An 18-game NFL common season has been looming over the league at the least because it was clear that the 2011 lockout was an inevitability. What the league desires, the league — extra particularly the workforce homeowners — normally will get. The income cut up was once 50/50 with the gamers, however now a greater share has gone to the owners since the lockout. The 17-game common season and expanded playoffs are a product of the 2020 CBA.
Whereas the gamers don’t get the identical share of the pie that they used to, at the least the NFL is backed off of testing for marijuana. The NFL and workforce homeowners had been open to that for a while, however weren’t going to behave on it with out some kind of concession from the gamers.
When the NFL begins to barter the 2030 CBA in just a few years, the way forward for tv might be on the forefront of the dialogue. Assuming that the league will at the least be as common because it was in 2023 — let’s cross our fingers for the way forward for TayTrav — probably the most assured solution to proceed a large enhance in income is so as to add an 18th regular-season recreation.
The enlargement might be offered to the gamers as extra money within the pot. As a lot because the NFL tv rights will enhance subsequent decade with no indicators of the league slowing down as America’s most constant tv product, 19 regular-season weeks will nonetheless value greater than 18.
Nevertheless, the gamers have been far from unanimous of their approval of the enlargement of the common season from 16 to 17 video games in 2020. What can be going to extend together with the worth of the NFL, is the gamers’ information of sports activities enterprise.
If Professional Soccer Discuss’s Albert Breer is reporting that he heard talk about an 18th recreation on the draft mix over the weekend, then the gamers have doubtless had that info for some time. It’s time for the gamers to demand that groups and the league workplaces earn their preserve.
The homeowners obtain nearly all of the income cut up, and Roger Goodell is paid greater than any participant. These leaders with titles ought to earn their preserve and discover a approach to make more cash in a approach that isn’t off of the backs of the gamers. As a substitute of instituting “hip-drop” tackle penalties in a sport wherein 200-plus pound persons are required to run into one another at full velocity, many instances from a distance, the conclusion needs to be drawn that them working into one another for an additional three-plus hour recreation is inherently unsafe.
Boxing way back removed 15-round fights, and the UFC now has weight courses, gloves, and cut-off dates that it didn’t have in 1993. The infrastructure of each of these sports activities is rotten, however at the least they know that lowering the size of the fights improves security. Full-contact sports activities are harmful. There is no such thing as a solution to regulate a rise involved that ends in improved participant security.
A hesitant defensive participant can lose his job, at finest, and at worst, the performance of a physique half. They by no means ought to have been torpedoing their heads at offensive gamers. Spearing has lengthy been in opposition to the principles and likewise by no means flagged sufficient. With all of that being true, including extra flags to the too many which can be already referred to as in opposition to the protection can truly enhance harm danger, particularly with one other recreation added to the schedule.
In 2010, Goodell set a purpose for NFL income to achieve $25 billion by 2027. The 2022 season reportedly generated nearly $20 billion. The Kansas City Chiefs’ win in the course of the closing recreation of the season in February 2024 is the most viewed Tremendous Bowl of all time. Curiosity within the NFL is in the other way of waning.
For this reason the gamers ought to go full-court press on the NFL in the course of the subsequent CBA negotiations. I’m conscious that there are fewer than 1,700 whole gamers within the league. Salaries stretch from Joe Burrow’s all the way down to gamers clinging to the observe squad. Nonetheless, in some unspecified time in the future, the gamers should take a stand. As a result of if they offer in for an 18th recreation with lower than a ferocious battle a yr or extra earlier than the CBA expires, lots of the ones who voted in favor won’t be on a roster lengthy sufficient to learn from the wage will increase after taking all the punishment of an additional recreation.
