NFL Owners Granted Permanent Stay: Why This Owner Victory Is Good News

I talked a few weeks ago with my neighbor (NFL coach) about this. He said that the courts are not going to solve the problems/issues between the players and the owners. They both have a lot to lose in this and this will hopefully force both sides to get serious. I am somewhat contrarian in that I don’t really care about pro football much in general, but I do want my neighbor to have a job.

You are exactly right about players living paycheck to paycheck, and being horrible managers of their financial well-being. I have seen it with some of the biggest names on the Cowboys and others. Players will spend, lose, gamble and give away the majority of what they make. The rest will be stolen or extorted from them by family and ‘posse’.

Idiot players.
Even one year of the NFL’s base pay for players would set my family up for life—
and pay for my funeral as well after the first solid hit on me.

Greedy owners…
Every team should be forcibly divested of their private ownership and bestowed on the community where they are located a la Green Bay Packers.

This breaks the player money management issues pretty well.

http://www.cosmoloan.com/money-management/the-6-main-reasons-why-most-pro-athletes-go-broke.html

I always liked that commercial with a young superstar who says that money isn’t going to change him, then they have 1 Bud light left and he says he’ll pay 1 million dollars for it.

The owners are far from Buffett-like in their money management and financial prudence, but there may not be a high paid professional class in the United States that manages their money more poorly than the NFL player.

Latrell Sprewell, Allen Iverson and Antoine Walker would like to have a word with you.

A badly compromised NFL season was most likely to come from either side gaining too much of an upper hand. The players should now understand that they cannot win total victory and will modify their behavior accordingly. The NFL owners should understand that they’re walking a fine line of public opinion if they press their advantage and there are still plenty of court rulings that can go against them.

Scip, this is an intelligent, reason approach, and I have serious doubts about members of both sides letting their emotions stay out of this. I hear owner Jerry Richardson spit out such distate for today’s players that I seriously doubt he has any wish to see anything resembling a “win-win” outcome.

In all seriousness, the players should walk and launch their own startup league. It would be brilliant, and they would IPO and be rich for life. They could then have all of the benefits they wanted – of course if the business could afford it…

Until that time – they should shut the f@ck up, and play some damn football
.

“Latrell Sprewell, Allen Iverson and Antoine Walker would like to have a word with you.”

While that is true, the NBA has guaranteed contracts even the pot smoking, stripper loving NBA players can’t screw that up too much.

I suppose the real difference is that an NBA player at the end of his ability, probably has two or three good contract years of 5 mil a year to plan with. An NFL player can be on the street tomorrow and if he didn’t save his bonus money, well its a tough job market for a guy 10 credits short of a communications degree from Alabama.

“In all seriousness, the players should walk and launch their own startup league. It would be brilliant, and they would IPO and be rich for life. "

This would turn out about as well as Chrysler and GM without the government intervention.

The players may have lost the legal leverage that they’ve gained, but that doesn’t mean that they have none left. They can move the fight to a more public arena and tag the owners’ position as “what is mine is mine and what is yours is negotiable.” Anything other than a win-win is just another Treaty of Versailles:article 231.

Owners have already agreed to lifetime heatth coverage. However, it sounds like the players need protection from themselves in the form of forced savings. Dez Bryant wants back in Northpark mall

Not sure why the bankruptcy rate of former pro athletes is such a shock. Shower kids in their 20’s (many who come from nothing financially), with sudden wealth and it isn’t hard to predict what will happen. Similar things happen to lottery winners who know nothing about managing money.

Sudden wealth solves a number of financial problems that are quickly replaced by a whole new set of issues that most of these guys are poorly equipped to deal with. Either educating themselves or finding competent people they can trust is hard.

Re:“Owners have already agreed to lifetime heatth coverage. However, it sounds like the players need protection from themselves in the form of forced savings.”

I can’t think of a situation more tailor made for a pension plan than this.

I don’t see this as a good thing at all. I think the lack of a lockout was the only thing that was going to get the owners to compromise. I now see the owners just waiting until the players can’t take it anymore and not budging at all.

Nice take, Scip. Consider this: if the players “win,” doesn’t the NFL power structure become more like MLB? If you’re a pro football fan, you do NOT want that.

Kilgore -
 
Thanks for the link.
 
srr50 -
 
No doubt, but NBA players do about as well or better than NFLers. For many of the reasons roach cites.
 
As for compromise, that’s why I brought up Korea. You don’t always have to see eye-to-eye to compromise, you just need to realize that there are too many Chinese to kill.
 
Foker -
 
Yes, Tank Black could be the commissioner. One of the points I’m making is that player vulnerability stems largely from their total inability to run a business with themselves as the main product. NFL 2.0 would be a bust. I’m happy to short it while you buy up shares.
 
Meddlesome -
 
Well stated. A Treaty of Versailles is what caused this current mess too. Gene Upshaw brought the wood to the owners in the last agreement (and the owners are idiots for extracting a billion from off the top instead of a percentage) and the owners have been itching to exact their revenge.
 
Mysterious -
 
Yep. Lifetime health coverage after three or four years of employment. That’s a spectacular benefit that elicits a shrug from most players. Cue ant and grasshopper parable.
 
hopeful -
 
Good point. The woes of lottery winners are well-documented and a good comparator.

 triple -
 
The NFL does have a pension plan (current players qualify after 3 years and add value for each year of service thereafter), but many of the woes of ex-players are centered around them cashing it out and then returning to the league hat in hand demanding they do more. You almost need to set up a plan such that the players are treated as children with no ability to access their pension beyond a monthly stipend.
 
Texas Wahoo -
 
I disagree. The owners are budging as we speak. A major player triumph creates something at least as bad as the MLB labor situation that WW McClyde references and that’s bad. If you don’t have a bargaining agreement that works for those who provide the capital and expend 65% of their resources on payroll as well as the players who are what makes the league go, you have The Treaty of Versailles.

Much of the exploitation of black athletes in this country achieved by the NCAA and professional leagues is enabled by the poor financial planning and awareness of said athletes.

Nickel -
 
Read the SI article I linked. White athletes aren’t exactly on the ball either.
 
And I’ve never quite managed to see how the professional leagues are exploiting anyone post-Curt Flood. Getting paid millions to play a game half of every year is an exploitation I’ll gladly sign up for.

I rented my condo to a current NFL player a year ago. He was not shocked when I asked for the entire rent up front based on his credit rating. It seemed to be business as usual for him.

“Yep. Lifetime health coverage after three or four years of employment. That’s a spectacular benefit that elicits a shrug from most players. Cue ant and grasshopper parable.”

This benefit may be seen by the players as unnecessary because of the implementation of Obamacare. (Let’s not start a discussion of the in’s and outs of Obamacare—I’m just saying that they may rightly or wrongly perceive Obamacare as lifetime health insurance on the taxpayers dime). Even without Obamacare, lifetime promises have a funny way of disappearing the first time they start to send an organization into the red.

Lifetime health coverage after three or four years of employment. That’s a spectacular benefit that elicits a shrug from most players. Cue ant and grasshopper parable.

Considering that the life expectancy of an NFL players ranges from 53-59 depending on the position, and that the average career is 3 1/2 years, trading 20 years of life expectancy for lifetime health coverage should be a pretty good deal for both sides.

“This benefit may be seen by the players as unnecessary because of the implementation of Obamacare.”

Huh? Were you not 20 once? Shit, when I was in my late twenties and my parents’ plan didn’t cover me any more, I was completely in denial mode! I didn’t bother to take the insurance plan my employer offered even though it would only cost me maybe $20 a pay check. I even had a friend who got in car wreck (his fault) and his hospital bills put his parents in bankruptcy. My response was, ’He’s a crappy driver.’

Most pro athletes think the money will last forever; they think their health will too. I bet most NFL players couldn’t tell you any detail about the current health care law…I wouldn’t be surprised if most don’t even know that Obama signed a health care bill.

Yeah, I gotta go with Ricky on this one. I was uninsured in my twenties while at the same time, I was an avid Rock Climber and Sky Diver. If I was honest with prospective insurers, they wouldn’t have taken me on due to my dangerous endeavors, but the point was, I never thought twice about the possibility of something happening to me. “Healthcare?, but I never get sick” was my attitude.

Gene Upshaw brought the wood to the owners in the last agreement (and the owners are idiots for extracting a billion from off the top instead of a percentage) and the owners have been itching to exact their revenge.

Exactly. Upshaw was a crafty bastard. DeMaurice Smith has come a long way in this process but he still couldn’t hold Upshaw’s DeJock.

The English Professional Footballers Association take 10% of each player’s salary and drop it into a pension fund. Isn’t there anything similar in the NFL? 10% wont make a huge difference for the guy that spends 3 years as a backup linebacker and special teams guy – but it would be a start.

The easiest solution on the current pension plan is to amend the current document and remove the lump sum distribution provision for future players. You might be able to to do it for current players, but not a lawyer and not certain if distribution choices are a protected benefit under ERISA.

Many of these players do recognize that their bodies won’t last forever. Very, very, very few of these guys get out of high school, through college, and into the NFL without some type of reconstructive surgery or the early stages of some degeneration somewhere in there body.

This issue there is that they don’t know what medical care cost outside of the environment they have lived during their time in college and the pros. Schools and the teams cover the cost of the medical care, rehab, drugs, and devices. What would it cost for someone in the world to have surgery and then access to a designated rehabilitation specialist for several hours a day to focus on them and them alone. None of this 5 rehab sessions with a therapist for 30 minutes, no co-pays or deductibles. They live in a world where everything is damn near taken care of for them for several years and no where are they taught basic skills to cope with the rest of the world.

“By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.”

This is an amazing statistic, but one that doesn’t shock me in the least. And it puts me squarely in the owners camp. Players shouldn’t bitch for a cent more than what they make now until they can prove that they can more competently manage the fortunes they have and squander.

“Players shouldn’t bitch for a cent more than what they make now until they can prove that they can more competently manage the fortunes they have and squander.”

Yeah, that’s a great idea, let’s start paying people not based on their ability to do their job, but on their ability to conform to arbitrary standards set by wethorn.

Given the Owner’s complaints that they aren’t making any money even with taxpayer financed stadiums, $10 dollar beer, and billions of dollars worth of TV contracts, your decision to side with the owners seems arbitrary at best.

The ruling I am really waiting upon is the decision on the television money. How long do you think some of the owners last with the amount of debt they are carrying on stadiums etc…….if they don’t get that money.

“They live in a world where everything is damn near taken care of for them for several years and no where are they taught basic skills to cope with the rest of the world.”

Maybe if they went to class every now and again? Most of us learn basic skills in college and they all went, did they not? And it’s not like they were raised by wolves in the forest during their youth.

“Most of us learn basic skills in college and they all went, did they not? "

Did you go to UT as a finance major? I had half a dozen majors in my 5 years at UT and never once had a class that discussed coping or life skills much less how to deal with money. Come to think of it, I didn’t have any of those sorts of courses in my 12 years of schooling prior to that either.

What I learned, I learned mostly from my parents and then from experience. I am thinking most players don’t have parental role models that are that helpful when a check for $14 million is handed to them…I wonder if my role models would have sufficed in that situation when I was 20.

The financial mis-management by players is realy an player’s union issue, which should be doing everything they can to get information and counsel to the players. I know they do a little of this, but not nearly enough.

Roach – FWIW, I don’t think an owner shoud ever get taxpayer financing for stadiums, etc., either.

As Scipio said up front, I don’t really have a dog in this fight, and I’m not following it closely.

Ricky,

Exactly. I work with people daily on these matters and things like financial management and restraint are not intuitive. These players are smart compared to the people I talk to who bought multiple houses in Las Vegas or Florida, were waiting to flip them when the market crashed, and think it is unfair their credit will be harmed if they short sell or walk away from these properties that are bankrupting them.

Taxes alone for the players are a nightmare and who in college would be prepared to handle issues such as the fact the certain states and cities hit you with a tax bill for playing in their home stadiums and therefore earning a portion of their income in that tax domain.

wethorn,

The Unio and the NFL does try to educate the players on this topic, gambling, lifestyle, etc…….but if the players have no background or frame of reference it is like hitting golf balls in the fog.

Here’s my issue, Scip. If the owners thought they signed such a crappy deal in ‘06, they had about 4 years to do what any other employer could do: re-negotiate. Instead, they went to the mattresses, declaring their intent to lockout, and then illegally bargaining themselves lockout insurance in the form of 4 BILLION tv dollars. And then they violated their own prior deal in challenging the union’s right to decertify. Further, their legal arguments are exclusively ones that were tried and failed in the 80’s and 90’s. Take a look at the District Court’s 89 page ruling granting the injunction. And then try to fathom how a conservative court is going to do legal acrobatics to force a group of people to STAY in a union. I’m with you in that I think this ruling gives the owners the cover they need to get a deal done. But I don’t understand why anybody is blaming the players for the current mess. Whatever their spending habits, they aren’t the ones who brought us here.