I have seen “experts” say there was extra and there wasn’t extra.

We have heard from both sides that the revenue sharing was put in by the owners and the players had not seen it. Goodel said it himself. We put in a supplemental revenueing sharing plan for the players.

I am also confident from listening to both sides talk that the owners ratified their proposal not a done deal where everything is done.

I believe they have agreed to the base of the contract but not necessarily all the specifics. Some of those specifics might be critical to the players. Having been through a number of these types of negotiations (okay ours are talking like $700,000 a year and not 9 billion) both sides try this all the time.

The more I watch the NFL press conference the more I feel it was all a PR stunt by the owners.

It’s really odd because I have gone back and forth on who I favor in this whole thing – but right now I feel the players are getting a short stick right now. heck they didn’t even see the agreed deal until 2.5 hours after the press conference. That is just odd to me.

NFLPA to meet monday July 25TH.

The only real change the owners made was to set up formal revenue sharing between the teams (good for the game, keeps the small market teams happy and functioning.

The other thing the Owners did was to give the players a deadline. Sign the deal and reform the Union or no deal. A deadline for signing the deal is standard in any formal negotiation I have been in. When you get to the point that everyone has done their give and take and their are parts of the deal that each side likes and parts that each side doesn’t like you set a deadline.

To not have a hard deadline gives the other side the opportunity to go back and try to re-negotiate what has been done.

It’s the age old ‘buyer’s remorse’. I’ll put it in terms the vast majority of us have actually dealt with. You go to the car dealer. You talk price. You talk features. You haggle over the sound system. Each side tries to get the other to ‘throw in’ something to benefit the other side. At the end of the day the dealer tells you the deal is on the table until day X or he/she will have to sell the car to someone else. Even if you do sign you go home and have that immediate “what have I gotten myself into’ moment.

The players are now having ‘buyers remorse’. They negotiated this deal. They gave up alot. They got alot of consessions from the owners. Now it’s time to put pen to paper and they are having second thoughts.

But in their minds instead of being honest with themselves and saying “I should have gotten the rubber mats and not the cloth ones’ they say the owners took advantage of them and pushed them into a bad deal.

Because if they are deceitful they’re more likely to “win”. If you’ve got enough money for that Caddy you can certainly afford floor mats.

/devils advocate
//literally, the NFL owners are Satan’s minions.

IF the players get a few things straightened out I hope it does actually go to a vote it passes and we are good to go.