

Its pretty much based on paying off stadium debt.

None of the teams are losing money, and none of the teams have claimed to be losing money.

This dispute is not about losing money. It's about whether the owners need more money to build stadiums, develop NFL Network and otherwise "invest in the game" in order to increase revenues exponentially in the future. The owners say yes, and the players say no.

What it comes down to were the contested infrastructure credits that the league tried to put through.

Thats why you have all those quotes of NFLPA counsel talking about unsubstantiated credits and coming back at them with the independent auditor, PriceWaterhouseCooper's, numbers. Its why the owners are saying that the players are getting 70% additional revenues while the players and the auditor say that its 55%.

Maybe you have some idea of what those credits actually were because the CBA does allow for listed stadium credits.

You do not hear Dan Snyder saying something like 'I upgraded 100 luxury suites with AV systems and it put me back $10mil but the auditor rejected it as a credit.'

This notion that the players do not recognize the benefits to expanding the league infrastructure is unfounded. There are variable credit provisions within the old CBA, it just required some accounting oversight.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I suppose that's true...whatever works.

I think they should just become 32 private entities with a governing body. The CBA should be between the teams and the NFL front office, in my opinion.

I could not possibly agree more. If only the individual owners were ultimately beholden to the NFL and not the opposite.

 

[PullMyFinger]

I think what people who are saying that are referring to is the collectively bargained minimum salary. If the NFL is forced to operate with no CBA, there will be no minimum salary, and many players who would have made the minimum for their experience level could end up getting much less money. There's no recent evidence for it, of course, because the NFL has had a minimum salary for decades. But imagine an NFL with no salary cap, no salary floor, no minimum salary and completely unrestricted free agency. The distribution of money among the players likely would be drastically different, and the total amount they collectively receive might be even less than it is now.

Knowing that they will have to outbid every other team for the best players, even their own, will teams still want to pay the worst player on the team more than $320,000 per year (for a rookie, more for a veteran) to be inactive each week? Or will they be able to find someone who is more desperate to do it for much less? More likely, the borderline players who would have gotten the minimum of $405,000, $480,000, $545,000, etc., under the old CBA would accept less because teams won't have any reason to offer them that much anymore. There's no bidding war for them -- they're just looking for any team that will sign them.

If there was open bidding for Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, DeMarcus Ware, etc., how much higher would their salaries be than they are now? And if the Colts had to pay twice as much for Peyton Manning, wouldn't they likely spend that much less on their other players?

Now, how extreme the salary spread between the elite and the dregs would become is unknown, but there's no question that it would increase.

It was like that before this last CBA and the NFL survived.