Will NFL try to dump the 50-50 revenue share with players?

NBC Sports

6 days ago

In 2011, the lockout ended with the NFL Players Association getting, roughly speaking, a 50-50 share of all revenue. Many critics crapped on the deal the players did, ignoring among other things the fact that the owners were willing to skip an entire season of football and the players were not.
There's another reason to applaud the 2011 deal. By taking a relatively even split of all football dollars generated by the game, the players acquired an unlimited upside. And the upside keeps going up and up and up.
The cap has more than doubled in 14 years, shooting from $120.375 million to $279.2 million per team.
Last week, Commissioner Roger Goodell dropped a strong hint that the owners possibly think the players are getting too much.
'We did spend time today talking, at length, about areas of our Collective Bargaining Agreement that we want to focus on,' Goodell told reporters after the quarterly ownership meetings. 'The two areas that we spent time on were really the cap system itself, the integrity of that system, how's it working, where do we need to address that in the context of collective bargaining, when that does happen. That was a very lengthy discussion.
'The second is just the rising cost, the cost of stadiums, the cost to facilities, the cost of operation, the cost of investment, and how dramatically that's impacting the ownership view. So, I think both of those will form what I would call our priorities. Going into any negotiation whenever that occurs. So that was the extent of our discussion today. [the] 18-and-two [season format] did not even come up.'
It was unsolicited and unprompted. It was a message Goodell wanted to send.
It was largely ignored by the media. It surely wasn't ignored by the NFLPA.
From the league's perspective, it makes sense to wonder whether they can get the players to do something other than a 50-50 split. How about a set and certain cap for a fixed number of years into the future, unrelated to the money the sport generates? Why share all revenues equally when the owners don't have to?
Also, why bear the burden of all other costs from the owners' half of the revenue?
The possibility of the owners squeezing the players to take something less than half speaks to the imbalance between management and labor. Management will use the nuclear option, and the players won't.
The current CBA has more than five years left. The salary cap will keep going up, especially once the NFL scraps the current TV deals after the 2029 season. The owners may want to change that, sooner than later.
It won't be easy. But if the end result will be an offseason lockout along with a threat of a full season of no football, it will be far from impossible.
For now, pay attention to things the Commissioner and the owners say. Monitor the sports-business outlets for news that the league has hired a lockout specialist like Bob Batterman. His arrival in 2008 was the clearest indication that a winter (and spring and summer) without football was coming.
The players need to recognize this possibility and start planning for it. Time is on their side. A war chest can be built. Other steps can be taken to ensure that the players can pay the bills if/when they aren't getting paid.
The problem, of course, is that plenty of the players who would be missing game checks in 2031 are currently in high school.
Regardless, Goodell's gratuitous remark from last week wasn't an accident. As the pie keeps growing, the owners are having second thoughts about giving half of it to the players. Knowing that the players will accept a smaller piece over no pie at all will only embolden the owners to try.