Nfl 2011/12

[Kuipers Supporters Club]

Could anyone please explain to me in layman's terms what is going on with the NFL and what are the chances of there being a season later this year.

I have read some of the NFL sites but am lost by the talk of lockouts, legal actions etc...

Thanks.

 

[Stat Brother]

Others will do it better than me, so I won't try, but I agree with Mr President when it comes to talk of a lock out:-

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's message to the National Football League's squabbling owners and players on Thursday was as simple and powerful as a perfect touchdown pass:

Solve your labor dispute yourselves, I'm too busy.

Obama was asked at a press conference whether he would intercede in the battle between the NFL's wealthy players and its even wealthier owners, who are trying to thrash out a last-minute labor deal and avoid a possible lockout.

But the U.S. president, while a big fan of the NFL's Chicago Bears, is tied up with other matters, including turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa and negotiations with Republicans over how to cut record budget deficits.

"You've got owners, most of whom are worth close to a billion dollars. You've got players who are making millions of dollars," Obama said at the press conference, with the visiting Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

"My working assumption, at a time when people are having to cut back, compromise and worry about making the mortgage and paying for their kids' college educations, is that the two parties should be able to work it out without the president of the United States intervening," Obama said.

The most popular U.S. sport generates enough money that players and owners should be able to find a compromise, said Obama, whose successful campaign for president three years ago stressed that he was a new kind of politician able to work with his rivals.

"For an industry that's making $9 billion a year in revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way and be true to their fans, who obviously allow for all the money that they're making," Obama said.

"And so my expectation and hope is that they would resolve it without me intervening because it turns out I've got a lot of other stuff to do."

The NFL players union and owners are at odds over how they should divide revenues. Under the current agreement the players get around 60 percent, but the league and team owners want a bigger slice of the pie to fund, in part, the building of new stadiums.

The last time the NFL season was affected by a labor dispute was in 1987, when the league brought in replacement players for a strike that lasted 24 days.

 

[chops]

The owners want to earn more money while spending less and the players also want to earn more money, is essentially what it boils down to. The whole debate concerns a 'collective bargaining agreement', which will decide how the cash is split up.The players union is threatening to strike if their demands aren't met while the owners don't want to meet the demands.
Essentially the whole season is under threat simply because of greed.

 

[Lyndhurst 14]

One of the problems is that the collective bargaining agreement is no longer in place so players, agents and owners are in uncharted waters with no rules and regulations in place. This includes the NFL drug testing programme which has a pretty good track record. There will be a lot of brinkmanship by both sides but there is too much money at stake for a settlement not to be found.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/sports/football/14nfl.html?_r=2&ref=sports

 

[Gritt23]

Looks like we are getting close to an agreement now, and surprise surprise it all started moving once they kicked the lawyers out of the discussions for a few days.

 

[Hotchilidog]

Let's hope they sort it soon. Looking forward to the Redskins hitting the heady heights of mediocre this year after a better than usual draft.

 

[Gritt23]

Let's hope they sort it soon. Looking forward to the Redskins hitting the heady heights of mediocre this year after a better than usual draft.

LOL, what a difference when Daniel Schnyder doesn't get a chance to trade away all his picks picking up restricted Free Agents.