I don’t see it on my Chinese Calendar, but 2006 may well be the Year of the Schitzophrenic in the world of sports business. Today, the world got flipped upside down when NFL owners walked out of their collective bargaining session with the NFLPA, all but cementing a fair dose of chaos as the NFL will now have to move forward without an extention to the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement.

If you follow baseball, you see the irony in all of this. After all, it’s historically been (hands off the buzzer, 2002 was the first time since collective bargaining began in MLB that we didn’t have a work stoppage) MLB that’s flown the plane into the side of the mountain when it comes to labor relations. Today, the NFL — the normally well adjusted sport — is the one that needs a session with the marriage counsolor.

Two issues are at hand for the NFL:

• Revenue sharing between the NFL teams; an increase in the percentage of local revenues shared.
• The percentage of total league revenues to be split amongst the players and the owners.

Where things got derailed was on the latter point. The owners wanted 56.2%, while the union stuck to wanting 60%.

So what happens now? Pandemonium.

At 12:01am tonight, the NFL will go forward for the 2007 season “uncapped”. The current $94.5 million cap still in place. Contract negotiations will be nothing short of a three-ring circus.

On the sidelines, no doubt, will be MLB watching, and hopefully, taking notes. All indications early on is for a relatively smooth ride for collective bargaining with MLB and the MLBPA.

Contraction and drug testing seem to be non-issues at this stage, and with that hopefully out of the way, management and the union can roll up their sleeves and deal with issues such as the Luxury Tax and dealing with the straight pool revenue sharing plan now in place. This isn’t to say that tweaks to the JDA might be forthcoming, but indications — at least in the press — have been that nothing monumental is looming on that issue.

The NFL is about to see what can happen when labor negotiations break down over, basiclly, 4 percentage points. MLB can avoid the pitfalls over heel digging this year. Let’s hope 2006 is more like 2002, although Bud and Don… can we get an agreement short of the 11th hour?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 7:58 am and is filed under Baseball Insight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.