Jeff: Shocked Into Stunned Disbelief

"We're going to behead the golden goose," one NFC owner said last week. "And I can't see why both sides would ever let it get to that..."

I thought I was smarter than this (any of you who know me can insert your own "well you should of asked me and I could have told you you weren't" joke here). I really did. With all the spoiled athletes and owners in today's world of sports, I didn't think there was anything out there that could really shock me. Well I was wrong. Reading Len Pasquarelli's column today on ESPN.com about NFL labor strife leaves me stunned. I expected the labor problems that happened in baseball, basketball, and especially hockey, but never the mighty king of pro sports, the National Football League. While the commissioners of the NHL and Major League Baseball are incompetent at best, and David Stern (now, without a doubt, "the Don Stern" is the best commissioner in sports) has done what he can with the third most popular sport in the country, I just thought the NFL was bullet-proof. The hard salary cap and non-guaranteed contracts have done wonders for pro football. It gives small market teams like the two latest Super Bowl contestants, Pittsburgh and Seattle, a chance to compete with the big boys in Dallas, Washington and New York. Although it's definitely a disadvantage to the players, having no guaranteed contracts makes them play harder, and therefore makes the game better. Hell, the fact the league is so wildly popular despite having NO TEAM in the country's second largest media market (Los Angeles) should tell you how well both the players and owners are doing here.

So you would think, as I did, that both sides would look at this, as well as the problems and shortcomings of the other leagues, and try to get a new collective bargaining agreement finished as fast as possible. If you're involved in the NFL, you're not making money hand-over-fist- money is practically falling from the sky!! Yes, owners from major markets could probably be making more money than they are now, but considering their franchises are all worth in excess of $800 MILLION DOLLARS each and they continue to be cash cows, is it REALLY worth it to sacrifice all of that for a few more millions a year?!?!?!

Apparently it is. Besides the fact owners and players can't agree how much of a percentage of league revenues the players should receive (players want 60%, the owners won't budge from 56.2%), you have the owners themselves fighting with one another!!! It was the late New York Giants owner Wellington Mara who years ago took the responsibility of convincing the owners that a salary cap and sharing revenue streams more evenly would be better for the league, even though Mara, owner of a team in the world's largest media market, standed to lose the most from this proposition. When Mr. Mara died this past year, it seems like his forward-thinking common sense that had been a Hallmark of this league for so long left with him. Is it possible to screw up the NFL? Before this week I would have said no. I believe college football is the only "untouchable" sport in the country. I can't possibly think of a scenario where people would stop watching and attending college football games en masse. I used to think the NFL was in this class too, but it looks like I was mistaken.

Is the NFL now doomed because of this week's happenings? No, but I'm no longer convinced cooler heads will prevail here. Unless something unforseen happens today, the NFL will have an "uncapped" season starting in 2007. Suddenly the two things that have made this league so great, a salary cap, and reasonable player contracts, will be gone. Suddenly small-market teams like Minnesota will no longer be on even standing with the Dallas Cowboys or Washington Redskins. Those "big boys" can sign as many players as the want to as much as they want. Yes, the contracts will still not be guaranteed, but that gives even MORE advantage to the bigger cities, as we've seen in baseball. If player X can sign for $10 million in Minnesota, or for $20 million in Washington, what do you think he's going to do? And if a team like Washington, a team that makes obscene amounts of money already, can spend freely on players with no concerns about their bottom line, well I think you can fill in the blanks from there.

Oh, and just so you don't think I'm totally blaming the owners for all of this, here's a quote from the Pasquarelli article on comments from NFLPA (players association) director Gene Upshaw:

"And Upshaw has reiterated throughout the talks that if the NFL ever plays without a salary cap for one season, players will never permit one to be reinstituted."

At this point, I have no reason not to believe him. Football fans (and especially those in Minnesota), enjoy the 2006 season, because after this, football as we know it may never be the same.