Your Thoughts On The Players Wanting More Money

#51
#51
People pay $$ to watch football players play football, they dont sit in traffic for hours and spend lots of $$ to hang out on a Sunday afternoon in a stadium for the ambiance. Kids dont stand in line to get a signature of the team owner, and you dont see people wearing jerseys of the owners. 2000 years ago, people in Rome didnt go to the coliseum to see Cesar put a thumbs up or down, they went for "the blood"

Now in Modern times, the people still go to the "Coliseum" for the same reason (to Cheer for our heroes) But now people dont want to see their Heroes 10 years later (or the guys blocking for their Hero) in a wheelchair because he cant afford top notch Health Care.

Who do you replace the bottom 40% with? Crappier football players who are more injury prone? Robots?

GM got in trouble because they sold crappy cars that nobody wants.
 
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#52
#52
Judging your post I'm not sure that you want to be taken seriously. That being said, we can replace the guys you never heard of from the bottom 40% of the league with other guys that you've never heard of (nope not robots), and your eyes would not be able to tell the difference. I guarantee it.

The venue is all part of the product. If the Coliseum didn't sit 60,000 few would have seen the gladiators. There's a lot more to putting on a game than just throwing some players out in a field.

GM has the largest market share. Apparently people do buy their cars. I'm sure you'll be able to completely invent another reason for their failures, though.

Auto Sales - Markets Data Center - WSJ.com
 
#53
#53
So I pay DirecTV $250 a year to see the grass grow at FedEx Field every Sunday afternoon?

GM changed their product in the late 90s. They sold a lot more SUVs then passenger cars. People didnt want SUVs in 2005 when gas prices spiked to over $4 a gallon. So they had a lot of inventory of a product nobody wanted.

Here is the lesson: You change a great product into something that people dont want (ie Crappy football) you go out of business. "New Coke" is another example. Now, lets pretend you are Deion Sanders, and your son, JR is a freshman in HS and is both amazing at Football and Baseball, where do you steer your world class athlete?

You do know that NFL teams hold tryouts every year? So you would be cool with players who orginally couldnt make a team, to now be on the field? I certainly wouldnt be cool with watching crappier players.

How about we replace 40% of every part in your car with cheaper, crappier parts from China. You cool with that?
 
#54
#54
nbakerld said:
Fans are stupid. He knows us better than we know ourselves. We might say we don't want 18 games, but if they went to that format would you stop watching after week 17? Nope. I wouldn't either.
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Fans in America eat up football. You could have 20+ games and fans would still watch as many as they could. That doesn't mean fans don't know what they want; it means there's a difference between what fans would watch and what they actually see as a best-case scenario. I'd keep watching because I like football, but I can still see straight through that and tell you that extending the season makes absolutely no sense through any perspective except a moneymaking one. With the injuries we've had this year and every year, if anything, the season should be shorter. I think most fans (as in the like 75-80% who don't want 18 games at all) think similarly, in that they love the sport but see this for what it is...the owners trying to exploit the players to make themselves more money.
 
#55
#55
nbakerld said:
Not likely. They'd be paying out the butt for the franchise and then instantaneously devaluing their investment. You would be shrinking your profit margin for the existence of the franchise. This is how GM got in so much financial trouble. When profit margins were great they promised the world to employees in retirement benefits. Now those benefits are weighing them down and they can't be competitive without government help.
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Fantasy land.
 
#56
#56
nbakerld said:
I don't get your point. We don't pay the owners to watch them play, we pay them to put a product on the field. The players are a big part of that product. A good portion of them are very expendable. You wouldn't notice the difference in quality of talent if we replaced the bottom 40% of the league. We don't pay to watch them either.
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And those 40% are the ones that need a little help towards health care.
 
#57
#57
nbakerld said:
Fans are stupid. He knows us better than we know ourselves. We might say we don't want 18 games, but if they went to that format would you stop watching after week 17? Nope. I wouldn't either.
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Pissing off the fans is an awesome way to insure your product succeeds.
 
#58
#58
justingroves said:
Pissing off the fans is an awesome way to insure your product succeeds.
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What are you gonna do? Stop watching football? People didn't stop watching baseball after the strike even though those pissed off fans swore they wouldn't watch. Attendance has steadily increased since 1994 (or whatever year it was).

NFL fans get pissed all the time, but they never stop watching.
 
#59
#59
VolsNSkinsFan said:
You do know that NFL teams hold tryouts every year? So you would be cool with players who orginally couldnt make a team, to now be on the field? I certainly wouldnt be cool with watching crappier players.
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Tryouts don't tell all. Superior players get cut all the time because a tryout is insufficient. Coaches go with their best guess. They're called marginal players because in general there's virtually no difference among them.

You know Arian Foster didn't make the bottom 40% 2 years ago, right? Now he's in the top 5%. The last WR on the Colts roster in 2009 was Hank Baskett. The last WR on the Colts roster in 2010 was Blair White. Baskett came to the Colts from the bottom 40% of the league. White came to the Colts off the street and he was much more effective. I highly doubt Nick Reveiz will make an NFL team, but he could play special teams as well as most reserve LB's in the league.

Again, if you replace the bottom 40% of the league you wouldn't notice the difference. Some of the new guys would be better than the ones we currently have and some of them would be worse.
 
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#60
#60
justingroves said:
Fantasy land.
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I am not sure what you mean by that. I think you are saying that I live in a fantasy land because I think GM is having hard times because they can't cover the retirements they promised.

Just google this: gm retirement benefits bankruptcy

I can save you some time. $60 billion to retirees in health care?!!! $7 billion per year in pensions! A failed fuel efficient car is a temporary hiccup. Having too much inventory is a temporary hiccup. $7 billion per year in pensions does not go away. It's hard to be competitive with Toyota when you start $7 billion in the hole every year.

http://www.wallstats.com/blog/the-fall-of-gm-a-visual-guide/
 
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#61
#61
As of the 2007 season, the minimum NFL salaries were:

Rookies and first-year players $285,000
Second-year players $360,000
Third-year $435,000
Fourth-year $510,000
Fifth- through seventh-year $595,000
Eighth- through tenth-year $720,000
Eleventh-year and longer $820,000

Good Lord people. Make a few smart investments. $6,355,000 in total salary for 11 years. Yeah they get hurt and many have lifelong health issues. Health care should not be a problem for them. After all, they DO have a college education, right? Get a real job like the rest of us. If the average NFL career is 4 years, that's a total salary of $1,590,000. A darn sight more than most people make in their lifetime. Yes, the owners want a bigger chunk of the overall earnings from TV and other stuff. I understand that. If you owned a business you would too. Your employees want to be paid for what they do. I get that too. Bottom line is, the fans WILL watch even if the "marquee" players aren't on the roster. If the product gets watered down because of this fans will still watch. They will still buy tickets, jerseys, etc.
 
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#62
#62
nbakerld said:
I am not sure what you mean by that. I think you are saying that I live in a fantasy land because I think GM is having hard times because they can't cover the retirements they promised.

Just google this: gm retirement benefits bankruptcy

I can save you some time. $60 billion to retirees in health care?!!! $7 billion per year in pensions! A failed fuel efficient car is a temporary hiccup. Having too much inventory is a temporary hiccup. $7 billion per year in pensions does not go away. It's hard to be competitive with Toyota when you start $7 billion in the hole every year.

The Fall of GM - a visual guide | WallStats.com The Art of Information
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GM tanked because they were held hostage by unions and they weren't ready for gas to go through the roof. They were stuck holding a bunch of gas guzzling SUVs that weren't selling.
 
#63
#63
nbakerld said:
What are you gonna do? Stop watching football? People didn't stop watching baseball after the strike even though those pissed off fans swore they wouldn't watch. Attendance has steadily increased since 1994 (or whatever year it was).

NFL fans get pissed all the time, but they never stop watching.
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Uh yeah they did.
 
#64
#64
justingroves said:
Uh yeah they did.
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Seriously. They took a huge hit.


I find it hilarious that people are viewing this as a owners vs players thing. When they should be looking through 3D glasses and realize that what's important is what WE, us, the fans, the consumer want and that's more and better football and to not see our players that we genuinely care about to be hobbling around with a cane at the age of 45.

But hey. Keep telling yourself that 250k BEFORE taxes is good money. So good that they can afford health care for their entire lives. Keep siding with the owners who are wanting 18 games because they literally have nothing else to ask for from the players. They have to show up to the bargaining table with something to ask for

The people thinking that the players are greedy are literally driving the game into the ground. The owners can sell anytime they want or declare bankruptcy and walk away if the business is so bad
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#65
#65
MLB is still feeling effects of the strike to an extent.

And I don't want the NFL to pay these guys a lifetime salary or cover 100% of their medical expenses forever. But some healthcare provision is needed IMO.
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#66
#66
FTR I already skip the last week or two of the NFL because most if not all of the games are meaningless.
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#68
#68
justingroves said:
Uh yeah they did.
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I've seen the data. Attendance has risen at a rate not statistically different from before the strike. You guys keep making stuff up. Say something and then back it up.

See if you guys can actually interpret this data. It's after the bibliography:

http://www.rodneyfort.com/Academic/WorkingPapers/FortLeeMLBPolicy.pdf

Also you can see here that ticket prices barely dipped the year after and then within 2 years it had risen to what it would have been without the strike (assuming the rate of growth is constant).

The Economic History of Major League Baseball | Economic History Services

I can't even find the academic journal I originally read. If you guys want it I'll go digging because that's the best source. It's peer reviewed and it's good analysis.
 
#69
#69
justingroves said:
GM tanked because they were held hostage by unions and they weren't ready for gas to go through the roof. They were stuck holding a bunch of gas guzzling SUVs that weren't selling.
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Who do you think negotiated the retirement benefits that sunk GM?
 
#70
#70
America's pastime still hasn't recovered from the strike 10 years ago. In the nine years before the strike, the World Series averaged a strong 22.3 rating... with each ratings point representing roughly one million households. And the league was turning a profit during that entire time as well, with roughly $22 million US in 1992 and $36 million in 1993. But the numbers have declined drastically since then.

Averaging a 15.3 rating in the nine years since the strike, the ratings for the World Series are down almost 33%. In terms of overall revenue, Major League Baseball claims it has lost money every year since the strike. Beginning with a loss of $375 million in 1994, baseball lost $138 million in 1998, and an astonishing $519 million in 2001.

Commissioner Bud Selig stated that 25 of the 30 teams lost money in 2001. And while the exact numbers have been questioned, no one is debating that Major League Baseball is still struggling financially. It was just in 2002 that the league looked into eliminating both the Twins and the Expos, a very telling statistic when professional sports are constantly adding expansion franchises.

A significant portion of the lost revenue since the strike has come from decreased attendance, which was down 15% shortly after the strike in 1996 and was still down 12% in 2002. With $1.5 billion in ticket sales in 2002, that 12% drop in attendance equaled $180 million in lost revenue. And with $3.1 billion in merchandising and concessions in 2002, every slight drop equals a loss of millions more. (Note: Stats were taken from the May 2, 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer -- based on info from Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal.)

The final factor that hit baseball hard was not playing the World Series in 1994. Broadcasting deals and ad revenue are highest during the playoffs. The handful of games lost at the start of the 1995 season was minor, but the estimated broadcasting rights for the 1994 World Series alone would have been another $180 million.
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#71
#71
nbakerld said:
Who do you think negotiated the retirement benefits that sunk GM?
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They were held hostage by unions while putting a useless product out.

The "retirement benefits" didn't matter as long as people kept buying gas guzzlers.

However, GM had no foresight and mass produced a product no one wanted.
 
#72
#72
volsnskinsfan:

World Series Ratings are a minute part of the financial health of baseball. Attendance was high and so were ticket prices. Owners can claim losses all they want, but what they claim is not reliable. They aren't legally obligated to release financials so we don't know. They always say they are losing money because if they are losing money fans don't get pissed about ticket prices. Didn't you follow the story last year where the Pirates real financials were released to the public. Ownership had been lying for years. If you want to know the true financial health of baseball franchises, look at what they sale for. Don't listen to what the lying owners say.

Depending on who you ask you will get different answers about attendance. If you include the Colorado Rockies attendance numbers, then yes baseball was down 15% from the year before the strike. The reason is the Rockies were a new franchise and spiked attendance because they filled up Mile High stadium before Coors field was built. Once the Rockies weren't a novelty anymore they didn't have insane attendance, but that spike came right before the strike and skews the numbers. When you exclude the Rockies attendance was not down.
 
#73
#73
So the worst team in baseball can turn a profit during the worst economic times since the Great Depression then the worst team in the NFL should be able to turn a profit and buy their players some health insurance, unless the owner is paying himself and his staff excessively

If the owners can't turn a profit and buy the players some health insurance, then they should sell to someone who can
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#74
#74
VolsNSkinsFan said:
So the worst team in baseball can turn a profit during the worst economic times since the Great Depression then the worst team in the NFL should be able to turn a profit and buy their players some health insurance, unless the owner is paying himself and his staff excessively

If the owners can't turn a profit and buy the players some health insurance, then they should sell to someone who can
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Actually, Pittsburgh isn't profitable. They receive $40 million in revenue sharing from profitable franchises. That's what all the controversy was about. Pittsburgh tells their fans they don't have money to sign good players but their payroll is covered just in revenue shares so they can afford to sign better players. Somebody in the front office leaked what they were receiving from other owners.
 
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