Atlas
03-21-2005, 09:36 PM
KAPALUA, Hawaii -- Significant problems are few and far between in the NFL these days, but that didn't stop commissioner Paul Tagliabue from opening the league's annual meeting on Monday in messaging-sending mode with a dire assessment of the NFL's stagnant collective bargaining agreement talks.
With sunny skies and Maui's spectacular weather mirroring the overall ever-rosier financial picture that the league still finds itself in, Tagliabue stood up before league owners and club officials and told them that negotiations on an extension of the CBA have "exhausted themselves'' and "are at a dead end.''
Rhetoric? Sure it was -- since when have labor negotiations ever scrimped on the rhetoric stage? And by anyone's standards, it's hard to feel a sense of urgency regarding the CBA talks when the current agreement doesn't even expire until after the 2007 season.
Still, to underline the league's increased focus on its labor situation, Tagliabue also scheduled a tentative special league meeting on April 19, to resume negotiations on a CBA extension. "If we can make progress with the players association, we'll have a meeting,'' Tagliabue said, dismissively. "If we don't, we won't.''
Make no mistake, Tagliabue chose his words carefully on Monday, hoping his ominous undertones will help both sides close the substantial gap that now exists between how much the players want to see the salary pool revenues increase, and how much some of the owners are willing to give after they account for the expensive debt service that goes with all the league's newer stadiums.
But before the league really faces off against the players in this round of labor talks, the really interesting battling is going on within the league, where owners from five or six high-revenue teams are fighting against the idea of a league-issued revenue tax, thereby diverting more of their hard-earned ancillary income to the low-revenue teams around the NFL.
Socialism has long been the way of the NFL, thanks to decades of successful revenue sharing, but this latest skirmish will again test the league's commitment to all for one and one for all. It's not yet time to think of this issue as Tagliabue squaring off with NFLPA executive director Eugene Upshaw. The more pressing matchup pits high-revenue owners such as Daniel Snyder of Washington, Jerry Jones of Dallas and Bob McNair of Houston, Bob Kraft of New England and Jeffrey Lurie of Philadelphia against their fellow, lower-revenue owners.
"The union's asking for a lot of money, and that's typical,'' said Pittsburgh's old-school (and low-revenue) owner Dan Rooney. "But we can't even get to that because of where we are [internally in the league]. I don't know if it's a question of a [revenue] tax. We're just trying to equal it out. The clock is ticking. Maybe they'll get brains soon.''
The "they'' in that sentence refers not to the players and their union, but to the capitalistic gang led by Jones and Snyder, who want to keep as much of their additional stadium and advertising related revenue sources as possible. Though Tagliabue later refuted that the owner versus owner struggle in regards to the structure of the league's revenue-sharing system is the primary issue that now hinders a CBA extension, he seemed pretty much alone in that opinion here Monday.
"Some of the lower revenue clubs do need help because they've been impacted,'' Houston's McNair said. "But at the same time you can't take incentive away from the clubs that have generated the growth and revenue, or the growth and revenue won't be there. You have to factor the stadium debt service into the equation, because people went out and built new stadiums and invested a lot of money to generate more revenue, and they need that revenue to pay off the stadium.
"If you come back in and change the model and take too much away from them, then they don't have enough money to service the debut. You've got people, just like ourselves, who paid big money for the franchise based on the existing model. If you change that model, all of sudden you're taking away the value you've paid for. Those factors have to be addressed.''
According to Tagliabue, the debt service on the new stadiums around the league accounts for between three and four percent of the NFL's total revenues of $6 billion. That may be a small slice, but that's still, as Tagliabue put it, "a lot of money.'' How to factor that dollar figure into a new CBA agreement is going to be the tricky part.
"That's a cost we've never had before,'' Tagliabue said. "Since we first did this CBA in 1992-93, teams have really had to spend dramatically more sums of private money to get stadiums built. So in a sense, the collective bargaining negotiation today is not how you divide 100 points, it's how you divide 96 or 95 points. Because three or four or five points already are going to the banks and construction companies for the new stadium. ... I'm not sure we have division [among owners]. What we have is a complicated set of new economic issues and we're trying to figure out how to resolve them.''
Tagliabue isn't very convincing when he insists there's no division among owners. Because that division, between the haves and the have-mores, is very real. But at some point, the league's owners, as they have always managed to do, are going to have close ranks and put their best possible proposal before the players union.
"Internally, we need to know what we think is in the best long-term interest of the league,'' McNair said. "That's what we have to do now. And then try to convince the players association that that's the right path for them, too.''
Don't look for any major steps along the way to a CBA extension to come out of this week's annual meeting in Maui. When big money is involved, the NFL moves as cautiously as a first-day bank teller.
But Tagliabue threw out his tough talk for a very particular reason. He's hoping his "dead end'' pronouncement will wind up kick starting the process that leads to a new agreement, and another era of labor peace. With a new CBA in place, the NFL's days of fair weather might just extend indefinitely.
With sunny skies and Maui's spectacular weather mirroring the overall ever-rosier financial picture that the league still finds itself in, Tagliabue stood up before league owners and club officials and told them that negotiations on an extension of the CBA have "exhausted themselves'' and "are at a dead end.''
Rhetoric? Sure it was -- since when have labor negotiations ever scrimped on the rhetoric stage? And by anyone's standards, it's hard to feel a sense of urgency regarding the CBA talks when the current agreement doesn't even expire until after the 2007 season.
Still, to underline the league's increased focus on its labor situation, Tagliabue also scheduled a tentative special league meeting on April 19, to resume negotiations on a CBA extension. "If we can make progress with the players association, we'll have a meeting,'' Tagliabue said, dismissively. "If we don't, we won't.''
Make no mistake, Tagliabue chose his words carefully on Monday, hoping his ominous undertones will help both sides close the substantial gap that now exists between how much the players want to see the salary pool revenues increase, and how much some of the owners are willing to give after they account for the expensive debt service that goes with all the league's newer stadiums.
But before the league really faces off against the players in this round of labor talks, the really interesting battling is going on within the league, where owners from five or six high-revenue teams are fighting against the idea of a league-issued revenue tax, thereby diverting more of their hard-earned ancillary income to the low-revenue teams around the NFL.
Socialism has long been the way of the NFL, thanks to decades of successful revenue sharing, but this latest skirmish will again test the league's commitment to all for one and one for all. It's not yet time to think of this issue as Tagliabue squaring off with NFLPA executive director Eugene Upshaw. The more pressing matchup pits high-revenue owners such as Daniel Snyder of Washington, Jerry Jones of Dallas and Bob McNair of Houston, Bob Kraft of New England and Jeffrey Lurie of Philadelphia against their fellow, lower-revenue owners.
"The union's asking for a lot of money, and that's typical,'' said Pittsburgh's old-school (and low-revenue) owner Dan Rooney. "But we can't even get to that because of where we are [internally in the league]. I don't know if it's a question of a [revenue] tax. We're just trying to equal it out. The clock is ticking. Maybe they'll get brains soon.''
The "they'' in that sentence refers not to the players and their union, but to the capitalistic gang led by Jones and Snyder, who want to keep as much of their additional stadium and advertising related revenue sources as possible. Though Tagliabue later refuted that the owner versus owner struggle in regards to the structure of the league's revenue-sharing system is the primary issue that now hinders a CBA extension, he seemed pretty much alone in that opinion here Monday.
"Some of the lower revenue clubs do need help because they've been impacted,'' Houston's McNair said. "But at the same time you can't take incentive away from the clubs that have generated the growth and revenue, or the growth and revenue won't be there. You have to factor the stadium debt service into the equation, because people went out and built new stadiums and invested a lot of money to generate more revenue, and they need that revenue to pay off the stadium.
"If you come back in and change the model and take too much away from them, then they don't have enough money to service the debut. You've got people, just like ourselves, who paid big money for the franchise based on the existing model. If you change that model, all of sudden you're taking away the value you've paid for. Those factors have to be addressed.''
According to Tagliabue, the debt service on the new stadiums around the league accounts for between three and four percent of the NFL's total revenues of $6 billion. That may be a small slice, but that's still, as Tagliabue put it, "a lot of money.'' How to factor that dollar figure into a new CBA agreement is going to be the tricky part.
"That's a cost we've never had before,'' Tagliabue said. "Since we first did this CBA in 1992-93, teams have really had to spend dramatically more sums of private money to get stadiums built. So in a sense, the collective bargaining negotiation today is not how you divide 100 points, it's how you divide 96 or 95 points. Because three or four or five points already are going to the banks and construction companies for the new stadium. ... I'm not sure we have division [among owners]. What we have is a complicated set of new economic issues and we're trying to figure out how to resolve them.''
Tagliabue isn't very convincing when he insists there's no division among owners. Because that division, between the haves and the have-mores, is very real. But at some point, the league's owners, as they have always managed to do, are going to have close ranks and put their best possible proposal before the players union.
"Internally, we need to know what we think is in the best long-term interest of the league,'' McNair said. "That's what we have to do now. And then try to convince the players association that that's the right path for them, too.''
Don't look for any major steps along the way to a CBA extension to come out of this week's annual meeting in Maui. When big money is involved, the NFL moves as cautiously as a first-day bank teller.
But Tagliabue threw out his tough talk for a very particular reason. He's hoping his "dead end'' pronouncement will wind up kick starting the process that leads to a new agreement, and another era of labor peace. With a new CBA in place, the NFL's days of fair weather might just extend indefinitely.