Cavaliers’ Losing Streak Ultimately a Meaningless Record
February 8, 2011NFL Flashback- My First Playoff Game
February 8, 2011Sometimes you read an opinion column and it attacks you personally in a strange way. It isn’t because you disagree with it, but because it feels so much like someone completed your own thesis. It is like they were living inside your brain and then found a way to summarize all the things you had been thinking before you figured out how to turn it into one cohesive point. That’s how I feel after reading Jason Whitlock’s article about the NFL labor situation.
Whitlock talks about the Packers and how their victory is a repudiation of the worst parts of the NFL players association. He speaks of Green Bay GM Ted Thompson eschewing expensive stars like Randy Moss and Brett Favre, but that is only a prelude to Whitlock’s home run.
“They don’t want to share half of their revenue with people they don’t believe have the necessary character to collectively act in a way that allows them to economically grow the game at a rapid pace.”
and then,
“If the players want half the revenue, the owners want to believe the players have a sincere interest in being equal partners in the growth of the game.
It’s no longer 1985. Owners are now paying players like they’re CEOs and executives at major corporations. CEOs don’t moonlight as reality TV stars. High-profile executives get canned for sexual harassment and multiple accusations of sexual assault. Good executives work year-round.”
And that is ultimately the crux of the debate. It is unnatural for sports fans to want to align with billionaire owners. That is usually the argument that is instantly spouted whenever anyone comes out against the players in the debate between players and owners. Then again, it is equally unlikely for fans to want to align with players who sometimes seem more interested in their own personal brand and celebrity than anything the fans truly care about.
For all that separates billionaire owners from fans, there is one thing that keeps them bonded. We know this in Cleveland more than most cities because of the love / hate relationship many Browns fans have developed with Randy Lerner since his father passed away. Regardless of what the man does right, wrong or indifferent, pretty much to a person in Cleveland, everybody knows that Randy Lerner wants the team to win.
As we see players guide themselves through their careers self-promoting like T.O. and Chad Ochocinco, tanking to get traded like Randy Moss, getting in shape only in a contract year like LenDale White, or worrying more about dating starlets than being a starting quarterback like Matt Leinart, their goals seemingly couldn’t be less aligned with those of fans. They also couldn’t seem further from being aligned with owners who pay contracts (even non-guaranteed ones) in order to get a certain level of effort toward a common goal.
So it isn’t that the world has a great level of sympathy for billionaires. There are certainly many cases where the billionaires are completely unsympathetic like in the cases of Daniel Snyder and Al Davis. Then again, in an objective look at the measure of goal congruency, fans are far more aligned with owners than players as a general rule.
Today I am just ticked off that it took Jason Whitlock to get me to the point where I could even begin to arrive at a conclusion I was migrating toward.
23 Comments
If the pundits think this is an issue with the NFL, just wait until they start digging into the same grounds of the NBA. This past summer couldn’t have been more timely…
I hope both the NFL and NBA, especially the NBA, come to a grinding halt. Let owners and players feel what the “average person” does (if possible). I think sports in general needs to take less of an important role in everyday life and this comes from a sports fan. I used to be worse but life has a way of putting things in perspective. I was working with people in the healthcare industry this past Sunday and the overall priority was making sure they got to see the game. People who have jobs caring for the sick and elderly. I just shook my head and laughed ever so briefly. Good thing Cleveland doesn’t win otherwise nothing might get done. I’m just saying.
Jason Whitlock 4 Super Bowl Halftime Show 2k12
I like the word ‘crux’.
The NFL will come to an agreement because at the end of the day they will realize just how much they can lose and nothing is broken.
The NBA is broken and the good news is by the time we see the Cavs in a new season they may have 2 #1 picks starting.
@5… I disagree Ben. I think the owners think something is broken. Whitlock’s piece suggests just what the problem is… the irresponisble millionaire athletes who choose I over TEAM while begging for their share of the pie. The owners see this as something that is broken and they want to fix it. They are in a much more powerful position than the players here. But DeMaurice Smith isn’t about to lose face in front of the NFLPA so he will drive a hard bargain. This will get ugly. But at the end of the day, the billionaires will win. They always do.
I’m with the players on this 100%. They are the product.
On top of that, it’s the owners who will lock out the players. They’re the ones messing with what is the most popular league in the history of mankind. And all in the name of making even more money. So as far as I’m concerned, they’re the ones who want to screw with the thing I love.
This line really annoyed me –
“Owners are now paying players like they’re CEOs and executives at major corporations.”
According to my research (aka Googling), the median salary for an NFL player in 2009 was roughly $770,000. The average length of career is a little over three years. A lot of money, no doubt.
Still – show me a CEO that only makes $2.2M over his career. Show me a CEO that is a physical wreck when he retires and can’t get decent health care.
I’m just amazed Whitlock didn’t find a way to make this about race.
Waiting For Next Year, the best independent Cleveland blog around that wastes 2000 words when a simple “RT” would suffice.
The new tagline: Stubbornly devoid of any original thought.
@6…I agree with you. I think that the owners are going to take the players to the cleaners. I just think it will wrap up pretty quickly and the players will claim a victory by retaining a 16 game season.
I fundamentally disagree with the entire crux of Jason Whitlock’s argument and it shows a shocking naivete of the inner-workings of everything from corporate America to the basic economic reality of professional sports to think any of Whitlock’s nonsense is true.
The owners do not, have and will not continue to care about the off-field transgressions of their star athletes as long as they continue to put on a product on the field that fans continue to buy in droves. Nobody cares (and I really do mean that NOBODY cares) that Ben Roethlisberger may have raped two women. Not in the sense, that we would be willing to boycott the Super Bowl simply because of his presence on the field. To play the morality card when Big Ben or Mike Vick or Brett Favre or Terrell Owens screw ups is the height of moral bankruptcy on the height of the owners. The supposed moral paragons that is the Rooney Family could have made a statement and decided that they would stand for something more than just winning by releasing or trading Ben Roethlisberger in the off-season. They didn’t because he keeps the team winning and continue to grow the popularity of the Steeler franchise.
Secondly, the notion that Me-First athletes are harmful to the product from a business perspective is ludicrous. Brett Favre is a one-man economic powerhouse for all parties involved simply because it’s fun to root against the villain. Professional sports needs villains like him. They drive interest in the sport for fans when the team they are rooting for isn’t playing. The Yankees are the most economically influential team in sports precisely because of the intense hatred they engender in non-Yankee fans. People watch them even if they simply want to watch them fail. Also, its not like their aren’t their share of narcissitic, dishonest look-at-me owners flooding the ranks like Jerry Jones, Al Davis and Dan Snyder.
The owners are simply looking to gut the players because it will reap more money in their favor. There is certainly no legitimate economic worry because the league has never been more profitable or popular. The owner’s want to strip away money because of pure greed. Nothing more.
Don’t be naive.
Simply put, for every Moss there are another 50 players that generally are NOT doing the kind of self-promotion Whitlock mocks. Whitlock is implying that all NFL players are like Moss. That’s bullcrap and he oughta know better.
What’s worse, clearly that’s what the owners want most people to believe: that the NFL is full of Mosses and Owenses and Ochocincos in order to take money off the table while demanding two extra games. It’s classic labor v. management, with the owners working to make the players work more for less. Horrifically dangerous work, at that.
I’m pro-player on this one, and I hope Whitlock didn’t intend to be pro-owner. I don’t think he was, but it can be played that way …
The snafu with the 400 people hosed out of Super Bowl seats is a microcosm of the NFL’s attitude toward its customers. They knew days in advance that these seats weren’t going to be ready but they still gladly took money from the fans. The owners don’t care about their customers and the players have no use for fans either. I think they’ll get a deal done simply because these pigs need to keep feeding at the trough we keep filling up for them. The NFL has been able to overcome these issues thanks to owners like the Rooneys, Maras and Ralph Wilsons. It’s guys like Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones that present the biggest threat. Jerry spends a billion bucks on a stadium and then wants to cry poverty?
The mess in the NFL is about to repeat itself in the NBA, NHL and MLB. The NHLPA is now led by former MLBPA head Don Fehr. If the NHL shuts down again they’ll be back down to their original six teams. The MLBPA and the owners are too stupid to adopt the NFL’s successful socialist model so fans in cities like Cleveland, KC, and Pittsburgh will continue to be screwed over while the Yanks, Red Sox and LA can spend money like crazy. As for the NBA, well, they could shutdown forever and I wouldn’t care. Maybe I’m too old or too bitter post-Lebron to care but there is nothing in that professional league that interests me and it doesn’t offer anything I can relate to anymore. It’s a hip hop league and I’m a classic rock guy.
Whatever happens we fans will be the ones who lose.
DocZeus nailed this. This has NOTHING to do with image and right and wrong. It is all about owners trying to squeeze everything they can out of the leverage that they have. It’s simple economics. If you have a product that is selling wildly at a 20% markup, you experiment with a 25% markup. They’ve been successful with the current setup, now they’re hoping to reduce their biggest expense on top of that.
They have leverage because they can live without football for a year, and the players can’t.
Why is it that with all the great conversation and interesting points laid out by the commenters here that all I can think about is the unfair drive-by sniping by Pete from Collinwood?
If I didn’t add anything to the discussion, then you added even less. Why not just move along to the next article instead of attacking me?
Anyway, to the people who made good points…
I know that not every player gets paid like T.O. Moss and Ochocinco and that every player doesn’t act like they do. Maybe I am off base in my assumptions, but I think a number of the players who are a tier below them would love to act that way if they were as talented. On top of that, these guys are the best players, so they are also supposed to be leaders of the team. That was one of the fundamental problems with Braylon Edwards. He had top-tier talent and potential with a third-tier attitude and leadership ability.
So it is true that these guys are outliers in terms of their actions, but I think it is indicative of the celebrity culture that we have created around athletes. I think that most of the players in the NFL would love to have the opportunities to be like T.O. and Ochocinco.
Maybe I am just playing into the owners’ propaganda though. I am not unreasonable in my willingness to listen to the other side. I’ve changed my mind before.
Based on his comment, Pete from Collinwood strikes me as that guy (or girl) that everyone knows who always has a criticism, but never a recommendation or solution of his own.
Craig: “I was thinking we could get pizza tonight…”
Pete: “That’s a stupid idea. I hate pizza.”
Craig: “Okay, what do you feel like for dinner, Pete?”
Pete: “I don’t know, just not pizza.”
————————–
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. To the guy who talked about a median lifetime income of $2.2 million for the average NFL player over 3 years, leaving said player roughly 40 years to earn money doing something else before he reaches retirement age, I say that’s a pretty good deal.
I make a decent living and it would take me 30 years at my current salary to make $2.2 million. And, if I did any of the crap these players get away with I’d be canned. No, I’m not a CEO. So, to me this is not about them needing to act like CEOs, to me it’s that they need to act like adults who face responsibilities and consequences just like every one of us.
This, in a way, relates to what I liked about Mangini. He stood for something. Whether you agreed with him or not, he believed in character and mutual respect and didn’t compromise. He never would have tolerated one of these bozos that gets paid ungodly sums and can’t control his behavior off the field.
@Craig – What Randy Lerner seems to *want* is for the team to be profitable. It is more appropriate to say that he *prefers* they win in achieving that end. Seems to be the inverse for Aston Villa. It’s a crime of passion. Get it?
@15 – Haters gonna hate.
@16 – I’m not saying that’s $2.2M isn’t a sizeable sum. It is and players should be thankful to receive that.
Yes, it will take you, me, and every other average Joe our lives to make that money. The difference being that we are not one of a very small group of people who can supply a skill that generates billions of dollars in revenue a year. Why shouldn’t they receive that windfall? Why should they have their salaries cut just so the owners, who really supply nothing imo, can pocket more money?
I also don’t agree that NFL players are on the whole some ungreatful lot who don’t deal with consequences. Don’t let the Vicks and Big Bens of the world fool you. Every player I’ve met are nice, down to earth guys who appreciate what they’ve been allowed to achieve.
The article’s main point seems to be that the owners don’t want to share large amounts of the profits because this era’s players are unworthy. Suuure, just give ’em rosters full of Tebows and they’d gladly open the vaults.
The owners don’t want to share more because they feel the NFLPA can’t make them. They are right. And an owner who pays hundreds of millions for his franchise has every right to use every drop of leverage to increase profits. But let’s not slap the white hat on his head when he’s fighting not to put sufficient funds in the coffers from old players who can no longer walk and suffer from trauma-induced dementia.
I find it ironic that with the looming lockout, the supporter-owned Packers win the Super Bowl.
Well done indeed…Jason Whitlock is very intuitive and has supported Cleveland on topics in the past.
Ross Tucker has talked about a problem when it comes to the NFLPA.
The majority of teams reps are the Ray Lewis, Braylon Edwards and OchoCinco’s of the world. The ones who won’t be hurt because they make millions a year and not that 700,000 someone quoted earlier. The smartest guy on the team, the one who could possibly contribute the most to the conversation, isn’t the rep. If I remember correctly he said the reason the NFLPA doesn’t help former players as much is cause those reps don’t envision themselves being in that position so don’t know of the possible problems.
Yes, the owners don’t want to give the players more money. Somehow the players don’t realize that if you kept the current salary cap structure, league minimum and installed a rookie salary cap that they would have that extra money. No reason to give 40$ million to an untested QB when that can go to keep Peyton Manning on your team without having to give up Dwight Freeney.
“CEOs don’t moonlight as reality TV stars.”
You tell ’em Undercover Boss.
-Signed, Donald Trump