8th Circuit Court Grants Stay, Lockout Continues

[SBXVII]

Originally Posted by NC_Skins

First that 59% should be 53%. You forget that the owners take 1 billion off the top so they are essentially splitting 8 billion, not the 9 that is brought in.

Truthfully, I have no issue with the owners opting out of the CBA. However, when you back out of a agreement and claim you are having loss of profits(even though your revenue has increased each year), then you need to be able to show (and prove) that to the people you are dealing with. If they can prove it, then by all means the players should concede some of the revenue back to owners for expenses.

My personal belief is this without seeing the books. There is absolutely no way that player income is the reason they are having loss of profits even though revenue has increase annually. My guess is the reason why owners are losing profits is because owners are bad businessmen. Let's take a look at who's losing money.

Al Davis - Raiders?
Wayne Weaver - Jaguars?
Mike Brown - Bengals?

Wonder why? Bad business decisions from owners?

NFL Labor Talks Hinge on Growth Issue - WSJ.com

This is a good read. Talks about how the NFL has probably hit it's ceiling for revenue and it's probably right. Inflation is sky high, and look no further than the price of gold to see that.



Sounds to me if owners want more money to expand their empire, they should be making better business decisions instead of stupid ones. Nobody told Snyder to set the market for DTs at 15million a year and a 100 million contract. Nobody twisted Al's arm to sign Russell to a 40 mil guaranteed contract, or any other over paid talent he's brought to that team. Should players take a cut because owners are making bad decisions? Hell no.

Again the semantics over who opted out of the CBA. Maybe I should just play your fiddle and say "I don't care that the Players opted out of the CBA." What point of the players leaving 6 hrs prior to the deadline to file their decertification and not staying, not requesting and extension, and not even offering a counter offer makes the owners the bad guys who wanted to opt out of the CBA? I'm sorry but to put it in your words..." I don't care that the players opted out of the CBA."

You mention "proof". This illustrious "proof" that they are losing money. Is the revenue sharing increasing every year because they are making more money or is it increasing because of agreements in the CBA? The CAP grew each year so I presume the revenue sharing would grow.

But I think the majority of the fans are still missing the point that there are teams out there who are not doing well, not because of their owners (as you put it) being bad businessmen, the Bills have issue's with attendance, the Panthers have issue's with attendance, the Jaguars have issue's with attendance, and I'm betting there are a few others. I'll admit there are teams who are doing well like the Skins and Cowboys, but if these teams are taking a good portion off the top of their income to share with the lesser fortunate teams, then there is the fact the economy is bad and I'm betting more people are turning in season tickets or not renewing their season tickets due to the economy. But go ahead and argue that. I recently posted a thread on another site in which many fans were saying just that in regards to their Redskin season tickets. Hmmm, I guess the NFL would not be losing money.

Season Ticket Renewals

EDIT: I did not post the thread. Sorry. Meant to say I posted here a thread from another site.

[NC_Skins]

Originally Posted by Dirtbag59

They offered to open the books to a third party audit and the NFLPA refused. They wanted to look them over themselves, most likely to look for leverage.

NFL's Statement On NFLPA Decertification - Battle Red Blog

That doesn't say they offered to open their books to a third party. The "audited' information that they offering is going to hide any personal expenses they may be masking as their business expenses. This isn't the real information needed to ascertain whether the owners are lying about their claim of loss of profits. THIS is what the owners don't want players seeing because it'll kill their very plea that they are losing money when in fact they are blowing it for personal gain. (See the LA Dodgers for a prime example) Now, most owners aren't going to go all out like the McCourts but I will bet you my life that owners do use their business stuff for personal use and write it off as a "business expense". In fact, every owner I know in America does this. Goes back to my idea that you can't expect the players to take cuts all because you run your business horribly.

Originally Posted by SBXVII

What point of the players leaving 6 hrs prior to the deadline to file their decertification and not staying, not requesting and extension, and not even offering a counter offer makes the owners the bad guys who wanted to opt out of the CBA? I'm sorry but to put it in your words..." I don't care that the players opted out of the CBA."

I don't know of any courts that stay open till midnight, so they had to decertify by 5pm that day or the case wouldn't have stayed in Minnesota. Surely you do realize this right? They would have had an extension of the CBA before that 5pm deadline in order stop the NFLPA from decertifying. However, it had been said that there was no use of going forward at this point because both sides were no budging. They had no other choice but to decertify.



One thing to remember in the owners argument that player costs are the reason they are losing profits. Player salaries for the most part are not guaranteed. (unlike MLB and NBA) The salary cap of a team is no indication of how much they are actually paying their players that year. I still don't believe their bullcrap. I've never seen a business in my life bring in more revenue each year and lose profits. Not without somebody either embezzling money or doing a piss poor job running it.

[Dirtbag59]

Originally Posted by NC_Skins

That doesn't say they offered to open their books to a third party. The "audited' information that they offering is going to hide any personal expenses they may be masking as their business expenses. This isn't the real information needed to ascertain whether the owners are lying about their claim of loss of profits. THIS is what the owners don't want players seeing because it'll kill their very plea that they are losing money when in fact they are blowing it for personal gain. (See the LA Dodgers for a prime example) Now, most owners aren't going to go all out like the McCourts but I will bet you my life that owners do use their business stuff for personal use and write it off as a "business expense". In fact, every owner I know in America does this. Goes back to my idea that you can't expect the players to take cuts all because you run your business horribly.

It would have most likely been audited by a public firm, companies which ever since the fall of Arthur Anderson and Enron are under intense scrutiny (which is an understatement) to audit statements correctly. They already know 99% of the tricks companies use to either inflate earnings for stock purposes or report losses for tax purposes.

What's amazing, and what shows the absolute distrust the players have for the owners, is that the NFL offered the players to have an independent auditor -- to be determined by both sides -- study the audited financial statements. The independent auditor would have studied the statements, then reported to the union the year-by-year profit-and-loss statements for each team. Theoretically, that would have shown whether teams were becoming less profitable in the past two or three years, a core argument of the ownership.

Read more: Full access to financial statements at core of NFL labor issues - Peter King - SI.com

In short if the owners try to pull a fast one it would most likely be discovered by the auditors and corrected. Remember these aren't the accountants employed by the teams or the NFL. This would be done by an outside firm that would be putting it's reputation on the line in the interest of providing accurate financial reports.

And also remember this is a very public case thats being watched closely by the government, no accounting firm in their right mind is going to help the owners, or the players for that matter, cook the books.

Bottom line I would fully expect the third party audits to be accurate. What I wouldn't trust is the players getting their hands on these reports and not trying to toy around with the numbers to help their case. As has been said before the players are obsessed with obtaining leverage, as are the owners but the players seem to be under more pressure, and pressure is one of the key motivators when it comes to potential fraud.

[NC_Skins]

Originally Posted by Dirtbag59

In short if the owners try to pull a fast one it would most likely be discovered by the auditors and corrected. Remember these aren't the accountants employed by the teams or the NFL. This would be done by an outside firm that would be putting it's reputation on the line in the interest of providing accurate financial reports.

You still aren't getting it. You obviously don't understand what a "audited" version of their books is, but they are basically offering a watered down version of their numbers that will not show any improper financial entries.

Something like this.

Revenue : $900 million
Player Cost: $285 million
Business Costs: $600 million
----------------------------------------------
Profit: 15 million

From this, you can't tell diddly squat about those "business expenses". You know that trip he took his private jet overseas with for a vacation? Yup, wrote it off as a "business trip" since he had a business meeting for 1 hour out of the 2 weeks he was there.

It's stuff like that are being hidden in "audited" numbers that the players want to see, and they have that right to see it if they are being asked to cut 1 billion from their payroll.


edit: D. Smith (and other players) have said they have gotten more information about the teams financial data from the Wall Street Journal reports than they have from the teams themselves. Again, I say open your books (unedited and unaudited) to a 3rd party and let them decide.