"We are not losing money; we have never said that." - NFL VP
"They believe they are entitled to make money every year, even in the midst of disastrous recessions." - Washing Post article
"the margins are tight" - Roger Goodell
"Packers say player costs rising faster than profits" - bizfootball.com
"Seriously Mr Goodell, Spare Us" - just a good article on the rhetoric of Goodell from sportsfan.org
And that's all hits on the first page of a search.
The whole issue has always been about the owners' greed, being jealous that the players get a percentage cut instead of a flat amount, while the NFL revenue is growing. In other words, they see the 43+% growth from 2006 to today and instead of thinking "great - we all made more" they think "those ******* players and their percentage cut - if we could get rid of that, we could have made even more of that money for ourselves".
I'm as conservative as it gets, but the owners in the NFL are personifying the evil and greed of big business rich guys. That's why it shocks me to see people side with the owners; most of the time its just a bit of ignorance on the matter at hand but sometimes its a lot worse - similar views...
*edit - almost forgot; for the clubs claiming they aren't making enough, why don't they open the books? This is not a typical employer / employee business model - its closer to a partnership with the private owners club and the NFLPA* - but even more worrisome is the last major labor issue showed that when the books were opened, the owners were expensing personal expenses, such as vacation travel, family 'bonus' payrolls, etc, to claim a low profit margin. Its called cooking the books and they've done it before; it would be foolish to think they are not doing it again, when they refuse to open their books. And pre-emptive comment, check Green Bay's data - they wrote off bad investments ( allowed as they are publicly owned ) which lowered their profit margin.
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