MINNEAPOLIS — Seeking more clout in their fight with the NFL, locked-out players asked a federal judge Thursday to make $4 billion in disputed broadcast revenue off limits to the league and to award them at least $707 million in damages, too. U.S. District Judge David Doty took the request under advisement after a two-hour hearing that included arguments from attorneys for the league and the players. http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/feed/2010-09/nfl-labor-talks/story/nfl-players-ask-for-707m-in-damages-in-tv-dispute?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-n%7Cdl5%7Csec3_lnk3%7C213096
CFL TC kicks off 6/2, so for me this is "meh" stuff, the NFL got greedy as well as to clever by half and sought to hedge their actions and still get paid which is par for the course, for me hopefully Doty drops the hammer on them and they go back to the table. What stuns me about all of this is the NFL is basing their actions on down the road projections of revenue declines, they made an assumption and now are expecting the players to sit still for it and that is just unsustainable imo. Not a fan of either side in all of this tbh about it, and think the NFL really over estimated the popularity of the league.
I think it is the opposite. I think they underestimated how popular the league is. I do not think they expected people to get so upset during the offseason when nothing but OTA reports have been lost and free agency delayed. I think they thought that they can both fight for leverage and then make a deal at the last minute and the fans won't care about it unless games are lost. Plus I think they underestimated how much Americans like to turn on something that they once loved that now pissed them off.
I'm all for flushing the current players. I'd root for a bunch of scabs playing in a Dolphins uniform. Wouldn't matter to me. I'm SICK of the players personally. SICK of them.
I feel bad for you. It must suck to personally hate the players you root for. It must be fun rooting for that Stephen Ross guy. You know, the billionaire guy who doesn't like 1:00 home games in September. The guy who thinks owning a team will get him into US Weekly. I remember the scab games of 1987. Wasn't pretty.
It must suck to hate someone because they worked hard and got rich. Maybe it's more jealousy than hate though.
Putting aside your weird fetish for the rich, you realize that this isn't true for almost half of the ownership in the league?
Putting aside your hate boner for the rich, I don't care who's rich or not. Show me a list of the owners who stole their money. If it was legal, they worked for it.
I don't hate Stephen Ross. I don't hate rich people. I just don't understand your hate for the players. Oh, and if you think all rich people got that way cause they worked hard, you're living in a deamland. Daddy's money goes a looooooong way!
Both sides are greedy and are doing their best to win for their constituants. There is no "good guy" or "victim" in this labor situation.
You misunderstand. No one "stole" anything, with the exception of maybe Al Davis. Your characterization that the NFL owners as a whole worked hard to get where they are is not particularly accurate. Eleven owners inherited, two more bought with inherited riches they were generations removed from, and then the Packers which don't have an owner. Then there's individuals such as Al Davis who you can't really claim did anything honorable, special, etc. from a business standpoint.
It's easy to say "both sides are greedy", but remember, its the owners who locked the players out. Its the owners who decided that they weren't making enough money. Let me repeat that: the owners decided that they weren't making enough money. I think that is the very definition of greed.
The owners made a bad deal and took advantage of opting out. That was their right and just good basic business. The players made a good deal and don't want to give anything back. Being fair is somewhere in the middle. As of now, most fans believe there will be a full NFL season. If there is nothing positive from the mediation, starting next week, and If the results of the June 3 hearing are a continued lockout or the NFL shutting down operations, fans beliefs will take a HUGE blow. The game will suffer.
I don't buy that narrative. Why are you assuming that "fair is somewhere in the middle"? Because the owners say they agreed to a bad deal? You really think all those Billionaires got swindled by Gene Upshaw? Puh-leeze. The previous agreement was "fair". Now, the owners are just being greedy and the players are holding the line.
None of this is the players fault, so I don't understand your being upset with them. Had the owners not locked them out and refused to negotiate on reasonable terms, none of this would be happening. There could have been another one year extention of the agreement from last year, and they should have sat down and began earnest negotiations. But its the owners that have refused to be even the least reasonable in this power play of theirs.
Many of the owners of the league have never worked a day in their lives. They inherited most of their money. Do your research.
The mechanism to opt out of the CBA was something worked into the agreement, it's not as if the owners up and decided that they were no longer going to honor a deal that they previously said they were going to honor. It's perfectly within their rights to do so. I do however think it's worth mentioning that the CBA that was opted out of was in place since 1993, and amended in 1998, and then again in 2006(At which time only two owners voted against it, Ralph Wilson and Mike Brown, and Ralph Wilson admitted he voted against it because he was confused). If it was a bad agreement for them, the owners are stupid. No one made them do that.
Both sides are greedy. I'm not sure how anyone can feel bad for either side. This is a case of two bank robbers trying to split a bounty.
The owner's operational expenses have increased dramatically. Players and owners agree on this. They do not agree on a dollar amount. One side want as much as they can get. The other wants to give as little as they can. This makes being fair as somewhere in the middle.
No, I don't think Daniel Snyder is an example of that. He's gotten rich through his own means. He's a terrible owner and a bad human being, but he's not rich through his family. I think his father was actually a journalist.
I thought I had read his father made the initial money though, money he needed to become super rich ?
I think it makes it harder to believe when the owners left money on the table to be able to take more money from the players
At this point, I favor the players. The only reason is the owner's refusal to open their books. The players offered it be done by a third party, which I thought to be fair, and were rejected. Baseball does it. NBA does it. Why not the NFL? What are they hiding? Other than that, I believe that the owners have been more negotiable than players, specifically Smith.
Well, even then, if he got rich through investing other peoples money, it's still something he did and I think he should get whatever praise or respect he deserves through it. Looking at his Wikipedia article, he looks like a successful businessman on his own merits. I do think it's not accurate to portray NFL owners who are people who have worked hard to become what they are. There are individuals who absolutely have, but just as many have gotten to where they are because they came out of the right vagina at the right time.
What exactly sounds like jealousy? Noting that a significant portion of the owners cannot really be ascribed as working hard for their economic position? Are you suggesting that's somehow wrong? Please, by all means do something other than ascribe unsupported and unsupportable motivations to me.
That’s not really greed at all. They’re running a business: it’s their duty to maximize profit. (This is why Judge Doty found the NFL’s TV deals to be invalid, after all.) Greed is hoarding money simply because the hoarder really, really likes money; to contrast, the owners want to change the 60/40 player/owner distribution of money so they can avoid a revenue sharing fight amongst themselves, expand the salary cap, and build new stadiums. (Supposedly.) Let’s also not place the blame 100% on the owners for the lockout. Did they opt out of the CBA? Yes, they exercised a collectively bargained provision that the NFLPA agreed to include in the previous CBA. Did they want to go to court? Nope. DeMaurice Smith wanted to go to court. He’s a trial lawyer with political connections; he’s loving the way things are going right now. Both sides are to blame. And it’s not as simple as calling the owners greedy.
Everyone has an opinion. Mine may not be right either. My company does over a million a year in mowing. Fuel has increased 25%. My profits are down. The owners can not drastically increase ticket prices to make up for the large increase in doing business. Everything they do costs more than it did just a few years ago. Draft picks cost more every year. Everyone but the owners are getting more. Sure, the owners are making money. That it why they own the business. If the profits are decreasing, they need to do something about it. It is no different than if your rent, bread, gas, etc. increased every year but your pay remained the same. Would you not opt for a change if possible? To me, it is pretty simple.
To what extent? I do not know. Do you? Enough to make up for the increase in operating expenses? If one of my employees demanded to look at my books tomorrow and demanded a raise, he would be fired. None of their business, nor is it the business of NFL players.
It’s not greedy. Stupid, maybe, but if there is no 2011 season it’ll be because everyone involved was being stupid. Everyone. And I think it’s worth noting that the league office is the only side trying to get negotiations and mediations going. DeMaurice Smith appears content to simply win in court and basically recreate the Reggie White settlement.
I fail to see the distinction. They'll be both greedy and stupid. The owners chose to opt out of a system that was generating record profits. Why should the players negotiate on anything? The owners want to cut the players out a BILLION dollars. How should the players "negotiate"? By agreeing to a $500 million pay cut? That's insane. That's not a negotiation!