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There's a real risk to the NFL with a rookie wage scale, though, which is that it allows an opening for a rival league to poach incoming rookies. The USFL did that, but had to pay something close to the real value of guys like Steve Young; if the rookie wage scale is too depressed, a USFL-type league could get Steve Young for less than his NFL market value, which would make competition with the NFL more viable.
With the artificial conditions imposed by the draft, I don't think we have any idea what the market is for high draft picks. Maurile, whose opinion I value highly, thinks that top picks would command even greater salaries under more open conditions. I don't agree with this in all situations.But, yeah, here's where I'm going with this: I already thought the draft sucked as an entertainment function and was blatantly unfair to rookies. A rookie cap makes the situation even more unconscionable. Conspiring to limit salaries to new employees is not healthy for anybody but those 31 buttheads running the show.
I understand where you're coming from, I really do.....but gaurenteeing a rookie QB 40 million dollars before he ever steps on a field is every bit as unconcionable considering his odds of success are no better than 50%.There has to be a solution that doesn't carry such ridiculous risk for the franchise while remaining at least somewhat fair to the players.Personally, I think getting rid of gaurenteed money in rookie deals and capping only the first two years of salary (generously) should work, but what you or I think really doesn't matter.'roadkill1292 said:
If the owners collectively depressed rookie wages outside of the CBA, they'd be open to a collusion action that they'd likely lose.'Yenrub said:
Well, who is being unconscionable, rene? If it's as unlikely to happen as Octupus says it is, (not that I'm disagreeing with him) then why are owners worried about rookies walking away and sitting out the season?And while I think the whole system is unfair to rookies, I also think the entrenched conventional thinking of owners could be costing them money as well. Because where I differ from Maurile is that I think in an open market, some rookie signings will actually decrease in value. The NFL and the agents for rookies are in some kind of weird rut right now with this concept of "slotting" and the notion that this year's No. 1 is automatically worth a bigger paycheck than last year's. We could probably run through the list of No. 1s the past couple of decades and see where this kind of thinking is bull hockey as often as not.
I disagree here. The NFL's brand in this country is simply too strong and their economic dominace too great for a rival league to threaten the NFL in anyway, particularly relating to rookie contract. Even the NFL proposal on rookie deals is talking about guaranteeing the #1 pick $20M.There also doesn't seem to be a tremendous amount of billionaires not being allowed to acquire an NFL team so there's no impetus for them to start an upstart league like what occurred with AFL 50 years ago.'CalBear said:
Things change. What franchises have been for sale lately? There are buyers and the league would love to replace Mike Brown and probably a few others (see Simmons' column on fixing the NBA for an interesting Mike Brown/Donald Sterling parallel). But there's no mechanism for getting rid of guys like that. They're sitting fat and fancy, don't need to be competitive or anything.
You're not focusing on the key part of Doc Ocs post.Holdouts do happen now. There are some examples of players who have held out for an entire season (Bo Jackson, Kelly Stoufer, etc), but there aren't a lot. I think it's fair to characterize most of those holdouts as "player doesn't want to play for the team who drafted him and is willing to sit out a year to get traded or redrafted", or else he has something else (Bo Jackson baseball, Mossy Cade 6th overall pick to USFL, etc) he can do in the meantime to where he's fine with not being in the NFL for a year.The other type of holdout then the player is signing some point after training camp and especially after the regular season starts, and it's about money, not what team he is on. Lots more examples of this. Jamarcus Russell signed after week 1. Cornelius Bennett after week 6. Michael Crabtree signed the first week of October. Emmit Smith held out for a month and a half. I think the NFL probably averages a couple players a year who hold out through camp, and maybe even averages close to 1 a year who hold out into the regular season.So let's talk leverage. When Crabtree came into the league he was able to get as much money as he could get the 49ers to sign him for. Crabtree's leverage includes the 49ers loss of not having him on the field, as well as the potential risk he could sit out an entire season. The 49ers leverage includes that by not signing Crabtree is losing money once those game checks start. Now what happens with a rookie wage scale? That's the key part of Doc Oc's post I mentioned. "He would then still only get the same 'offer'". Now you're adding huge leverage onto the 49er's side. Crabtree can sit out as long as he wants, the new rules potentially won't allow the 49ers to pay him anything other than what they first offered him.So there is no financial gain with his current team for the player to hold out anymore. Which was the vast majority of the reason that rookies hold out. For him to get a better contract than what was already offered by the team who first drafts him, he'd have to sit out a year and get drafted in a higher slot. And most teams won't see a player's value go up when he's out of football for a year. Even if he does get drafted to a higher slot, for the player to come out ahead he has to be drafted high enough that the new contract makes up for the value of what he would have made that first year, but didn't since he didn't play.So now the benefit for the player of holding out is pretty much limited to, "I don't want to play for you... trade me or I'll hold out and wait to be redrafted next year."'roadkill1292 said:
The USFL had to compete on an even basis with the NFL for rookies. If the NFL implements a rookie wage scale, any other league would not have to compete on an even basis; they could offer rookies more than the NFL is willing to pay them as rookies, but less than their true value in a free market. So if right now the #1 overall NFL pick could get $40M, and the rookie wage scale will limit him to $20M, a USFL-type league could come in and offer $25M. A rookie wage scale lowers the cost of competing with the NFL for rookies by the same degree to which it depresses rookie salaries.
You're leaping ahead to the time when there is a league that will compete with the NFL. That's what will never happen.
It's happened several times before, once very successfully. There's nothing magical about the NFL which makes it immune to competition.
Fixed. (The Chargers lost one of their first-round picks the previous year — RB Gary Anderson — to the USFL.)
How can you not see it as unconscionable? I think it's definitely better for the health of the league but I can also see how one could say it's patently unfair for rookies. But if you want to play in the NFL, you agree to the labor rules of the league, and you go along for the ride.
And the new CBA being discussed actually removes the ability of an owner to sit comfortably under the cap. While there has been a salary cap floor up until now, it has not been a hard floor. My understand is that in the next CBA, the new salary cap floor will be in hard collards spent that will represent 95% of the value of that years cap.So if 2011's salary cap is $120M, teams will essentially be forced to spend $114M on actual player salaries. On what level would a new league be able to compete with the NFL financially if right off the bat, teams at a minimum have to spend 9 figures on player compensation? The AFL largely succeeded because it's owners had as much, if not more money than the NFL owners.What you're also leaving out is that a lot of NFL owners now control their facility. So they would either refuse to allow another upstart league to use it, or secure a kings ransom for it to be used. If you want to use the Liberty Bowl in cities like Memphis or the Alamadome, you're trying to establish professional football in cities the NFL has largely rejected.No...the NFL has a monopoly on football in this country no matter how much someone else would like to pay collegiate stars.
Weren’t they already depressing the rookie wages without them being collectively bargained?I mean it’s only the top 10 or 15 guys that get crazy guaranteed money the remaining 250 drafted players aren’t paid that well (relative to their industry)
The cap floor affects competition for veterans, but it doesn't affect competition for rookies or players under rookie contracts. Take Sam Bradford; let's say he was locked into a 5-year, $20M rookie contract right now. What's to stop the PFL (Poaching Football League) from offering him $10M/year to be the new face of their franchise? Or even to have offered him that last year, with a four-year contract instead of the five the NFL was requiring? You could build up a plausible league with a few stars and a bunch of replacement-level players if you have the protection of five years of depressed wages for incoming players to compete against.The venues would work out; you could start in LA, for one thing, and some of the stadiums the NFL teams are abandoning remain perfectly usable.
Did my response to this post get lost or deleted? Or did I mistakenly post it in one of the "legalize marijuana" threads? I remember it as being particularly brilliant though, again, that might be because I've been posting in the "legalize marijuana" threads and, well, you know how things are.
Prisco is reporting a player called letting him know "don't believe the hype." Essentially the owners are putting out false hope to force the players to sign.Don't believe the hype'Raiderfan32904 said:
Earlier today somebody asked Chad Ochocinco on twitter if he was happy that the lockout probably won't last much longer. His response: "Dude, don't let the media fool you. Not happening yet."
it most certainly was bc of money in rubio's case. his european contract had a very high buyout figure and he essentially would have been playing for free for about 3 years. his buyout figure was 5.75 euros and his salary as the 5th pick would have been about 8.8m over three years. nba teams can only contribute 500k to buyouts.in the ensuing years his buyout number has dropped to 1.4 million and that is why he is coming over now.'bicycle_seat_sniffer said:
No, it's still there, but you went off a direction based on incorrect logic/assumptions. I.e. "If there's no advantage to a rookie holdout, then why are owners complaining that they are forced to overpay for top picks? If it's unlikely that they'll hold out, then why pay so much? Why does this need to be part of the CBA?"I was pointing out that there was an advantage to a rookie holdout... the prospect of getting more money than what the team was offering early in the contract negotiation. And as Doc Oc pointed out, under a rookie cap "He would then still only get the same "offer" (since their is a cap)".And that's why it needs to be in the CBA. The owners can't impose a cap legally without it being collectively bargained.
I shouldn't have posed that one question because of course I understand that this can only happen by being collectively bargained. But neither of you is yet addressing my question of why owners feel that a cap on rookie salaries is necessary in the first place when rookies already possess so little leverage in the negotiating process. If it's so disadvantageous for a rookie to sit out for year, why are owners "overpaying" now?From the perspective of short careers, lower pay than other pro sports and a lack of viable competition, it seems unbelievable to me that a "like it or lump it" deal for rookies can be allowed to stand.
1. Ochocinco likely doesn't realy know anymore about the status of the lockout than any of us.2. As much as the owners want to put pressure on the players to make a deal by being public about the deal bring close, the players want to do the opposite so they dont cave. It's a big circle. I wouldnt really believe either side until a deal is done.
There was a collectively bargained rookie cap already, but I believe the owners are looking into a hard slotting system similar to the NBA as opposed to just needing all rookie contracts to fit under a rookie cap. And really, most years even the top 10-15 are probably underpaid. Now, certain years with weak draft classes the top of the draft gets artificially high salaries, but on the whole rookies probably get less than market value. However, the owners want to pay them less and the veterans also want more of the pie, so the rookies will get screwed.
Because the amount a rookie cap shifts contracts is of a vastly different scale than what we're talking about with the typical player holdout. I don't know what percentage the owners are proposing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was only 50% to 60% of what they are currently making. What was not worth it to the player to hold out, it would now be, if a team tried individually to shift things back to where they think they should be.A player isn't likely to hold out and miss a season and go back into the draft when the amount they differ on is the order of $1m per year. Crabtree gained $1.3m per year by his holdout. But if the Panthers, absent a rookie cap, go to Cam Newton and say, we want you take a contract where you make $6.5m per year instead of the $13m that Bradford got last year? Newton would be better off sitting out a year, costing himself $6.5m and coming back in the draft the next year and hoping to get a Bradford contract, if he's not outright traded by Carolina to someone who will pay him the $13m. If he signs the Panther's contract, after year 2 he's got $13m, if he holds out and gets a Bradford contract, he makes nothing year 1 but then the new contract hits and he makes $13m. There's no reason for him not to hold out in such a case. The scale of the shift in salary being sought makes it worthwhile to him now.The only way a reduction works is if all the teams work together to implement. If other teams are going to continue to pay these inflated prices, then it is worth it to the player to hold out if he's offered something on the level of the what the owners want the cap to be.
Everything I've read today expressing optimism that a deal will be reached soon either didn't mention sources or mentioned unnamed owner sources. I haven't seen anything yet expressing optimism from the players' side. Has anyone?
Nothing forced teams to offer draft picks that much.
I've read this post five times, Greg, and I still don't understand it. Is it all to reach the conclusion that a rookie cap will end holdouts because rookies won't be able to improve their bargaining position by holding out?In return for this wonderful new tool for management, have the owners offered anything positive for rookies in the negotiating process?
Owners dont need to offer rookies anything positive, they just need to offer most of whatever they're taking from the rookies to the veterans.
As it relates to some of the arguments you've made in other posts, I think you're off on a number of points.1) I'm assuming you mean the AFL when you refer to a league that competed with the NFL. When the AFL/NFL merger occurred, there were 16 NFL teams. The demand fir professional football outside of those 16 cities was immense and the AFL was able to exploit that with a different brand of football which backed by wealthy owners like the Hunt family, could compete for top talent. The business and economic conditions have changed mightily in the last 40-50 years which include the NFL/AFL merger which contributed in making the NFL a 32 team league eventually and essentially putting a franchise in most every market that could support it. Obviously LA is an exception, but the NFL has strategically held that card in it's back pocket and there is little doubt that within 5 years, an NfL franchise will be there.2) For the most part, older venues are being demolished. This isn't a deal killer, because you'll be able to fund some cities that hypothetically could support (Memphis/San Antonio), but again...what demand exists for someone to spend time watching Tier 4 city professional football? Wasn't this tried in the last 10 years with the XFL to disastrous results? If the business model of this new league to take advantage of a cap on rookie signings, then why haven't we seen a competitive league sprout up in professional basketball where there is a hard rookie cap? In fact, the only rookie in recent memory who was worth something that decided to play in another professional league was Brandon Jennings, and that was only because he didn't want to play a season of college basketball. And that was when he had the option of established professional leagues overseas...which don't exist in football. Plus, the NFL business is in much better health than the NBA so if any league was ripe for such w play by an upstart, I think wemwould have seen it there based on your reasoning.
That's how I see it, too. Both sides are taking it out of those not in a position to defend themselves. The league will tell you for whom you can play and if you try to get around that by taking a year off, you're just gonna have to go through it again. And don't try to shake us down for more money, boy, we can't offer it even if we wanted to, though that's just a rule we made up so we wouldn't do it, not that we couldn't. Now here's a nice check that all the guys at FootballGuys would chop up their grandmothers for and consider themselves privileged to have the opportunity to wield the cleaver. If you don't suffer a crippling injury and manage to hang on for a couple of years in the most competitive profession in the world, there might be a couple of extra bucks in it for you next time -- unless we can get a rookie for less.
http://m.nbcsports.com/s/3108/proFootballTalkDetails?itemUriVal=6f27ef3e689dad1a933da986385bda7c%2F10510041303951134210611799&view=hdl&itemTitle=On%20rookie%20wage%20scale,%20league,%20players%20don’t%20seem%20to%20be%20squabbling%20over%20muchThis post on pft cites an nflpa document that addresses the rookie wage scale as being pretty close. It doesnt say if it adresses anything else, but most of the media.seems to be on board that it is the last hurdle. I think I trust the media about as much as unnamed sources. I just saw a twitter post (dont remember who) that reminds everyone that there are really only a handful of people that truely know where the talks stand
AlbertBreer Here's one thing to remember with the ups-and-downs ... A small number of people are privy to what's happening in those negotiating rooms.
If the XFL started with Sam Bradford instead of Mike Pawlawski, the story could have been different, no? (And believe me, I love Mike Pawlawski, he was a great college QB and is a great analyst now).
We have. It's in Europe.
And didn't formerly exist in basketball, either.
Euroleague Basketball, commonly known as the Euroleague, is the highest level tier and most important professional club basketball competition in Europe, with teams from up to 18 different countries, members of FIBA Europe. For sponsorship reasons, for five seasons starting with 2010-2011, it will be named Turkish Airlines Euroleague. The competition is operated by ULEB, a Europe-wide consortium of leading professional basketball leagues. During the season, the Euroleague is broadcast on television in 191 countries and can be seen by up to 245 million (800 million via satellite) households weekly in China. It is also televised in the United States and Canada on NBA TV and available online through ESPN3. The Euroleague Final Four is broadcast on television in 197 countries....and it started in 1958. This does not qualify as an upstart.As for whether the XFL would have succeeded with Sam Bradford's vs. Mike Pawlawski...I think it would have delegitimized the product even more as elite talents surrounded by replacement level talent doesn't produce compelling competition. And how much more would a PFL have to offer a Bradford or Cam Newton to throw away his NFL dreams? Plus, from a marketability standpoint, is said player as marketable in the PFL as he is in the NFL? I simply don't buy it.
Yep, thats the one I saw, thanks!
I don't see it as unconscionable because I have zero empathy for any of the player's positions on any of this.
When was it very successful? When the AFL and NFL merged nearly 50 years ago?When else? The USFL? There has been no real competition. And I agree there's nothing "magical" per se, but there's no real competition for the NHL, MLB, NBA, NASCAR, etc... either. They tried it with CART and IndyCar and look what happened. Neither league was worth a crap so they ended up re-merging. There just isn't an appetite for two "main" leagues in any sport. That's what makes the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, etc... so special.
When was Euroleague first taken seriously by NBA-level basketball players? Certainly not in 1992. Charles Barkley, when asked if anyone could beat the Dream Team, said "No, absolutely not. Maybe the U.S. women's team." It was assumed prior to our third-place finish in 1988 that USA basketball was so vastly superior to European (or any other) basketball that we could send college players and still dominate. And with NBA players in 1992, the USA looked like the Harlem Globetrotters against the Europeans.The NBA rookie scale was adopted in 1995. Is it coincidence that the decline of USA basketball coincided with the adoption of the NBA rookie wage sale? I think you have to presume that there was an effect. Certainly the basketball world is a lot different now than it was in 1995, and not to the advantage of the NBA.
The USFL managed to sign Herschel Walker, Steve Young, and Heisman Trophy winner Mike Rozier; and that was without the NFL artificially depressing rookie salaries.
Yes, obviously.
You're missing both history and current reality here. Euro basketball is a real competitor to the NBA, right now, and one that is growing in importance. CART used to be bigger than NASCAR and the Indy 500 was the premier auto race in the country; the split between CART and IndyCar is the reason that NASCAR got an opening to become what it has become. I'm not saying a rookie wage scale will doom the NFL. But the only league where one was implemented has declined greatly in popularity since it was adopted, and has had more and more of its potential players going off to other leagues. It's something to be concerned about.
Are you suggesting that the NBA is becoming less popular because players are leaving to play in the Euro League because of the rookie pay schedule? That's what it sounds like. I can't think of a single one. I'd say the "thug" factor has a lot more to do with the NBA's losing popularity than anything else. That and an NBA game in and of itself does not compare to a top flight college game in intensity and atmosphere. Not even close.'CalBear said:
Heard two comments from players, neither identified. Adam S quoted one as saying players have given in a lot, owners have not followed suit. This player is part of negotiating team. I believe there was a PFT quote from a player that sides are not close and it will be a while. Said optimism in media from owners manipulating the public opinion.It's over when it's over. I am not counting on the 21st.'fatness said:
Thank you.
Because the rookies hold too MUCH leverage now. Teams HAVE to sign them, or risk pissing off their fans. To make things worse, the owners have been unable to go backwards on offers compared to prior years, instead watching the demands of the first round rookies escalate to unreasonable levels. I will agree that it's the owner's own faults. They weren't drawing a hard enough line on first rounders 15 years ago, and it's simply gotten worse. But knowing that simply does nothing to change the reality of the problem....the salaries for high first round picks have been unreasonably high and the teams are desperate for a legal way to curtail the problem.'roadkill1292 said:
