Guest Entry: Jake on the CBA Blame Game

I?m always open to posting guest articles on this site, and today I?ve got one for you from fellow Texans blogger Jake Langenkamp. Busy day today for me so I will get more into what?s going on with Jake and this site later tonight or this weekend ? but for now, I turn the floor over to Jake.

Last night was a tumultuous evening. NFL fans waited with baited breath for the completion of a new collective bargaining agreement. Just as it was looking as if any real progress would be delayed for yet another day, Roger Goodell strode to a podium in Atlanta and announced that the owners had approved a proposal for a new deal.

Spirits all over the country simultaneously soared. Football, the game that had never actually been taken from anyone, had been given back. Goodell proceeded to explain the timeline with which activities would proceed. Free agency and training camp by next Wednesday, less than a week away? Incredible.

Then the ever-present labor pessimism clouds rolled in. The players reacted in a completely opposite manner. As they portrayed it, they had been bamboozled by the owners in an attempt to strong-arm them into ratifying a deal that they had not even seen! Not only that, but they slipped items into the deal that hadn?t been discussed during negotiations. What a bunch of greedy old rich men.

ESPN and NFL Network had hours of live coverage. Both were virtually unwatchable, but neither held a candle to Twitter. Every person that spends most of their time tweeting about football felt it necessary to stick up for the owners and call for the players to vote yes for the deal, or conversely vilifying the owners for trying to coerce the players into something that isn?t fair for them. From my vantage point, it seemed as if more people defended the players, but that could be reflective of who I follow and not the average split among football writers and fans.

This is a business negotiation. Neither side is telling the truth, but neither side is flat out lying either. The players claim that they didn?t have a completed deal to read and therefore couldn?t vote. Goodell and DeMaurice Smith spent approximately 90 minutes on the phone right before the owners took their vote. Do you really think Smith had no idea what was about to happen on the owners? side? The owners played a brilliant card by being the first to bring football back to the masses, and the players were forced to play the only card left to them; vilify the owners for anything possible.

That language inserted that the players had never seen was the supplemental revenue sharing agreement. It?s true that the owners didn?t share this with the players and that sounds terrible. But when you dig a little deeper, it turns out this is simply an agreement among owners to share revenue among the 32 teams and has nothing to do with the players.

This isn?t all to say that the owners didn?t do anything disingenuous. DeMaurice Smith said in a statement that it was illegal for the NFL to set out a timeline for the players to form into a union, and while it is hyperbole to site federal law in this situation, he is correct. The real problem is that there are several issues that can only be negotiated with a union such as workers compensation. However the owners inserted dangerous language in their timeline saying that once the NFLPA re-certified they would have three days to come to an agreement on these issues, or they would revert back to the 2006 CBA rules.

NFL fans have been dragged through this entire process, but we have subjected ourselves to it by caring so much about a business negotiation that doesn?t involve us. Notice I said ?we? because I am just as guilty of it as anyone else. NFL fans taking sides in this dispute is like going to a local car dealership to watch two strangers haggle over the price of a car and then becoming passionately entangled in the argument. Neither side is right; they?re both just trying to get the best deal possible. The NFL labor dispute is no different.
The good news is that this is all almost over. Despite whatever reports that came out last night or will continue to come out today that suggest the sky is falling, a deal is still close.

At the core of this negotiation is only a handful of people that really know what?s going on, and they?re not the ones giving regular updates to the media. Case in point is that of all the players decrying the evil of the owners, none of them are on the executive committee that actually engages in negotiations. The players received too many concessions such as 55% of media revenue to leave this deal on the table.

The purpose of all this is to explain that it is in all of our best interests as fans to try and detach ourselves as much as possible until this process is complete. I know that is easier said than done because we care about the game of football so much, but the truth is that we have no control over what happens from here no matter what the PR war insinuates. I think that a week from now, we?ll be wondering what we were so worked up about today if we weren?t too busy discussing free agency and training camp.

Source: http://www.houstondiehards.com/?p=11377

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