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TWO YEARS without NFL football????

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The NHL isn't a suitable replacement for the Oreo Licking League, let alone the NFL. 😀

I assume cooler heads will prevail at the last minute (I'm thinking August) and there will be football in the fall. If not, I'm going to watch a lot of college football.

In a game of chicken in terms of who can go without pay the longest, the owners win by a landslide, most of them are billionaires and the league still collects a large chunk of revenue when games are not played. Players on the other hand lose valuable years from their careers and paychecks that will never come back. I think the players will lose this one, unless the owners severely mishandle and lose the PR battle that comes along with a strike/lockout.
 
Yeah the NFL players may be overpaid, but don't you feel sorry for the college juniors and seniors who worked so hard for their shot and won't get it?
 
My only hope is that D*TV somehow gets screwed with the Sunday Ticket contract expiring while games aren't being played. Would love to buy the package, but not be tied to them.
 
Great. NFL gets anti-competitive exemptions from US Antitrust laws, and now we are rewarded with rising ticket/merchandising costs, greedy owners taking from public funds to build their extravagant stadiums, and now no NFL games.

I hope Congress threatens to remove the exemption. Players can then choose between league and gain leverage, cities can also choose between leagues and not be at the mercy of choosing between giving up 100s of millions of dollars and losing local football. A monopoly is good because owners profit, players can profit, and the public gets to see a superior product, but not when the owners take more than their fair share. Greedy bastards.

EDIT: Oh right, and I have to pay ridiculous cash to see my team play (49ers fan in Boston, needing to buy Sunday Ticket). Certainly wouldn't be the case if there was competition between leagues.
 
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Hasn't Mark Cuban been working on starting up some kind of alternative league with a bunch of other rich guys and backers in some serious cities? This might be a great window for him. Or, heck, arena football even.
 
arrfep said:
Hasn't Mark Cuban been working on starting up some kind of alternative league with a bunch of other rich guys and backers in some serious cities? This might be a great window for him. Or, heck, arena football even.
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You're thinking of the UFL, the league that lied to its players about their contracts, has already relocated teams, is thinking about contraction (they only have 5 teams!) or canceling a season, hasn't paid the players their last paychecks, and is being sued by Pubes, I mean Cubes, for failure to repay a hefty loan he gave the league. It's pretty much dead after 1 forgettable season.

Also, just wanted to point out that the Federal judge overseeing the matter (Judge Doty) ruled today that the NFL owners violated their fiduciary duty to the players in 2009 when they renegotiated the TV contracts to insert the "lockout insurance" clause. He has not ruled yet on sanctions, but they could include voiding the clause in question and/or financial penalties payable to the Union.

It's a pretty big blow to the owners' collective leverage.
 
sactoking said:
Also, just wanted to point out that the Federal judge overseeing the matter (Judge Doty) ruled today that the NFL owners violated their fiduciary duty to the players in 2009 when they renegotiated the TV contracts to insert the "lockout insurance" clause. He has not ruled yet on sanctions, but they could include voiding the clause in question and/or financial penalties payable to the Union.

It's a pretty big blow to the owners' collective leverage.
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I was just going to post this. seems the NFL was planning on the lockout. they did the TV contract screwing over the players with the lockout in mind.
 
Just as the Packers become THE premier team with a strong chance to compete for years to come? This is bullshit.

If they lockout, and its gone for TWO YEARS, fuck them all. They will lose A LOT of fans I think (not me though.... ugh, I will weep).
 
rockyct said:
Well, they sure are shrewd sons of bitches but that's probably how they got money in the first place. It took years for baseball to fully recover from their strike and that was because it was the beginning of the steroid era and baseball was exciting.
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Fail
 
gotsmack said:
Stupid question: why don't the owners just hire scabs to play and fire all of the strikers?
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What kind of talent do you think is available? Outside of a few cases of finding diamonds in the rough, most of the best football players already play in the NFL. The product would be hugely inferior to what we've come to expect.

Edit: In further developments, David Doty overruled a Feb 1st decision to reject the NFLPA's motion to have all TV contract payments to the NFL for 2011 be payed into an escrow account if there is a lockout. The NFLPA argued that the league intentionally structuring the deals so that the owners would get guaranteed payouts in 2011 but did not negotiate for the most profits in 2009/2010 when the revenues would have been split. The owners are saying that the TV revenues for 2011 were never a concern and they have been proceeding along under the assumption that such a ruling would be made.
 
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gotsmack said:
Stupid question: why don't the owners just hire scabs to play and fire all of the strikers?
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Uh because first it's not a strike, it's a lockout. If anything, the ones on strike are the owners, not the players. Secondly, because all the best football players in the world are currently in the NFL and firing them would mean the only players left would be ones from the CFL, UFL, and not-yet-drafted college players.

It would be like if the MLB disappeared and they just promoted AAA league in its place. It's not the same level of play.
 
NeoV said:
the fact that there is an NFL player's 'union' is sickening to me in the first place, and then the fact that it takes care of it's former players for shit - that 'union' money could be much better spent attending to the health-care for former players.

Rookie contracts are a joke - if NFL players can't agree to that fact, what's the point of any of these negotiations? Shame on the owners for letting that go so long - JaMarcus Russell took home 30+ million already - Verhnon Golsten, 22+M - neither could play at all

the 18 game schedule? Only the owners want it - I think it's an awful idea.

think of the cries of the fantasy football world if 2 NFL seasons are cancelled....
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I believe you haven't the foggiest clue what you are talking about.

The union protects the players, and is looking out for the interests of the veterans and former players alike. Given that the current rookie class is not yet employed, they are both interested in rookie wage alterations in some form. Chances are, it will still have to be a fairly significant pay-out, but the growth will be locked. This is mostly due competition among other sports, so they will have to remain competitive in that arena.

That union is the one group with the players' interest at heart. Its job is to protect them and allows a collective decision among a group of individuals, and is quite necessary in ensuring that the players are taken care of.

The 18 game schedule is likely a bad idea in the interests of the players. However, from an income standpoint, replacing 2 pre-season (meaningless) games with 2 regular season games increases revenue significantly. It would create a bigger pie for both the owners and the players. The problem is, it will likely decrease the longevity of many careers. In addition, current player contracts were more or less based on 16 game seasons, not 18. SO there are two significant bones of contentions for players, the most important being the shortening of careers due to added risk.
 
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