Latest news with #Goodell
USA Today
5 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
Roger Goodell wants to penalize teams like the Browns in next CBA
Roger Goodell wants to penalize teams like the Browns in next CBA NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell discussed the future of the league at a press conference at the ownership meeting and has seemingly targeted teams like the Cleveland Browns. Goodell spoke a lot about the sport and the future of the NFL. He explained how the league wants to grow, and the Browns may be in trouble. Goodell talked about the integrity of the cap system during the system. He flouted possible reforms to the financialization of the cap. Goodell expounded on his ideas when asked about the future of the collective bargaining agreement. 'There are no formal plans on any discussions. We obviously continue to be in close communication with the union on a variety of matters, but no start of negotiations have been set or are under consideration really at this point. We did spend time today talking, at length, about areas of our Collective Bargaining Agreement that we want to focus on. 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.' Goodell is targeting teams that skirt around the salary cap through clever bookkeeping. The Browns could be in his sight line. General manager Andrew Berry is well-regarded for his cap creativity. The team employs a variety of strategies, including void years and signing bonuses, to maximize its year-to-year payroll. It's one of the few reasons why the Browns have had a modicum of success after the disastrous Deshaun Watson trade. If the league changes its financial rules, the Browns will have to NFL owners are planning to ask a lot from the players' union. The Collective Bargaining Agreement expires in 2030. The deal was negotiated by former Browns' center and then-NFLPA President JC Tretter. The agreement must have been beneficial for the players, as franchise owners are already complaining that players are getting too much money. The league has been howling for an 18th game since the ink dried on the deal. They also want to expand the international games from 10 to 16 games per year. The players have a lot to think about. Players may want to consider revising the agreement to put guaranteed money into an escrow account. The rule originated in the 1970s, when there was greater financial instability surrounding professional football. However, the league has turned into the king of TV. Teams make more money than ever. Owners have used the escrow clause as an excuse for not being comfortable giving out fully guaranteed contracts. The NFLPA will have ample time to outline its demands and develop a plan of action. Five years away from negotiations, NFL owners are already saying players are paid too much and not working enough. The next collective bargaining negotiation in 2030 is shaping up to be a hostile one. The Browns could end up on the short end of the stick if negotiations end poorly for the players.
NBC Sports
5 days ago
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Succession plan hovers over Roger Goodell's contract situation
When making more than $60 million per year, it's hard for anyone to have a bad week. Still, last week was not ideal for Commissioner Roger Goodell. Beyond having two of his pet projects fail to muster sufficient owner support (tush push ban and playoff seeding changes), Goodell's latest contract extension wasn't finalized. There was at least one report that it would be. However, no vote was taken on Goodell's contract. In a conversation with John Ourand of Puck, Seth Wickersham said that an extension will happen — but that owners want Goodell to focus on a succession plan. 'Owners would like to have a better sense of the bench,' Wickersham told Ourand. The problem is that there isn't much of a bench. And, frankly, there's been a trend in recent years that, once an in-house name emerges as a potentially viable candidate to become the next commissioner, the person ends up not sticking around much longer. From Dean Blandino to Chris Halpin to Tod Leiweke to Maryann Turcke, they came, they saw, and they were gone long before they could conquer. At this point, there's a generally-accepted belief in league circles that the folks who end up being long-term high-level executives at 345 Park Avenue are not regarded by the captain as viable candidates to take the helm. Of course there's a Game of Thrones/Succession-style drama at play here. There's too much money and power riding on the job. For Goodell, who has privately said there's no way he'll still be working when he's 80, he's only 14 years away from blowing out a full four score of candles. He has perfected the craft. He knows the personalities. He (usually) gets what he wants. Where else would he make the kind of money he makes and (perhaps as importantly) wield the kind of power he wields? His only career objective was to become Commissioner of the NFL. He achieved the goal 19 years ago. For the dog who chased the car, caught it, and is now surfing on the hood, why stop? Still, the owners need to be ready for life after Goodell. The longer they aren't, the more they need Goodell to not go.
USA Today
6 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
Is the NFL about to take aim at one of the Saints' most important salary cap tools?
Is the NFL about to take aim at one of the Saints' most important salary cap tools? Could one of the New Orleans Saints' most important tools go the way of the dinosaur? Reporters and NFL analysts have had time to fully explore the comments made by commissioner Roger Goodell at last week's owners meetings, and one statement stood out to Over The Cap's Jason Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is one of the foremost salary cap experts around, and his interpretation of Goodell's discussion should perk the Saints' ears up. Here's an excerpt from Goodell's reflection on among owners ahead of negotiations on a new CBA, via Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio: "We did spend time today talking, at length, about areas of our Collective Bargaining Agreement that we want to focus on. 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 point Goodell referenced was the rising cost of owning an NFL franchise. He clarified that to mean "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." That bit about the "integrity" of the salary cap stands out. Many teams around the league have adopted tools the Saints pioneered in maneuvering the cap, specifically the use of automatically-voiding "ghost years" that spread out signing bonus payouts in years players will never suit up for a team. It's just one example, but that trick allows a team like the Saints to sign a free agent safety like Justin Reid to a three-year, $31.5 million contract that carries a first-year cap hit of just $3.8 million. Some owners, Goodell's comments and Fitzgerald's commentary suggest, believe that kind of rules-bending is unfair. Whether you agree is up to you, but it sounds like some owners feel pressured to actually invest in their teams in order to remain competitive. And their response to that pressure is to snuff it out rather than buckle. As Florio observed, superyachts don't pay for themselves. Let's say that the NFL does ban void years in the near future. How dramatically does that change things for the Saints? Could they wriggle their way out of that jam? The easiest way to ban void years would be to require teams to attach a salary to future years, not just signing bonus proration; that would mean a five-year deal is really a five-year deal, not a three-year deal with two void years tacked on. But they could still come up with a solution like only paying out, on paper, base salaries in those two future years. That could increase the dead money owed when a player is let go after the third year, or sooner, but not prohibitively so. That we came up with a solution and a way around it in this paragraph suggests the NFL will need to come up with a stronger approach, when or if they get around to it. Ironically, the best way to enforce comparable salary cap spending across the board would mean taking a step owners would balk at. Fully guaranteeing contracts just like MLB and the NBA do just might do the trick. Giving teams no outlet to play with funny money would force them to commit to spending every dollar in every contract, but that's another no-no for owners, who have fought tooth and nail to keep from guaranteeing all of the money in deals even with rookie draft picks. At some point, even they will have to realize they can't have their cake and eat it, too.
NBC Sports
27-05-2025
- Business
- NBC Sports
Will NFL try to dump the 50-50 revenue share with players?
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.
Miami Herald
25-05-2025
- Sport
- Miami Herald
Roger Goodell: USA Football will select Olympic flag football rosters, not NFL
While the NFL has approved active players to participate in the 2028 Summer Olympic flag football tournament in Los Angeles, commissioner Roger Goodell made it clear that the NFL will not determine which players will compete for the United States. Rather, Goodell said during last week's meeting of league owners, the roster selection will come down to a separate group: USA Football. 'That's actually a function of USA Football that will be making that decision,' Goodell said. 'The NFL will not have any involvement in that selection process.' According to USA Football bylaws, Goodell will appoint three individuals to the 15-member board with at least two of them serving on the five-person executive committee. This all comes just a few days after NFL owners unanimously voting in favor of allowing active players to compete in flag football at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. No more than one player from each NFL team will be able to participate in the games, which will feature six men's teams and six women's teams consisting of 10 players apiece. 'I know first-hand that the inclusion of flag football in the Olympics has sparked a tremendous amount of excitement among NFL players interested in the chance to compete for their country on the world stage,' Goodell said at the time. 'We are thrilled that they will now have that chance.' The 2028 Summer Games are scheduled to take place from July 14-30, 2028. NFL players generally are off from mid-June until the start of training camp in late July. Field Level Media 2025 - All Rights Reserved
