By Mike Wilkening
May 20, 2008

If there was any doubt that NFL owners are itching for a labor brawl, that illusion is gone, vaporized like the final two years of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, which the owners unanimously voted to lop off on Tuesday.

Technically, the agreement now runs through the 2010 league year, but because that would be a year without a salary cap — a prospect that NFL owners and then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue could not bear to face in the last round of CBA negotiations two years ago — the pressure will be on the owners to strike a better deal during either the 2008 or ’09 league years.

NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw

Many issues are in play in this newest set of negotiations, but they can all be linked to the percentage of revenues being paid to the players. Under the current agreement, players will receive 59.5 percent of total revenue in the next two years. When the deal was reached in March 2006, Tagliabue earned praise for keeping the labor peace, but the leaguewide feeling was that Upshaw had won the negotiations.

If Wednesday’s vote is any indication, the owners, who will spend almost $4.5 billion on player costs this year, will be less conciliatory at the next set of labor talks.

“A Collective Bargaining Agreement has to work for both sides,” the NFL said Tuesday. “If the agreement provides inadequate incentives to invest in the future, it will not work for management or labor. And, in the context of a professional sports league, if the agreement does not afford all clubs an opportunity to be competitive, the league can lose its appeal.”

Upshaw said that while the NFLPA is willing to negotiate with the NFL, the players will not accept a smaller share of the revenues in the next agreement. As he has before, Upshaw also indicated an uncapped year would mean the end of he NFL’s current economic system as we know it. Calling the beginning of the 2010 league year “the point of no return” as far as negotiations go, Upshaw said that the NFLPA believes players would receive 70 percent of revenues in an uncapped system. Said Upshaw of such a scenario: “I’m not going to try and sell the players on the cap again.”

The owners are expected to argue that rising capital costs — primarily those stemming from stadium construction — necessitate revenue concessions from the NFLPA. “The current labor agreement does not adequately recognize the costs of generating the revenues of which the players receive the largest share; nor does the agreement recognize that those costs have increased substantially — and at an ever increasing rate — in recent years during a difficult economic climate in our country,” the NFL said Tuesday. “As a result, under the terms of the current agreement, the clubs’ incentive to invest in the game is threatened.”

In response, Upshaw argued that the union has worked closely with the NFL on several capital projects in recent years, citing the stadium improvements undertaken by the Chiefs, Cowboys, Giants, Jets and Ravens as examples. Speaking mostly in general terms, Upshaw said the NFLPA had agreed in some instances to allow clubs to keep some revenues recognized from the capital improvements out of the revenue pool to be paid to players.

Another expected point of contention in the next set of negotiations: rookie salaries, especially for high first-round picks. The NFL called the current system “irrational” in that “some rookies are able to secure contracts that pay them more than top proven veterans.”

However, Upshaw is against a rookie wage scale.

“It’s something we’re not willing to embrace or make part of the future,” he said, citing the relatively short career length for the average player.

The league is also likely to try to insert language into the next CBA that allows teams to recoup bonuses to players who, in the clubs’ view, “subsequently breach their player contracts or refuse to perform.” Upshaw, whose union won a major victory in February when a federal judge ruled that Falcons QB Michael Vick did not have to repay more than $16 million in roster bonus money, doesn’t see any concessions forthcoming on that issue, either. “(The NFL) threw that in (its announcement Tuesday morning) because it seems to be a sexy topic right now,” Upshaw said.

Adding to the intrigue of this latest round of negotiations are the internal issues both sides will also have to sort out to come to an agreement. For the owners, revenue sharing among the 32 clubs remains a hot-button topic. It is no secret the highest-grossing teams aren’t enthralled with sharing with lower-revenue clubs, and the issue threatened to derail the last set of negotiations.

“They hate paying the players. … But they hate sharing with each other more,” Upshaw joked.

Upshaw’s future with the union also bears watching. His contract runs through 2010, but he has reportedly pledged to stay on as executive director until the latest set of negotiations has been completed. In April, an attempt by Ravens PK Matt Stover to find Upshaw’s replacement by March 2009 fizzled.

“I think the players will stay together right now,” a league source told PFW. “It sends a big message to players when it’s 32 to zero. What the owners are basically saying is, ‘We are ready for a fight.’ The players’ message needs to be, ‘We are 100 percent behind Gene.’ If the players cannot agree on anything, there will be big problems.”

Because the stakes have never been higher on both sides.

Related Articles:

Opting out of CBA early signals owners' interest in getting a new deal done before it's too late
By Eric Edholm, May 20, 2008