·          A rookie salary cap including signing bonuses. Too many rookies making way too much money and they haven’t played a snap in the NFL, they haven’t stepped foot on to an NFL field yet. I’d rather see that money go to proven veterans that have earned it rather than the perceived potential of a rookie.

·         Revenue sharing. The Jerry Jones’ of the world want to keep all of their own money and pay for their taj mahals while smaller market teams suffer. However, the smaller market teams (I’ll use Cincinnati as example because I’m more familiar with the inner workings there) like the Bengals need to be forced to use the money they receive on players and scouting to improve their product on the field and not to merely pay the additional bills to operate the franchise. The perception is that guys like Mike Brown (Bengals owner) are lining their pockets on the sweat, money and foresight of others.

·         Retired players need medical and monetary assistance. Those who paved the way for today’s player need to be better compensated for their suffering. The money has vastly changed in the last 10 years and is worlds apart from where the game and it’s dollars were back in the 60’s and early 70’s. There are serious health concerns for the vets of yesterday and there needs to be more attention paid to those who blazed the path for the wild success of the game today.

From ESPN.com, here’s a look as to how we got to this point today:
The players got the upper hand on the owners in 2006, the last time they hashed out a CBA. The players were able to renegotiate what revenues were considered a part of the financial pie, from which they would receive about 60 percent.
The salary cap skyrocketed from $80 million per team in 2005 to $102 million the next year. In each subsequent season, the cap climbed to about $109 million, $116 million and $128 million for the 2009 season. The salary floor -- the amount of money teams are forced to spend -- was $112 million this season, or $32 million more than the highest ceiling under the previous CBA. By doing so, the owners froze the percentage of revenues dedicated to player costs at 57.5 percent.
In 2008, the owners voted unanimously to exercise a clause that allowed either side to opt out of the CBA one or two years early.

 

The leagues (owners) perspective basically equals money, as does the players but in the owner’s case they are taking a majority of the financial risk with larger and larger portions of the revenue pie going to the players. The players would love to see the status quo; salary caps going higher and higher and no restriction on guaranteed signing bonuses, less money to the veterans which means more money for the current rosters and a lot of the “say” power including the nixing of an 18 game season. The questions are; who will blink first, with so much on the line and the game of football as wildly successful as it is today, can the NFL survive a public and messy labor dispute and how much will football fans stand for?

Even though a recent victory by the NFLPA to keeps the revenue sharing viable thru 2011, which means that the small market teams will be competitive in the free agent bidding this offseason vs. the larger market teams, this is a short term victory. Even with that flow of money, small market teams may hedge their bets and keep a lot of their own capital in an effort to survive a lengthy labor dispute and work stoppage.

        

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