Overall, I gotta say that I am totally against the players on the NFL CBA. I don’t mind that they don’t like the idea of more games per season.[1. Although, I would like to see 18 games per season, only 1 pre-season game spread over 2 weeks and 2 bye weeks per year, I think it’d be good for the sport overall but the concept may take time.] I understand that they want more health benefits for retired players. These are reasonable requests. But asking for more money is silly.
I mean, these guys are already multi-millionaires. I realize that their career is short and they need to capitalize on it while they have it, but most people could live off a 10 year $1 million per year contract for the rest of their lives. Personally, if I ever came upon $2 million I would retire and be able to live off the meager $50,000+ a year that interest would provide me.
But I was thinking of the recent events of decertification that the players had. Basically, there is no more union, they are doing this to force the owners out of the lockout and get some leverage back. The assumption is that the owners would be forced into repeating the last year of the previous Collective Bargaining Agreement or bend to player’s will on the new CBA.
But does it really have to be that way? I mean without the union, there is no CBA. Why would they follow rules of a previous CBA? Wouldn’t rules return to the normal boss-worker relationship without union intervention?
If I were on the owner’s group I would end the lock out, yay we won. No more Union, no more CBA now we can make the rules. I would go ahead and institute ALL of the changes we wanted, and then some. You know that they were looking to lower the cap quite a bit? Why not double that. Permanently increase the time frame to become unrestricted free agents to 6 years in the league. All those little rules that players don’t particularly like, put them in.
I mean they can’t strike, they have no union to work out a new agreement. Just make your changes and let them back in and say, you guys decided not to talk to us and give us the power back. Ok we will act as if you are not involved just as you want, and take the power back and do what we think is good for football without you.
If they unionize again….. lock out goes back up until they agree. This completely takes away any semblance of power they felt they had and may actually put them in a worse place than they started in.
Of course, if they wanted a true compromise, maybe they should make it so that new stadium costs come out of the salary cap and then they can have their money. Of course, then they wouldn’t be paid much of anything at all.