Over the past few days since the CBA has been completed, I have seen a lot of talk about who got the better deal: the owners, or the players. I think it is safe to say that both sides gave up some things and got some things and in the end it looks like a very good compromise. Perhaps our government could use this example and get something done as well!
What no one has been talking about though, is how this new CBA affects the fans. I think that it has a great effect on us, the hardcore fans, as well as the casual football watchers of America. The four main items that I want to look at are the salary cap, the length of the season, the 4 years of service rule, and the rookie wage scale.
First, and maybe most important, is the new salary cap. The cap is just over $120 million. This is approximately $7mil less than the 2009 cap. The big deal here is that the owners will be REQUIRED to spend upwards of 99% of that cap. In the past teams spent much less because they were in a small market and maybe did not have the funds to pay out the full cap amount. Now, they are just going to have to find a way to make it work. This is a very good thing for us as fans. Think about it: you sit down on a Sunday afternoon and start watching a great AFC South match-up between the Colts and the Jags. By the middle of the 2nd quarter the Colts are up 17-0 and you change over to fox to watch the other game. This happens all the time. It isn’t because the Colts are a dominant team, although they are very good. It is because Jacksonville doesn’t spend money to acquire big-name guys. The new cap rules are going to make sure that we the fans get to see talent spread out over the entire NFL a little more equally than we used to.
My favorite result of the new CBA was the decision to keep a 16 game season instead of moving it to 18 games. Now from a casual fan’s perspective I would have to say that this was a bad thing. The casual fan would much rather see 2 more regular season games instead of having 4 pre-season games to watch. For someone like me who loves stats and records, moving to 18 games would have been a disaster. If the league did move to 18 games, how do you even compare players anymore? If Manning passed Favre’s total yards mark by a few hundred yards in his final season, would he really be the all-time passing yards leader? All the records would have asterisks next to them or the old records would have to be projected out over 18 games. Yes, at some point in the distant future we wouldn’t even remember the time of a 16 game season as we have totally forgotten about decades long ago where 16 games would have been a joke. For me though, I am glad they kept things the way they are. This also provides less of a chance for player injuries, especially at the end of a long season. What happens when your star RB goes down in week 18 or 19 because he has now carried the ball 400 times instead of the 350 he was projected at? Keeping the season at 16 games was the right thing to do. Also to note is that it should stay this way for the full 10 years of the CBA. The owners have the right to remove 2 pre-season games, with the thinking that the players would miss the lost revenue and would be willing to turn those into regular season games….highly unlikely if you ask me.
Next is the rules that players earn their unrestricted free agency status after 4 years in the league. Short and sweet: this is a good thing because it means we will see fewer hold-outs by big name players and we will see player movement to keep weaker teams competitive as they pay for big name guys. If they had made it 5 or 6 years, things would have been very messy. It is also fun right now to see almost 500 free agents needing to land somewhere instead of less than 200 if we had been looking at 6 years.
Finally is the rookie wage scale. This by far is a huge benefit to the fans. What happens if you are an Oakland fan and you grab JaMarcus Russell with the #1 overall pick? You have to pay him a bigger contract than the 1st pick the year before, only to watch him suck it up and finally be released. This story is not new. It happens with first rounders all the time. They get guaranteed money only to be replaced mid-season or maybe after a couple of years because they can’t cut it. With the new rookie wage scale, team can spend more money on their proven players and less on rookies that have accomplished nothing in the NFL. This will allow for teams to hold onto their best guys and even go out in free agency and have the money to spend to bring in missing pieces. The top pick will still be receiving some big bucks, but it will be less than half of what they had been getting. No more of these guaranteed $50 million contracts! Rejoice fans! This is a very good thing.
So that’s a wrap. Let me know what you think about these rules and what you would have liked to see that didn’t happen (or what you hate about what did happen). Thanks for reading!
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