Owners and players headed for a "cliff" and SB notes

Monday, February 14 2011

NFL executive Jeff Pash raised the possibility at a Super Bowl news conference that the league could “stop the clock” in the negotiations with the players’ union if progress was being made. This article was written by Vito Stellino and appeared in the Florida Times Union.

“It’s not a Thelma and Louise-type situation where you just go over the cliff and that’s all you can do,” he said.

Well, it now seems that the cliff is in view, and the owners will impose a lockout March 4.

The two sides met last Tuesday, then canceled a session planned for Wednesday. And the owners canceled a meeting scheduled in Philadelphia this week.

What exactly happened at last Tuesday’s meeting is a matter of dispute.

There were reports the union made a proposal for a 50-50 split, which is basically what it has now. Technically, the union gets 60 percent of the revenue, but the owners get $1 billion off the top.

That supposedly prompted the owners to walk out, although the league, which at first refused to make a statement, eventually said that characterization was inaccurate. But it didn’t offer an alternate version.

Sports Business Journal reported the negotiators downplayed the cancellation of the session in a conference call with the owners.

“These kinds of things — ups and downs, bad sessions and good ones — are an inevitable part of a messy process,” a management source was quoted as saying. “It is like watching the sausage being made. It is 'normal' in that sense.”

The problem is that the two sides don’t appear to be making any sausage.

“If we put the effort into negotiating that we have put into litigating, news conferences and pep rallies and everything else, we really could get something accomplished,” Pash said.

Assistants have issues

The league’s labor troubles won’t be over even if it gets a new collective bargaining agreement with the players.
The assistant coaches have their issues, but they have decided to put them on the back burner while the owners deal with the players. If the league doesn’t eventually address their issues, the assistant coaches would consider forming a union.

Larry Kennan, the head of the assistant coaches’ association, said the major concern is that 11 teams, including the Jaguars, have dropped the defined benefit pension program for coaches and front-office personnel.

He said it is not good for the league because the teams that kept a pension program will have an advantage in attracting coaches.

“It will affect competitive balance over a period of time,” he said.

Another issue is not letting coaches interview for jobs that are promotions. For example, the Jets denied permission for the Titans to interview offensive line coach Bill Callahan for the offensive coordinator’s job.

They’re also unhappy about the Jaguars’ assistants being on one-year contracts and yet being denied permission to interview for lateral jobs and that the Jaguars’ assistants pay for part of their health coverage, which is fully funded by some teams.

Owner Wayne Weaver said last week that he talked to the assistants and told them he’s never had a contract in his life.

Kennan said, “But we have contracts.”

Where's Jerry?
Jerry Jones is usually one of the most visible owners in the league. He even held his own Super Bowl news conference as the host owner.

But Jones has been invisible since the temporary seating fiasco, and now the question is who gets the blame.

The head of the company hired to install the seating, Scott Suprina of Seating Solutions, told Newsday he is being made a scapegoat.

“I think it’s an effort to hang somebody with the blame, clear the NFL, to let their fans have someone to be angry at,” he said.

Suprina said his workers didn’t have enough access to the stadium, and the ice and snow storms also slowed things down.

Still, the fans are upset at the NFL and have filed a class-action lawsuit against the league. And the way the league handled the situation was inexcusable.

One Packers fan, Peter D’Amico, told the Green Bay Press-Gazette that he arrived at the stadium at 10 a.m., 7 1/2 hours before kickoff. He received tickets a half hour before kickoff.

That was after being sent a few blocks to a ticket resolution center, then sent to the Texas Rangers’ main ticket office a mile away and then back to the ticket resolution center.

He said no one from the league or the Cowboys ever addressed the 1,200 fans to explain the situation with a microphone. Fans in the back of the crowd couldn’t hear.

D’Amico said it eventually became a “riot-type atmosphere” and he estimated that 200 to 300 fans got into the stadium by storming a fence.

The NFL’s answer to all this?

League executive Eric Grubman appeared on “ProFootballTalkLive” and suggested, “I think we need to keep this in perspective.” He noted 160 million fans watched the game. He said lawyers suing the NFL should “work on something like world peace.”

Huh?

It is that kind of attitude that created this mess in the first place. The NFL just didn’t get it that a once-in-a-lifetime trip for many fans was ruined.

Colts are on the clock

Last year, Jones talked openly about being the first team to play in the Super Bowl on its home stadium turf.
That didn’t work out too well as the Cowboys started out 1-7 and finished 6-10.

With the Super Bowl scheduled to be played in Indianapolis next February — assuming there is a season — Colts owner Jim Irsay isn’t making any bold statements.

“Honestly, I don’t even think of that [being first team to play the game in its home stadium],” Irsay said to the Indianapolis Star. “I’m not starting a mantra that didn’t work out well last year [for Dallas].”

Indianapolis figures to do better than Dallas in hosting the game. Even if there is bad weather, the city is used to dealing with it. The stadium, both teams and the media will all be downtown and many of the facilities are connected and within walking distance.

“It’s an outstanding opportunity for our city and our state,” Irsay said. “It’s something we want to do right and will do right.”

Topping the Dallas effort shouldn’t be too difficult.

Interesting Demographics

One of the interesting sidelights of the Super Bowl is that it draws a much bigger female audience than the NFL gets for the regular season.
During the regular season, only 33.5 percent of the viewers are women. For the Super Bowl, 51.2 million of the 111 million total viewers were women. Last year, 48.5 million women watched, and 44.1 million watched the previous year.

The league is also doing better with minorities. The Hispanic audience increased from 8.3 million last year to 10 million and the black audience from 11.2 million to 12.5 million.

To show how the demographics of America are changing, that means more women and minorities watched the game than white males.