By: Martin Rand, III
Date: July 29, 2011
It's finally over. The NFL Owners and NFL Players have agreed on a new CBA. After all the lawsuits and nasty words thrown back and forth at each other, the two have finally came to an agreement on a number issues.
There are three important issues that needed to get the settle the more than any other; and not one has any thing to do with that nine billion dollars that that the two sides apart for so long. Although, my issues still involve how money is being split up.
The number one issue for me is the rookie wage scale. This is something that had to implemented. These rookies were coming out of college and getting bigger salaries than most current players at their position. This was probably the profession in America where kids coming out of college were getting bigger salaries than almost every other person at the company. To put this in perspective, number one overall pick Cam Newton would have been able to get a 50-60 million dollar contract; whereas now, he can only make a 20-25 million dollar contract.
I think it was unfair to the current veterans in the league, the owners of the teams and the rookies themselves to give such enormous amounts of money to unproven players. The owners were getting stuck paying money to rookies who may not even be able to play at an NFL level (see the Oakland Raiders and JaMarcus Russell). It was unfair to the rookies because their level of play had to match their high salary immediately. If they didn't play well right away then they were cast-off as busts; when, if given some time, they might have actually developed into decent players. It was unfair to the veterans because most of them weren't getting salaries any where near what a first round rookie was getting, even though they had proven they can play in the league. With this new rule, a certain amount of fairness has been restored to the league.
The next thing that I'm happy to see is the retired veterans get more money for their pension checks. I'm not exactly sure how much more they will receive, but the fact that it has been increased is enough for me to get happy. The retired players can actually thank the rookies for the extra money in their pocket. The money that would have went to the rookie's contracts will instead go to the retired players, who've proven they can play in the league already.
The length of time this agreement will last is another good thing. This CBA will last for ten years without ANY opt-out clause for the owners. This whole off-season was terrible for fans to sit through and hear about on a daily basis and terrible for coaches, players and general managers. They usually have months to prepare their teams for the next season and now they have to cram all that work into one or two weeks. Hopefully, this wont affect the play on the field during the season but it's likely it will. I'm glad to see the owners won't have the ability to opt-out of this contract for another petty reason like they did this off-season.
As annoying as the daily talk about this situation was, it's good to see these things come out of it.
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Martin Rand III,
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