Owners are preparing their generals

Looks like my prediction of MAJOR salary reduction is going to come true. Small market teams that have been complaining for years are going to use 2010 as their year to cash in and make a lot of money. Jacksonville, Tampa Bay and Buffalo are all going to be in that $50-60 million range, just watch. With a payroll that size who cares if they sell out the games, huge profit windfall for them. Jax can probably make up for 3 bad years with this one nice hit.

The writing was on the wall last year when Tampa, despite having tons of cap room, hardly signed any free agents plus hired a new coach on the cheap. Look at Bufallo, rinse, repeat. Chan Gailey is probably paying them to coach.

Good for the small-market teams, especially with the loss of $10 million or more (each) from network profit-sharing. And then there's all that room that'll be available on the back end when a cap is reinstated, which I expect it will eventually. Competitiveness might be affected for a year or two, but in the long run this could make for happy owners...as long as they don't get overly greedy and try to extend it too far.

What a shame to waste even a season out of the career of the players.

You want proof that mankind has a sinful nature? I offer this as exhibit A. How many millions are enough, guys? I tell ya', people just refuse to allow themselves to be happy.

I don't envy DeMaurice Smith. He is between the proverbial rock and hard place. Even if the owners would give him something to say "yes" to, he couldn't sell it his members, who are in deep denial about what they are going to have to give up. The union's only real leverage is the threat to decertify, which means an end to cushy union jobs for everyone concerned, so how likely is that to happen? This will end in a lockout in 2011, with the players forced to accept humiliating givebacks. Do you really think guys who are losing millions will stick it out for the benefit of college guys who will be tryng to take their jobs in a couple of years? The players will fold like a lawn chair. The only alternative would be a continuation of uncapped years, which many owners might like, but that would leave them without a rookie salary scale.

Jack,

I agree that it would be foolish for both sides to let it go that far, but this seems like a perfect storm brewing.

Fewer old guard owners with real stature and league-first think, more new guard owners with lots of stadia debt, even bigger divide between the large market and small market owners, a commissioner that doesn't have the stature and clout with the owners that his predecessors did, an NFLPA Exec. Dir. who doesn't have the stature or clout with his members or with the owners that Upshaw did and a commissioner and NFLPA ED who do not have the rapport that Tags and Upshaw had to facilitate back channel discussions and a generation of players who've never experience a work stoppage and don't really realize what they have to lose.

I hope you can tell me I'm wrong but this looks bleak.

The players are the ones who really lose out - they only have limited career lengths to earn their cash to live on, missing one year of paychecks will hurt a lot, losing the other benefits (like the extending of RFA's to 6 years) hurts them even more.

Some players may never make a second contract / payday operating on a 6 year UFA period, especially with the possiblility of a franchise tag after that.

The players need to realize they have far more to lose than the owners, far more.

It will be interesting to see how this scenario plays out in Green Bay -- the smallest of the small market teams -- by far.

The Packers just announced a rise in ticket prices for the 2010 season -- but there is no individual owner in Green Bay looking to pull big profits out of an uncapped season.

The owners are the community, and they want a winning team.

This brings to mind the Clemenza line from The Godfather about having one of these 'every 5 years' or so to keep things in line. Unfortunately for the players, the owners hold all the leverage and the owners know it.

Wondering if we do get a lockout/strike whether Obama gets involved and tries to make it a political issue. Even that doesn't bode well for the players given middle class America's feeling about him and his agenda these days.

The players best move is to make the best deal they can before it gets to the point of lockout because they're not going to win -- in fact they could get crushed.

There's no reason for Obama to intervene. Be more concerned about Rush Limbaugh who still fancies himself a football authority.

Maybe he could step up and mediate the impasse. Make himself useful as it were.

Yeah Obama will step in, blame this all on Bush, then screw it up like everything else he touches. He'll probably make Pelosi commissioner, tax all season ticket holders, and then let us watch the games in 4 years.

I think the owners are going for the throat on this one. I sense congress or even Obama will get involved in this (for political points) even threatening some kind of antitrust legislation or something along those lines. Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden egg.........

The Chosen One will get involved. After all, he is beholden to the unions. He has an opinion on EVERYTHING, so expect him to pontificate on this dispute. He will evoke the lessons he learned from his Kenyan upbringing and his Muslim teachings in Pakistan. I expect he will decree that each player receive TARP money that was supposed to be spent on job creation. Put it in the "job saved" category.

Everyone needs to go to www.investigatethenfl.com and sign the electronic petition to have Congress investigate the NFL for fraud and game fixing.

Question for article writer, why doesn't the NFL PA decertify like Gene Upshaw did a long time ago? I read an article about it and Upshaw said "the union is not in place to protect the owners, it's in place to protect the players". Decertification kills the owners' chances to collectively bargain and structure everything neatly.

These guys are Hawkeyes, They have been coached as well as any players in college across the country and will contribute once they get in to camp due to the coaching and training they received in I.C.