Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

[fordfixer]

Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
By Ed Bouchette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
[url="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11131/1145781-100.stm"]http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11131/1145781-100.stm[/url]

Steelers President Art Rooney II will join three other team owners when the NFL labor talks resume before a mediator in Minneapolis on Monday.

Other owners joining Rooney will be Carolina's Jerry Richardson, Cincinnati's Mike Brown and the New York Giants' John Mara.


First published on May 11, 2011 at 3:08 pm

Read more: [url="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11131/1145781-100.stm#ixzz1M5vBazoW"]http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11131/11 ... z1M5vBazoW[/url]

[phillyesq]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

How did Mike Brown get himself into the mix?

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

How did Mike Brown get himself into the mix?

good question...

[SteelBucks]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

Nothing against Art II but I'd feel more confident if Dan was part of the talks instead.

[aggiebones]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

Dan went and got himself old. Negotiations like this tend to require being awake alot. Seriously, they are exhausting. ArtII is well trained for the position. Many said the same thing when Dan was involved early on.

[flippy]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

Dan went and got himself old. Negotiations like this tend to require being awake alot. Seriously, they are exhausting. ArtII is well trained for the position. Many said the same thing when Dan was involved early on.

ArtII will get something done.

How did Mike Brown get himself into the mix?

good question...

I was thinking of that Sesame Street, one of these kids is not like the others...

[Oviedo]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

I'm sure Art and Mara are there to represent the "Old Guard" of the NFL who see the benefit of the league as more important than individual team prosperity.

The reality though is the mediation will achieve little since Demarius Smith screwed this up and threw this whole thing into the courts. Once it went into court any chance for the season and camps starting on time went out the window. It will now have to be played out in the courts because neither side is going to blink until a court rulling is made that forces them to.

[steelblood]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

I'm sure Art and Mara are there to represent the "Old Guard" of the NFL who see the benefit of the league as more important than individual team prosperity.

The reality though is the mediation will achieve little since Demarius Smith screwed this up and threw this whole thing into the courts. Once it went into court any chance for the season and camps starting on time went out the window. It will now have to be played out in the courts because neither side is going to blink until a court rulling is made that forces them to.

Who does Mike Brown represent? Ebeneezer Scrooge

[RuthlessBurgher]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

I'm sure Art and Mara are there to represent the "Old Guard" of the NFL who see the benefit of the league as more important than individual team prosperity.

The reality though is the mediation will achieve little since Demarius Smith screwed this up and threw this whole thing into the courts. Once it went into court any chance for the season and camps starting on time went out the window. It will now have to be played out in the courts because neither side is going to blink until a court rulling is made that forces them to.

Who does Mike Brown represent? Ebeneezer Scrooge

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

League launches effort to get players to focus on dollars, not percentages

Posted by Mike Florio on May 19, 2011


We’ve long believed that the current labor dispute arises fundamentally from an insistence by the NFLPA* to continue to receive 50 cents of every dollar that passes through the cash register, and from a refusal by the owners to continue to provide that percentage. And so the NFL finally seems to be pushing a dollars-over-decimals message to the players.

“When you’re doing your budget and paying your bills and things like that, you’re not looking at a percentage, you’re looking at how many dollars you have in your checking account,” NFL general counsel Jeff Pash told Pat Kirwan and Tim Ryan of SiriusXM NFL Radio on Thursday. “If we can continue to have the kind of growth that we’ve had over the last 10 or 15 years, if we can do that going forward, which I totally believe we can do, there’s no question but that every player in the league will have rising income, rising salary, rising benefits.”

Of course, if the players are getting less than 50 percent of the increasing revenues, it means that the owners will be getting more. But as one management-side source recently explained it to us, the league believes that much has changed since a 50-50 split worked for everybody.

“Not long ago every team in the league had a stadium paid for with public money,” the source said. “Now teams have huge stadium debt. Not long ago most if not all teams had stadiums whose operating expenses were paid for by the public. Now almost all have huge operating expense bills. Not long ago we had revenues we could raise without incurring much cost, i.e., tickets prices. Most teams are now at a point where tickets prices don’t have much room and generating revenues if you can even can do it, has a lot of cost. So 50 percent worked when the owners didn’t have these kinds of costs but that reality has changed and is likely to keep getting more challenging from here.”

And here’s the other reality to which the league is now aggressively pointing. The players receive 50 percent, and it’s basically profit (after taxes, which of course the owners pay on their pay and profit, too). The owners receive 50 percent and from it they pay all other costs associated with running a football team. As these other costs grow, the amount that represents profit shrinks, in time dramatically.

“There are real reasons that aren’t greed,” the source said. “The business model has changed. They can make more money than they make even today but there are real credible reasons why the percentage can’t and frankly will not be the same. If we can’t get De Smith to understand or recognize this, I don’t know how this will end.”

Of course, one way to get Smith to “recognize this” would be to open the books and prove to the players that the trend is real.

[url="http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/05/19/league-launches-effort-to-get-players-to-focus-on-dollars-not-percentages/"]http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... rcentages/[/url]

[feltdizz]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

I'm sure Art and Mara are there to represent the "Old Guard" of the NFL who see the benefit of the league as more important than individual team prosperity.

The reality though is the mediation will achieve little since Demarius Smith screwed this up and threw this whole thing into the courts. Once it went into court any chance for the season and camps starting on time went out the window. It will now have to be played out in the courts because neither side is going to blink until a court rulling is made that forces them to.

Demarice Smith = Lebeau 3-4

[RuthlessBurgher]

Re: Steelers' Rooney to join NFL mediation talks

I'm sure Art and Mara are there to represent the "Old Guard" of the NFL who see the benefit of the league as more important than individual team prosperity.

The reality though is the mediation will achieve little since Demarius Smith screwed this up and threw this whole thing into the courts. Once it went into court any chance for the season and camps starting on time went out the window. It will now have to be played out in the courts because neither side is going to blink until a court rulling is made that forces them to.

Demarice Smith = Lebeau 3-4

But rookie Von Miller is a plaintiff in the Brady vs. NFL lawsuit. LeBeau would never use a lowly rookie like that if he were in charge of the player's association. DeMaurice Smith should know that rookies must have a mandatory redshirt season...not involved in any lawsuits against the league until at least their 2nd or 3rd season in the league.