I'm really not joking here. I've decided to hit some facts and take a mathematical approach to this whole NFL labor situation that has been brewing. Before we get to the numbers, I want to state my opinions related to this issue.

1) I am not pro union. If we lived in a perfect world, there would be no unions. As we live in a world where great power seems to come with great abuse, I feel that unions are a necessary evil. I believe in balance, and it appears that in this dysfunctional society we live in, in order to achieve balance you must let two extremes battle until they both tire and sit down right where they originally started.

2) I am biased in that I personally side with the players on many levels. However, to say that players should make even the same amount as the owners is asinine. This would be like if I were a chef and a business owner came to me with a proposition. He says to me that he owns a restaurant and likes my work, so he would like me to come work for him. I gain great notoriety for being an outstanding chef and his business grows dramatically. Seeing that he is making money off my work, I argue that I need a raise. He offers me a salary and I turn it down. I say to him, "Wait, you make three times that, but I do all the work. I demand the same salary that you earn!" I think any rational person with any legitimate business sense can see why that is just not logical. I didn't put the money in. It's not my restaurant. If he leaves, I have no job. If I leave, he still has a restaurant. Monetarily, he takes all the risk. I should not get equal pay.

I could state further opinions I have regarding the labor situation in the NFL, but I don't really feel that I need to at this point. I'm going to present some interesting facts. In order to do so, I would like to address the angle that has been taken by most people speaking on behalf of the owners. It is said that with this economy, that NFL franchises are now making less money, they are becoming cash strapped and that it is becoming more difficult to turn a profit. With this in mind, they are asking that the players accept less pay to help "even things out".

First of all, I would like to make a point which should squash this entire conversation immediately. The team salary cap (i.e. player salaries) are set as a percentage of total league revenue. This means that if the league makes less money, the players cannot earn as much aggregate salary. Yes, if you have a multi-year contract, you will still make that, but somebody else will make less as they negotiate a new contract. On the average, it all levels out. Thus, a decline in revenue does NOT just come straight out of the pockets of the owners. It is a burden that is shared by the players. This is part of what makes NFL salary cap architecture so ingenious. But both sides apparently agree that there need to be some adjustments made to the way that player salary is determined.

Facts:

In 2009 total player salary was $4.5 billion¹. Average owner profit was $33 million¹ or over $1 billion total. "NFL owners want the players to take an 18 percent pay cut because of rising costs"². This would total $810 million using information from 2009. All things equal, this is more than a $25 million raise per owner. This is approximately a 76% increase of mean salary or 94% increase of median salary³. "Oh, we're only asking for 18%." No! you're asking for the monkeys to keep dancing while you make a 76% pay raise.

A similar claim that gets thrown out there during ANY negotiations between labor and administration in any unionized field is this fallacy: "Labor accounts for over 50% of the salary. That's unfair. We're just asking administration to get a little more of the pie." The previous collective bargaining agreement between the players' association and the owners dictated that the players should earn not more than 60% and not less than 56% of league revenue.¹ If we concede that the NFL is, in fact, losing revenue (not necessarily profit), it could easily be argued that player salaries are closer to their cap of 60% of revenue. So the quote that comes out is, "how is it fair that owner's make less than the players?" There are more players than owners. There are 32 teams in the NFL and they are allowed a maximum of 53 salaried players on their roster. Most teams have the max or close to it. That gives us an estimate of 1,696 players in the NFL. There are 32 ownership entities in the NFL. Thus players make up over 98% of the individual salary earners. Should players then get 98% of the revenue? No. Just like in my example above with the restaurant and the chef, the owners should DEFINITELY earn more than that leftover 2%. But let's look at average salary. The average NFL player makes $2.6 million annually. As I stated above, Forbes reported that the average owner makes $33 million annually. Looking at average salary, an owner picked at random will make over 12 times that of a player picked at random. If they went out to pizza together and shared a large pepperoni pizza, the player would get less than a slice while the owner ate the rest. Are you sure that those poor owners are really hurting financially as they get bullied by those greedy athletes?

To finish off, I would like to rip on Colin Cowherd because I enjoy it. This morning he brought up this wonderful gem of a false analogy (with a creamy fallacy center). He asked his listeners to think, as fans, what they would prefer. Would you rather more money go to the players so they can waste it on "shark tanks" and other nonsense? Or would you rather it go to ownership so they could have more money to run a business with. "How many fans want their team to end up like the Mets?" he asks. Two fallacies in this one. First, he is running on the fallacy that if the owners can't get more money, then the players get more money. They can't just strike out a deal that leaves them both with the same amount of money? Secondly, he tries to argue that if owners don't have more money in the NFL, they'll end up like the Mets in MLB that are never contenders because they can't afford to compete with the Yankees or Phillies. The huge difference here is that MLB doesn't have a salary cap. The NFL does. The disparity in MLB comes from giant ball clubs like the Yankees being able to wave their checkbooks all the way to the playoffs. While some clever arguments have been made that this is starting to happen in the NFL too, it's simply untrue. First off, most teams are at or close to their caps, so they have the same amount of money invested in player salaries regardless. More importantly, read this: According to data provided by Forbes regarding income and profit of NFL franchises, the lowest 7 in terms of profit are, from highest to lowest: Green Bay, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Minnesota, Seattle, and Oakland.³

Quickly:
- Green Bay and Pittsburgh are in the Superbowl.
- Detroit was still reeling from their 0 - 16 season and is a historically bad franchise.
- Dallas just built a 1-point-something-billion-dollar stadium and is almost always a contender.
- Minnesota made the playoffs in 2009 when these numbers were recorded.
- Seattle and Oakland can hardly be considered tragic non-contenders due to financial issues. They are the only two franchises to finish 2009 in the red and I would argue that Seattle is clearly making turns while Oakland is run by an insane demon monkey that throws feces.

So in summation, the owners are asking to become REALLY STINKING RICH and Colin Cowherd sucks. Have a great day.

¹ http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/25/most-valuable-nfl-teams-business-sports-football-valuations-10-intro.html
² http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/article_0e275d4e-8ac3-59fe-8d90-55c450e789a2.html
³ http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/30/football-values-09_NFL-Team-Valuations_Income.html