Explaining NFL & NFLPA Accounting
Remember this one? When some of the rhetoric first started coming out about the NFL’s revenue-sharing with the NFLPA and the players, Commissioner Roger Goodell’s standard answer was that those generous owners were handing over almost 60% of their revenues to those greedy players. Recently, the League has been demanding a 20% reduction in salaries as well as no salary cap on the top end of rookies’ and older players’ contracts. And now it’s also becoming clear that the NFL’s idea of 60% has never really been 60% of gross but some convoluted accounting that ends up actually being closer to 52%. The League’s PR flaks and shills (aka attack dogs) have been trying to spin out the idea that the NFLPA needs to open their books even as they continue to dodge calls for an audit of their own numbers. We believe that transparency is needed from both sides of the fence but right now the fact that the NFLPA has to file annual LM-2′s with the Dept. of Labor makes the Union more open than 31 of the 32 teams in disclosure (the Green Bay Packers are the only publicly-owned team and therefore required to open their books annually). As common sense goes, the NFLPA’s numbers will never be completely accurate if the NFL hasn’t actually been paying its real share all these years.
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So now…
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Any questions, Roger?
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Tom Baugh
April 20th, 2010 at 2:53 PM #
It is great that the NFL is putting up money for the brain study. The NFL Players Association should at least match it. If the League and players can donate $2.5 million to Haiti, given the half century of head injury coverup they should do for the future of football what they haven’t done for the retired players. If one player not yet drafted can pledge $2.5 million to his alma mater, why can’t the players association back (with dollars and not words) their supposed support of this CTE study so that the future players won’t have to endure what we retirees did? Anyone counting what they said they support as actual support?
http://tinyurl.com/y52lbtq
Tom Baugh
1986 – 1989
Kansas City Chiefs & Cleveland Browns