Vintage;2085562 said:
I wonder how long before someone claims an anti-Dallas conspiracy..... that we are finally getting good and a strike shortened season is on the horizon....
If you re-read the story..Upshaw said they would just probably de-certify as a union and not go to a strike that would affect players immediately.
What would probably happen is that players presently under contract would continue to play under their agreements until they expire.
Players signed under new contracts from that point on would have the new deals in place with what the owners come up with as what the NFL and owners are willing to provide.
The reality to me is that the NFL should be able to just re-install much of what the labor union was doing and run the whole thing itself.
They should be able to maintain the player benefits and the post-career pensions and player bonuses the union was providing it it's contract to the players.
What is the major question is the future revenue-sharing of the TV contracts and how that slices up.
I'm not of the opinon that the owners are going to do anything so stupid as to let the ugliness that erupted in '87 to re-occur.
Nor the players. There is too much at risk for both sides. Much more than in '87.
I'm assuming if the owners are prepared to take this next step, they also have an extensive and meaningful alternative to the player's union being drawn up that will be very competitive to what they now are providing the players.
But I think the owners have a case in that if the union is not being there as a middle man and raking some of the profits that could instead just flow more directly to the players after 2009, that the owner's and players can become partner's in revenue sharing instead of being owner/employee based.
If that happens, the need for the union and the issues involved with it's existance dissolve.
The owners seem to want to start the ball rolling about getting it started, which means they have a plan in place and are ready to fine-tune it as the end of 2009 comes around.
As for the draft, I don't think that would end. The NFL would just continue that and what would change would be the union imposed salary slot for the various contracts.
That makes a ton of sense in that it's gotten to the point teams are unwilling to invest in college players that force them to pay out so much in the top 10-15 spots in the draft without having played a down of football.
This artificially is forcing the owners to involuntarily pay out salaries to unproven players and eat at the profit margins the team and owners feel they shouldn't have to do.
It's sort of a financial hostage situation I think the owners feel have gone far enough with. I'm not sure it's fair to the team or the other players on the team that are already there and are not the core players on a team and making less money than these unproven players coming out of college, but have been good enough to make the team.
It forces the teams to make personnel decisions based on union-determined enforced pay scales for these lesser players that makes it unaffordable for teams to pay both the high-priced rookie contracts and then half to cut some lesser star players from the team that other-wise could continue to have a career, but have to be cut and replaced with lesser players because their union-driven minimum salary wage scales are artificially too high.
The union has never adjusted the rookie salary slots over the time it became agreed upon and that is part of the issue. The Union just continued to not place any cap on that situation and it's like tripled or more since it first came into existance, yet the union continued to enforced the overall cap on the owners and teams per the agreement.
This is what a lot of this is all about. There are other things like the TV contracts and other issues, but this players union has damaged the overall harmony b/w the players and owners with that unwillingness to amend the rookie draftee wage scale and had a domino effect to where we are now.
So the draft will stay, but the union-imposed hard and fast expensive salary slots are leaving along with them.
We'll see what happens.
:starspin ReDBall ExPreSS :starspin