NFL ‘have-nots’ may decide labor deal
INDIANAPOLIS – Labor peace in the NFL has seemingly come down to a class struggle.
Consider some of the players who in various forms have expressed opposition to or are reported to be against the proposed 10-year extension of the collective bargaining agreement that is headed to a vote.
Players you’ve probably heard of: Russell Wilson. Richard Sherman. Aaron Rodgers. JJ Watt. Maurkice Pouncey.
If this deal hinged on star power, it might crumble.
Pouncey, the Steelers’ Pro Bowl center, put it this way (sort of, with expletives removed) on a passionate video posted on social media Wednesday, hours after the NFL Players Association’s player reps voted 17-14 with an abstention to send the proposal along for a vote: “If any player, on any one of our teams, if y’all are hurting for rent money or anything while we’re going through this lockout, call us. Man, we’ve got way more money than what they had back in the days. We ain’t got to worry about that. All the vets on each team, stand the (expletive) up. Stand up! Show these guys that we care about them.”
Wilson, the Seahawks’ star with the league’s highest average salary at $35 million a year, urged in a tweet that his fellow players should not rush into a deal.
Watt, star defensive lineman of the Texans, weighed in recently with a “hard no” declaration.
Sherman, more active than most as a member of the NFLPA’s executive committee, has been adamantly opposed to the 17-game schedule that owners see as a bedrock (and revenue driver) for a new deal.
Yet for all of the respect and leadership possessed by some of the NFL’s best-known and highest-paid players, this matter could essentially swing with the collective weight of the have-nots.
For ratification, the vote needs a simple majority of participants – and if only half the players of an often-apathetic rank-and-file decide to vote, it’s a majority of that.
And for every Wilson, Sherman and Watt, there are 30 guys on each NFL roster earning minimum salaries, praying that they’ll stay in the league for the four years needed to be fully vested for the improved benefits of a new CBA.
That’s why this deal could go through. There is sometimes strength in numbers. Even though the proposed deal shifts billions of dollars into the pockets of players, with their percentage of overall revenue increasing to 48.5% from 47%, the most tangible, immediate difference would be felt by the bottom-of-the-roster players who stand to gain a $100,000 a year bump to their base salaries, on top of an increase in the performance-based pay provisions that can often add six more figures.
That has to be so enticing to a player who isn’t sure he’ll be around for a second or third contract.
You can believe that owners – eager to get this deal done now, in the final year of the 2011 pact, to help facilitate new media deals that would significantly boost the $8 billion a year on existing packages – are banking on the havenots to seal the deal.
How ironic. Owners depend on star players to win championships and fuel the appeal of the nation’s most popular sports league. Now they’re seemingly more dependent on the lower class of players to open the floodgates to bigger windfalls. Or is it divide and conquer?
That haves vs. have-nots scenario drew a lot of criticism after the pact was done in 2011, and while the new deal might try to address that to some extent, the gulf is probably growing with every big-money quarterback contract that comes down the pike.
Outgoing NFLPA president Eric Winston insists this proposed labor deal wasn’t rushed … though he’s weeks away from finishing his term, with a new president potentially pumping the brakes on these talks.
Regardless, there’s hardly a consensus from the players’ side … while NFL owners wait as a seemingly united front. Yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.