CBA Threatens NFL Season in 2011
If the Mayan calendar is correct and the world ends in December of 2012, it may come as a welcome relief as 2011 may be a year with no professional football in America. Last year, NFL owners voted unanimously to exercise an option to end the existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and to continue negotiating a new agreement for the 2011 season and beyond. This means that the 2009 NFL season will be the last season played under the current salary cap structure and the 2010 season will be played, however with no salary cap. Following the 2010 season, if no new agreement is underway, the owners may instill a lockout on the NFL players.
The issue at hand is team revenues. The NFL players issue is simple. They want to get paid at a rate that is fair and in proportion to the enormous revenues in which they bring into the league. The NFL is the largest grossing professional sports league in the United States, grossing $6.7 billion in revenues in 2008 (compared to $6 billion for MLB, $3.3 billion for the NBA, and $2.25 billion for the NHL). The NFL players are guaranteed, under the current CBA, 50% of the revenue be applied to player salaries.
With no guaranteed salary for players (except signing bonuses), the players are one injury away from having no salary and no money for retirement. The players are at risk every time they take the field from being without a job and without income. Their mantra has been to get paid as much as possible as early as possible to insure the damage they do to their body is compensated for when they retire.
The owners, on the other hand, see the CBA as a burden on their ability to invest revenues into facilities and the increasing costs of upgrading those facilities to attract fans, both old and new. One only has to look at the cost of the Dallas Cowboys new stadium, ringing in at a reported $1.2 billion, to understand the potential expenses of new, state-of-the-art stadiums for NFL teams. Additionally owners site operational costs associated with running the franchise as costs that make the current CBA obsolete.
No matter what side you take, one only has to look at the lingering effects that lockouts and strikes have had on the other major pro sports leagues to understand the potential backlash not reaching a new agreement could have. In 1994, when MLB canceled the World Series due to labor disputes, it took a magical season by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa four years later to bring back the fans. With a strike in 2003, the NBA went from an 18.7 rating in the final NBA game before the strike — Game 6 of Chicago versus Utah — to a finals average of 8.2 in 2003. And the NHL, which held a lockout in the 1994 season, was on the verge of becoming a player in the pro sports arena in America, has never rebounded in terms of popularity or revenues.
In the end, the players and owners have to realize that any damage done by not coming to terms with a new CBA far outweighs any damage that any new CBA could inflict.
