Rookie Eve!

[Sperrydogg]

Except the contract is per game which doesn’t start until September. He can make his point and miss training camp and still get his full contract.

That sucks cause then he’s behind

 

[oldhawkfan]

So the rookies reported today. What did they do? Practice? Sit around and learn each others names? Go on a group tour of the VMAC? Share their mom’s favorite recipes? Sharing a two minute presentation of how they organize and decorate their locker?

I need reports of Milroe to Arroyo. Zabel taking charge. I need real football news. I’m starving here for something. Anything…

 

[Dolomight12]

Greed is a hell of a drug.



Yes it is.



No. Not in the least bit debatable. The market supports the current prices for merchandise, football-viewing subscriptions, and tickets, and it supports the current rates that advertisers pay football-carrying broadcast networks, so it supports the giant contracts the broadcast networks are paying the league. So the money is there, and it would be stupid to ask corporations to lower the prices below what they can charge, because that's not how our economic system works. Now, given that the NFL is taking in all those billions, I want as much as possible of that money going to the people who actually make the sport worth watching. An NFL player is in the top 2000 people in the world at what he does without even considering position specialization. When you include position specialization, an NFL player is in the top 128 or so in the world at what he does. The current world population is about 8.06 billion, of which we can eliminate half by gender and let's say 3/4 by age, leaving an effective population of just over a billion. That places any NFL player, even a Seahawks backup interior offensive lineman, in the top 0.000013% in the world at what he does, that is, in the top 13% of the top 1% of the top 1% in the world at what he does. And that's in an industry that generates many billions of dollars. To the extent there's anything wrong with the players' compensation, it's that it's very strongly artificially deflated by the ridiculous salary cap, which is just a way for the greedy-ass owners to artificially keep the players from getting their fair market value (that is, to steal from the players).
What does an owner bring to the NFL? Money and only money. And money by definition is fungible, so the owners are fungible, but the players are absolutely not. Change the owners, and the game stays the same. Replace the players with the next tier, and the game doesn't get close to being as good. If I wanted to watch shitty football, there are internet broadcasts of high-school football on Friday nights and many options for watching "college football," the nicer name for the NFL's minor leagues. I'm not interested. But I'm happy to pay my under-$100 annual subscription to the international edition of NFL Game Pass. What's the difference? NFL games give me opportunities to see human beings exploring the limits of the application of athletic ability to gridiron-related skills. The CFL, the NFL's minor leagues, and high-school football don't offer that.



YESSSSSSSS!
Your route took a little detour into some owner-friendly-media-based nonsense about whether the players are overcompensated, but you ended up at exactly the right destination.

I really do enjoy reading your posts.

 

[Lagartixa]

I guess I should try to be more direct, I believe the players deserve and are worth every penny cause this is ameeeerica daymit. But in the scheme of life football ain’t as valuable as we have created it with our appetite

I get what you're saying.

The problem is that the market (specifically, how much consumers are willing to pay) decides how much money the NFL can make, and it turns out that consumers are currently willing to pay a lot more for entertainment than a reasonable person might expect or hope, especially when you start comparing it to how much people have to spend on some necessary-for-survival things and how much they're willing to spend on other non-essential things. And it's not just the NFL, but also other kinds of entertainment, including other sports, music (the prices of concert tickets shock me), movies and other video, etc.

What it basically comes down to is that consumers have priorities that it's easy to find screwed-up. I think they're pretty screwed up, but all I can do is accept it. I'm not gonna convince the entire worldwide entertainment-consuming public that it's giving way too much importance to entertainment.

I suspect entertainment spending in the U.S. will start decelerating rapidly in the next few years and even decline, and it will be interesting to see how the NFL tries to navigate that situation.

 

[onanygivensunday]

I can understand the owners' reluctance to giving in the 2nd-rounders... if they do, next year it's the 3rd-rounders, then the 4th-rounders... and so on.

Every team is in the same boat... pretty much... except the Hawks, the Bears, the Texans and the Browns each have TWO 2nd-rounders potentially not practicing at the start of TC.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Such a different world in the NFL. At least it's not one of those "these guys are stupid" things. It's 30 teams trying to sign their 2nd round picks.

 

[Smellyman]

It's more of a salary cap issue than greed

 

[WmHBonney]

It seems like hold outs always get injured. I will be interested to see how this plays out with injuries.