Does the 2011 NFL Season Happen?

Does the 2011 NFL Season Happen?

  • Yes. There is too much at stake for the players/owners not to work it out.

    Votes: 10 66.7%

  • No. We've seen this before. No football in 2011.

    Votes: 5 33.3%
  • Total voters
    15
Maybe a "Peace for our time"- Neville Chamberlain type moment.

Hope not.
 
Couple interesting (but depressing) tweets from Andre Carter:

"The lock out is coming. Let's get ready to rumble."

"Remember the players are not on strike. It's the owners locking us out."

Not sure what Carter's role is with the NFLPA, but he seems to know something. And since the mediator, George Cohen, admitted that nothing of substance is happenening at the NFLPA-owner meetings, I think Andre is on to something, unfortunately. According to Jerrah, the owners "need to realistically assume (we are) locking out in 2011." Sad.
 
Just to keep things up-to-date, this was posted by Michael David Smith at NBC Sports at 12:27 PM EST.

De Smith meets with agents, has no good news on negotiations

Posted by Michael David Smith on February 25, 2011, 12:27 PM EST

NFL Players’ Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith met with agents today in Indianapolis at the NFL Scouting Combine, and he did not give them any reason for optimism that a deal with the owners could get done soon.

In fact, one agent in the room texted Adam Schefter of ESPN, “Not close on one single issue. This WILL go into September.”

So, from that agent’s perspective anyway, the two sides are not even close to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. They’re more than six months away.

According to NFL Network’s Albert Breer, Smith also emphasized that he’ll honor the media blackout that both sides in the negotiations have agreed on. So we won’t be hearing much from Smith himself.

But what we’re hearing out of the meeting isn’t good.
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Link: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/02/25/de-smith-meets-with-agents-has-no-good-news-on-negotiations/

Also-this just showed up and is starting to be re-tweeted.

MaxBroncos‎ Just witnessed Adam Schefter and Mike Shanahan conversing in a back corner of the club level atrium lobby here. Some things never change ...
Twitter - 14 minutes ago
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Maybe Shanny and Schefter are secret lovers?

I think the season is shortened. I think the owners win and the players see how much money they are losing and give in.

The owners still have tv contracts. I think this has a huge difference on the outcome.
 
Things may get even nastier yet......

I'm afraid they are going to screw around until they ruin the sport...well, at least for me anyway.......


Union sources confirmed an ESPN report that the union has planned to decertify Thursday.

That has long been planned because the CBA states that the union can’t decertify for six months once the CBA expires Friday.

Decertifying before the end of the CBA would place the case in front of US District Court judge David S. Doty, who has ruled on NFL labor issues since 1993. Ownership views him as pro-union and wants the CBA to expire so their cases can be heard in front of another judge.

Whether the NFLPA follows through on the plans remains to be seen. It likely is part of a strategy to get the NFL to budge off its economic demands before the CBA expires.

A union source said decertification would only be used if there was no progress on the CBA and a lockout by the owners appeared certain. Decertification would be done to file an injunction to prevent a lockout.
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http://www.boston.com/sports/footba...ons_plans/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Football+news
 
Judge ruled in favor of the players today in the TV contracts case - meaning a prolonged lockout is much less likely since the players now have leverage.

For those not familiar, the judge ruled that the roughly $4B in TV money the owners stood to collect in the case of a lockout was in violation of the CBA since it was not with the players interest in mind, and was not "good business sense" as the NFL tried to argue. Without their nest egg, the owners will be more willing to bargain, as they won't have that financial cushion when all their other game-related revenues dry up.
 
Deadspin article on the lawsuit, breaks it down nicely: http://deadspin.com/#!5774550

In briefest terms, a federal judge's ruling found that the NFL's curious broadcast contracts for the 2011 season amount to a "war chest" the league improperly obtained specifically for a lockout. But what does this mean for fans, players and owners, and what happens next? Let's try to make a very complicated situation as simple as possible.

What did the judge say?
It has nothing to do with football, and everything to do with contract legalese. U.S. District Judge David Doty ruled that the NFL was not acting with the interests of the players in mind when it renegotiated its current TV contracts, but rather with an eye toward a lockout. That's impermissible, so those TV contracts — and the billions of dollars that come with them — won't keep the owners rolling in dough if there's a prolonged lockout. An important byproduct of the ruling: proof that the league has been planning for this work stoppage for years.

What's the controversy over the contracts?
There is language in the league's deals with the networks and DirecTV that ensures two things: A) money from rights deals will keep flowing to the league, even if there is no football played, and B) much of that money will not have to be repaid quickly, or at all, if there is a lockout.

How much are we talking about here, and why does it matter?
Somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 billion, which would represent the largest piece of the league's assets in the event of a lockout. The owners were counting on this, because if there's no football, their own revenue streams largely dry up, and they have their own debts and obligations to keep up with.

How exactly did the league stockpile that much cash?
In both 2009 and 2010, the league renegotiated its TV contracts to include language specifically addressing a work stoppage. For example, "of the total amount payable [from DirecTV] in the event of a canceled season, 42% of that fee is nonrefundable and the remainder would be credited to the following season." If there's a lockout, the NFL gets to keep 42 percent of its fees from DirecTV, whether there's football or not. This language did not exist prior to the restructuring of contracts.

Isn't that just good business sense?
That's what the NFL argued. Earlier this month, special master Stephen Burbank (essentially an independent arbiter appointed by the terms of the last CBA) ruled that the league acted "in good faith" and "consistent with sound business judgment" when it renegotiated the contracts. The NFL's argument, which Burbank agreed with, was that it acted out of self interest as a single organization.

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Click the link for the rest.
 
Wow, great read Serv. Thanks for posting. A bit depressing to hear the owners are and have been committed to sitting out the entire season. Sounds like they have been planning for it, actually. With the two sides being so far apart, things aren't looking good...
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Goaldeje said:
Wow, great read Serv. Thanks for posting. A bit depressing to hear the owners are and have been committed to sitting out the entire season. Sounds like they have been planning for it, actually. With the two sides being so far apart, things aren't looking good...
Posted via BGO Mobile Device
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They have been planning on it - even structured their new TV deals for a lockout...which is why they lost their lawsuit.
 
Lanky Livingston said:
They have been planning on it - even structured their new TV deals for a lockout...which is why they lost their lawsuit.
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Yes. I am getting more and more dour about the prospects of a season at all this year. I hate to be a debbie-downer, but it seems like the owners have not only planned on, but WANT to lose this season.

Sigh.
 
Goaldeje said:
Yes. I am getting more and more dour about the prospects of a season at all this year. I hate to be a debbie-downer, but it seems like the owners have not only planned on, but WANT to lose this season.

Sigh.
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Our only hope is now that they don't have their little nest-egg to help them out-wait the players, they'll see the light and negotiate a little more. Money talks, and that $4B has to be screaming in their collective ears.
 
Lanky Livingston said:
Our only hope is now that they don't have their little nest-egg to help them out-wait the players, they'll see the light and negotiate a little more. Money talks, and that $4B has to be screaming in their collective ears.
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Maybe. I think most of the owners have other businesses that they depend on, however. I suspect more owners will no slash their payrolls since they won't have that money to support those workers. Secretaries, salesmen, groundskeepers, etc will all be let go, and that will be blamed on the players.
 
Lanky Livingston said:
This is probably a little low-brow for some of you (Mildly NSFW for language), but it sums up my feelings pretty much exactly. Its an article from Drew Magary at Deadspin about who the real villain is in the labor dispute.

http://deadspin.com/#!5775431/the-real-villains-of-the-nfl-lockout-a-gentle-reminder
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Mildly NSFW? Really? :)

Nice read, and I think he is absolutely right. Here's a more sanitized version expressing the same sentiment by Rick Reilly:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=6177574

I wonder what the tipping point will be? There has to be a point at which the general public does to football what it did to MLB 20 years ago. I wonder how long it will take...
 
This article made me wish I had voted differently when this thread started-I was almost certainly driven by a "wishful thinking" perspective that now seems less than realistic. I was wrong about some things.

About the only thing I was hoping for is that they would work out an extension of the negotiations but right now, after reading the Munson article, even that looks like that's not going to matter. The owners have prepared for a siege apparently and have stocked up with sufficient resources to simply wait things out until the players get desperate enough to cave.

We fans? $$>fans
 
Twitter is abuzz with news of a possible extension of the deadline tonight. Making people more optimistic.
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