As you might have read, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has pledged to drop his salary to $1 if the league doesn't have a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in place by the time the current one expires in March. It sounds like a bold move, but it's impact is lessened when you realize that Goodell is not the one who needs to be pushed to the bargaining table. There have been incentives in place for both the players and the owners, the real drivers in these negotiations, to come to an agreement long before we reached this point.
When the current CBA was drafted in 2006, then-Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and then-NFLPA President Gene Upshaw put clauses in the last year of the contract to deter their successors from a work stoppage. For the 2010 season, the salary cap would disappear if a CBA extension was not signed. Upshaw hoped the owners would negotiate rather than lose their precious cap. On the other side, the minimum requirement for a player to become a free agent would switch from 4 years to 6 years. Tagliabue's reasoning was that nearly 200 players from the 2005 and 2006 draft would push their union president to make a deal so free agency could continue as usual and they could sign big contracts. But as we saw, this was not how things played out. The NFL owners happily waved at the extension deadline as it passed, hoping to garner a sweeter deal in 2011. And new NFLPA President DeMaurice Smith (elected after Gene Upshaw's sudden passing in 2008) made no attempts to sway them.
So as much of a nice gesture Goodell's $1 salary promise seems to be, it has a much bigger impact on the NFL PR department than the bargaining table. If we want to see a 2012 season, it's the players and owners who have to start conceding their incomes.
No comments:
Post a Comment