Looking at the NFL's salary cap

A year ago at this time, NFL fans were focused on courts rather than fields as the lockout was in full swing following a hearing in a Minnesota federal court.

Everyone can agree: Thank goodness that’s long over.

But the question that continues to loom - and likely will for some time - is, did the game even need the lockout, which was triggered when the NFL Players Association walked out of federal mediation March 11, 2011?

Because the way things are going, the players look like they didn’t gain anything. In fact, it appears they’re losing money - some $652 million over the next three seasons.

Domonique Foxworth, who was elected NFLPA president last month and was a key part of the union’s negotiating team, said he’s content with the deal he helped craft.

“I can’t speak for individual players; I’m really happy,’’ Foxworth said last week at Harvard. “You forget where you were. You start looking to the future to get something new, which is our nature; we always want to get better. So I expect our players to expect more from us. But frankly, I think the gains in health and safety, it not only does things for our players’ health but it trickles down and protects younger players.’’

That’s all well and good, but the NFL was not putting up a fight on any of the safety issues, nor stepped up contributions to player and retiree benefits. The NFL needed to do better in these areas for public relations. And they were all a part of the league’s final proposal to the union before executive director DeMaurice Smith decided the players would do better in court.

The battle over the new collective bargaining agreement was always about money. And the owners, who said the league couldn’t continue to give players 50 cents of every dollar, look like they’re winning handily through at least 2015.

According to the statements of many team owners and reports from Sports Business Journal, Yahoo!, and profootballtalk.com, which have been confirmed by league sources, the NFL management council informed owners at the league meetings that the salary cap will remain flat through 2015, and then increase incrementally.

Not only does that run counter to what the NFLPA told agents at their annual meeting at the scouting combine - they were told the cap would explode in 2014 when the new television money was due to hit - but it falls way short of what the NFL offered the union before the lockout started.

After making statements to the television cameras, Smith walked into a conference room at NFLPA headquarters and handed the assembled print media financial details of the NFL’s final offer - which he would later term “the worst deal in the history of sports.’’

Smith was right about that in at least one respect. The NFL wanted the salary cap (excluding benefits) to be $114 million in 2011. That would have been a drastic cut from the $123 million it was in 2009, the previous capped year.

After the new CBA was struck, the ’11 salary cap was $120.4 million. So the union gained $204.8 million in salary across 32 teams in the first year alone from what the NFL proposed.

Then the deal appears to go off a cliff for the players.

The NFL offered a cap of $121 million in ’12 - it will be $120.6 million. That’s a loss of $12.8 million for the players.

In ’13, the NFL’s proposed cap was $128 million. If the actual cap stays flat at $121 million, that’s a loss of $224 million.

The proposed ’14 cap was $134 million. If the actual number is again at $121 million, players will have lost $416 million in a year they expect to strike it rich.

That’s $652.8 million lost in the final three years - $448 million if the gains in ’11 are included.

And if 2015 also remains flat, the players will have lost more than a billion dollars from 2012-15.

Surely players and agents are going to be upset if this comes to pass.

“I can’t speak to what the owners were speaking to down there,’’ Foxworth said. “Honestly, next week is when I’m going to go crunch all the numbers with our lawyers and figure out the true cap projections, so it’s hard for me [to comment]. I really wish I could give you some definitive answer but one thing I know is the NFL isn’t getting less popular, so I don’t think that anyone is in danger, from owners or the players’ side, going bankrupt any time soon.’’

The biggest reason the union got fed up over the negotiations was that the NFL refused to link the cap to the actual revenue generated by the league each year. That was an important issue to the NFLPA, and it ended up getting an annual linkage. The players now get 55 percent of league media, 45 percent of NFL ventures, and 40 percent of local revenues. In total, the NFLPA was guaranteed to receive an average of 47 percent of total revenue over the life of the CBA.

“One thing that we did do that I’m proud of is for the first time we linked our revenue to actual revenue,’’ Foxworth said. “It’s hard to project what’s going to happen out in the future but no one is going to be upset because the only way the cap could be flat is if revenue is flat. So it’s hard to be [ticked] that you’re not getting more money if more money is not coming in. That was one of the smarter decisions that was made during that.’’

Maybe the lockout will eventually be worth it for that, but it’s not doing them much good now.

Part of the problem is that when the union and NFL sat down and did the linkage for the 2012 salary cap, the number came out around $114 million, according to reports, and to get the cap up to $120.6 million, the NFLPA had to borrow against future caps.

Foxworth wouldn’t confirm those reports. He did, however, look as puzzled as anyone about the cap being flat through 2015.

“I’m being careful not to say anything, but I think anyone with a brain in their head thinks that the NFL is going to continue to be lucrative,’’ Foxworth said.

Now, it’s certainly possible that the NFL doesn’t have its numbers right into the future. But one thing we now know is that the numbers the NFL used before the lockout - which the NFLPA derided - have turned out to be correct. So much for the NFLPA’s cry that the NFL was cooking the books. It has the books now. They’re right. And the players are coming up short.

So right now, the NFL’s numbers are the leaders in the clubhouse. We’ll see if they’re knocked down, and whether the players stand to make a bundle from 2016 to 2020 to offset the losses in the near term. They had better.

Right now, it looks like the players lost in the deal, and the whole nightmare of a lockout was really unnecessary.

(source Boston Globe)