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JONES EXPECTS OWNERS TO OPT OUT OF LABOR DEAL
Posted by Mike Florio on February 11, 2008, 9:51 a.m.
It’ll soon be time to get re-acquainted with terms like “cash over cap” and “supplemental revenue sharing.”
According to Daniel Kaplan of Sports Business Journal, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones believes that enough of his 31 colleagues will vote to opt out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players union in November 2008.
In November, either party to the deal may give the other side notice of an intention to end the contract two years early. The deal currently runs through 2012; opting out would trigger expiration after the 2010 season.
But while Armageddon is still roughly three years away, the mess would initially unfold on the first day of the 2009 league year, given the accounting rules that apply in the final year before an uncapped season.
Two years ago, a new labor deal was negotiated not on the eve of an uncapped year, but on the eve of the last capped year, which uses various devices to prevent teams from getting an early start on spending limitless money on player salaries. And with the union surely smarting from the decision to pull the plug in November 2008, it’s unlikely that both sides will get together and hammer out a deal before March 1 of 2009.
It’s also unlikely that the union will give up the inherent leverage of an uncapped year. Why should it? The owners apparently want to roll back the financial gains made by the players in 2006, and likewise to correct some of the noneconomic terms that were essentially ignored by the Management Council at a time when the focus was on striking a deal with the players for a percentage of Total Football Revenue, and at the same time working out an arrangement among the owners for the partial sharing of currently unshared revenues as to which, among some franchises, there is a huge (and always growing) disparity. Asking the union to play a little givesy-backsy is not the way to preserve labor peace.
So we’ll be dusting off some of our old articles regarding the realities of an uncapped year and the last capped year. We’ll also be pondering what ultimately could be the end result of this exercise — a spin-off league of smaller-market teams committed to sharing all revenue, and an existing league with big-market franchises who want to keep as much of what they make as possible.
Posted by Mike Florio on February 11, 2008, 9:51 a.m.
It’ll soon be time to get re-acquainted with terms like “cash over cap” and “supplemental revenue sharing.”
According to Daniel Kaplan of Sports Business Journal, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones believes that enough of his 31 colleagues will vote to opt out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players union in November 2008.
In November, either party to the deal may give the other side notice of an intention to end the contract two years early. The deal currently runs through 2012; opting out would trigger expiration after the 2010 season.
But while Armageddon is still roughly three years away, the mess would initially unfold on the first day of the 2009 league year, given the accounting rules that apply in the final year before an uncapped season.
Two years ago, a new labor deal was negotiated not on the eve of an uncapped year, but on the eve of the last capped year, which uses various devices to prevent teams from getting an early start on spending limitless money on player salaries. And with the union surely smarting from the decision to pull the plug in November 2008, it’s unlikely that both sides will get together and hammer out a deal before March 1 of 2009.
It’s also unlikely that the union will give up the inherent leverage of an uncapped year. Why should it? The owners apparently want to roll back the financial gains made by the players in 2006, and likewise to correct some of the noneconomic terms that were essentially ignored by the Management Council at a time when the focus was on striking a deal with the players for a percentage of Total Football Revenue, and at the same time working out an arrangement among the owners for the partial sharing of currently unshared revenues as to which, among some franchises, there is a huge (and always growing) disparity. Asking the union to play a little givesy-backsy is not the way to preserve labor peace.
So we’ll be dusting off some of our old articles regarding the realities of an uncapped year and the last capped year. We’ll also be pondering what ultimately could be the end result of this exercise — a spin-off league of smaller-market teams committed to sharing all revenue, and an existing league with big-market franchises who want to keep as much of what they make as possible.
Say it isn't so
