Nobody would buy a ticket to this fight
- From: stananger < stananger@********.***>
- Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 06:54:22 GMT
Nobody would buy a ticket to this fight
01:00 AM EST on Thursday, March 9, 2006
BY TOM E. CURRAN
Journal Sports Writer
Labor strife isn't a great spectator sport to begin with. But this revenue
rodeo between NFL players and fractured factions of owners was especially
hard to A) grasp; B) form an opinion on; and C) get indignant over.
It boiled down to these two issues.
The league's 2000-odd players were being offered about 58 percent of $6
billion to split each year. They wanted 60 percent.
Some owners cut side deals locally to make more dough for their businesses.
They want to keep that for themselves. Other owners can't or won't cut
those side deals and want the entrepreneurial types to share the extra cash
they make.
Wow. They'll sell you the whole seat if you want to watch that argument, but
you'll only need the edge.
Was there ever a less interesting -- or less noble -- labor battle waged?
Beginning last spring, I boned up on this situation pretty well. I can
explain what was at issue. And if I had Jessica Alba next to me while I
explained it, maybe someone would have paid attention to the explanation.
Nobody cared what percentage of money the Buffalo Bills make when the
Patriots sell the naming right to their practice bubble. Nor should they.
The practical questions people wanted answered were: Will there be football
in the fall? (Yes). Would the Patriots' on-field product this fall have
been visibly impacted one way or the other? (No). Would some of the
Patriots' main competitors be negatively affected by some of this stuff?
(Could be). OK, then, high-fives all around if you're into that kind of
thing.
Just like nobody really wants to know how the sausage on their plate was
made, neither did the vast majority of fans really care about the dynamics
that land NFL players on the field at 1:02 p.m. on Sunday afternoons in the
fall.
If the players are there and they are good and you've heard of them, you'll
pay your $99 for an end-zone ticket and the NFL can send it to Sally
Struthers for all you care. You've got enough of your own revenue-sharing
issues to worry about between needing a new car, wanting to take a vacation
and trying to find a summer job for your kid.
And this is not to say you should feel like an inadequate fan because you
can't wax poetic on defined gross revenues. A whole lot of the guys who
take the field are probably less up-to-date on what was being fought for
than you are.
Interestingly, both the NFLPA and the owners preyed on the numbness of the
public and media throughout this dustup.
For instance, NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw said earlier this week
that the proposal the owners were making was actually worse than the one
the players had been working under for the last 12 years. The percentage
the owners were offering was smaller. And people in the media nodded and
noted that this is what those mean, old owners were up to this time.
How, one might have had reason to ask Mr. Upshaw, could an offer that would
raise the salary cap from $85.5 million per team last year to $105 million
this year be worse than the system they were under?
Upshaw would have gladly pointed out that the players have been getting 64
percent and now the owners wanted them to take 56.2, leaving out the fact
that they would now be getting 56.2 percent of all money raised instead of
64 percent of some.
And while the Patriots may be right to feel wronged by having to share the
excess money they make, this just isn't something Pats fans are going to go
Norma Rae over.
It seems both sides knew all along this was not a battle worth escalating.
They went eyeball-to-eyeball screaming, "You want to go?" for more than a
week and nobody had the nerve to throw a punch.
Now that it's over they can both claim they would have won if the fight ever
went down. Thankfully, we'll never know.
tcurran@xxxxxxxxx / (401) 277-7340
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