NFL owners, players compete on an uneven field
In the game of football, the rules favor neither side. Each team has the same number of players and similar resources.
In the business of football, however, the rules overwhelmingly favor one side. And the resources each side commands are vastly unequal.
That is the situation confronting football players as tonight's deadline for a potential lockout approaches.
Consider the different access to the media each side has. The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) submitted a 60 second ad for broadcast during the College All Star game, played the day before the Superbowl. The ad was anything but inflammatory. It showed a dark stadium, empty locker rooms, locked gates and dozens of individual fans and players repeating the refrain, "Let them play."
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The College Sports Network, owned by CBS, refused to broadcast the spot. Executives at CBS said it "crossed the line of fairness." They insisted they "didn't want to get involved" in the labor negotiations.
But of course, CBS is very much involved in the labor negotiations -- on the wide of the owners. CBS shells out $620 million to the NFL for the rights to broadcast its games and to access other NFL content. The NFL also receives $1.1 billion from ESPN, $720 million from Fox and $600 million from NBC.
Last year CBS and the other broadcasters signed a contract with the team owners designed to give them enormous leverage in their negotiations with the players. In return for the NFL receiving less money initially, the broadcasters agreed to pay it $4 billion even if the season is not played. That arrangement is being contested in court.
The NFLPA and the league have been working under a 1993 agreement that has been extended five times, most recently in March 2006, when it was extended through the 2011 season. Last year the NFL exercised its option to terminate that contract, effective at 11 p.m. today. Team owners have threatened to close down the league.
Millionaires vs. billionaires?
Currently the revenues are split about 50-50 between players and owners. (The net revenues, after the owners subtract some of their expense from the total, are split 57-43, which is the percentage you often read in the media.) The owners want the players to give back about $1 billion that is coming to them under the 2008 contract.
The owners argue that while the players' percentage will decline, the amount the players receive will not if they agree to another of the owners' demands: extending the regular season to 18 games. The current schedule has 16 regular season games, up from 14 in 1977 and 12 in 1960.
The media so far are describing the labor battle as millionaires fighting billionaires. And it is true that the median salary across the NFL is a handsome $1.4 million a year. The rookie minimum is $310,000. But the length of an average NFL player's career is only 3.6 years. And even a short career takes a heavy toll on the body.
The owners watch from cushy seats in heated skyboxes as the players engage in a very violent game on a cold, hard field. In 2010, 350 players were on the injured reserve list for an average of nine and a half games. At the Superbowl we watched Packers star cornerback Charles Woodson exit the game with a broken collarbone, Packers cornerback Sam Shields leave with an injured shoulder and Steelers star receiver Emmanuel Sanders sit out almost the whole game with a foot injury. Green Bay's quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, has suffered two concussions this year.
A professional football player now has a 10 percent chance of suffering a concussion in a given season. Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), the medical term for concussions, has become the most common specified type of injury in pro football. The Center for Disease Control estimates that l5 percent of patients diagnosed with MTBI experienced disabling problems on a "persistent" basis. The long-term health risks associated with NFL injuries include a significantly increased likelihood of Alzheimer's or dementia.
Essentially, the quality of life of an ex-football player is likely to be diminished; even more damning, the quantity of his life will be diminished as well. The average NFL player who plays for more than 5 years has a life expectancy of 55 years. If he is a lineman this drops to 52 years. U.S. life expectancy overall is 77.8 years.
To my knowledge, there have been no studies of the life expectancy of NFL owners. But since life expectancy is correlated with wealth it is likely they'll live longer than most of us.
Since a professional football player's tenure is so short and the probability of debilitating injury so high, a key issue affecting the quality of life of a professional football player is the level of medical benefits and pension. NFL pensions are skimpy.
The players union is not perfect. It hasn't represented well the interests of all its members, focusing instead on enabling ever-higher salaries for its current players. The NFLPA can also be criticized for not using its members' fame and influence to assist other workers.
Indeed, the NFLPA doesn't formally call itself a union. It is an association. Probably it embraced the word "association" because the word "union" has disagreeable connotations in modern America. That's unfortunate. The word "union" projects a strength and unity of purpose the word "association" lacks. And that strength and unity will be crucial when faced with the power and influence of 32 team owners with collective wealth of more than $40 billion.
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David Morris is vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and author of "Seeing the Light: Regaining Control of Our Electricity System." He is a source in MPR's Public Insight Network. A longer version of this piece first appeared on AlterNet.
