The 2011 NFL Lockout

Anyone who has recently watched ESPN has heard of the current NFL lockout. Football fans and analyst would normally be talking about draft picks, free agency, and how the Green Bay Packers can repeat as Super Bowl Champions. All that has changed since the NFL players and owners can’t agree on a new collective bargaining agreement that expired on March 1st, 2011. It’s a very complicated issue, but here are the following issues affecting this current NFL lockout:

1. An Extended Season

The NFL season is usually a 16-game season with three or four playoffs games. A playoff team can play 17 – 20 games in a single season depending on where that team was ranked. The owners requested for an 18-game season to make money via ticket sales, merchandise, and television revenue. Many of the players opposed this proposal because it would increase their chances of getting injured without compensation. If the NFL owners want this, they will have to pay the players more by giving them a bigger share of the money and health benefits. In addiction to that, there have been talks about minimizing or eliminating the NFL preseason in the process of an 18-game season.

2. Salaries

This issue is always big with players and owners. Players want more money and the owners don’t want overblown salaries. In any sport, a salary cap was designed to have a level playing field for all teams. There was no salary cap for the 2010 season because the NFL owners used their option to extend the collective bargaining agreement for another year. All 32 teams are different when it comes to the salary cap. The issue would be how much each team’s salary would increase or decrease over time.

3. Revenue Sharing

The most talked about and scrutinized issue in this whole lockout is the issue revenue sharing. The whole “money pie” is made up of $9 billion. Both sides are arguing which side gets the most. If not the most, than the percentage of money both sides can agree to. They are other key issues that play a major role in deciding the revenue sharing for both players and owners.

4. Financial Information

This issue is more about trust than releasing information about finances. The players feel like the owners haven’t been honest about the money they really make. The players requested that the owners reveal their financial records of how they make and earn money. The owners declined that request. Even with this issue being about finances, the real issue here is lack of trust. 

5. Rookie Salaries

One of the few things that both sides agree on is to change the rookie salary. There have been a lot of rookie athletes who come into the league with a big time contract, yet they’ve been untested in the game of football. Some of the contracts these rookies get is something a veteran player might receive over time. For example, when quarterback Jamarcus Russell was drafted as the first overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft, he was given $62 million contract with $32 million guaranteed. Needless to say for Raiders fans, it didn’t work out. Both sides will likely agree on a sliding scales based on the round a player was drafted.

This issued has become one of the biggest union debates to come in professional sports in the last five years. The NHL and NBA have had their union disputes in the past, but both sports don’t even compare to the NFL. The NFL is “king” in America and any labor dispute the league has will be magnified more closely than other sports. Regardless of who wins, the NFL fans still lose if there is no NFL season. No one knows for sure when a deal would get done to insure an NFL season in 2011. All I know is that the fans would rather hear about player contracts than union/league contracts.

References

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ycn-8051788

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/story/15241433/distrustful-owners-hold-the-key-to-unlocking-the-lockout