Rich Tandler's Real Redskins

Upshaw Invokes the " N " Words

Certainly, it's early and the tough talk is part of the posturing game. Still, NFL Players Association head Gene Upshaw dropped a couple of "N" words in talking about the current status of negotiations for a new contract between the players and the union.

Those two "N" words were NHL and NBA. Upshaw quoted in the Washington Post:

Their last proposal to us was totally unacceptable. You see what happened to hockey [a lockout that forced cancellation of the 2004-05 season]. Now basketball is moving in the same direction. I don't see us as being too far off the pace from those two. For some reason, the owners have not moved the ball at all

Just as the NHL has not moved the puck at all in nearly a full calendar year. Its labor problems may be insurmountable and it may well kill the league or at least a lot of its teams. The NBA's labor relations went from friendly but uneasy to hostile at some point last week. A strike or lockout is a strong possibility.

We're still a long ways away from there being a good chance of an NFL strike, but Upshaw's comparisons to the other two labor-strife leagues certainly did ratchet things up a bit.

Said Upshaw:

To sit around and think that labor peace is going to just fall off a tree, they're reading the wrong tea leaves. It's time for them to wake up to the fact that we have a problem, and we need to get it fixed.

The "problem" at hand is over revenues that are not shared by the league's owners and, thus, are not a part of the formula used to calculate the salary cap. Naturally, more revenue going into the top line of the equation means more money in the players' bottom line, their paychecks.

We've covered this here before so I'm not going to retread much ground here. The basic question is this: Should the high-revenue owners such as the Redskins' Dan Snyder be forced to share the revenue generated by luxury boxes and stadium naming rights with the players and/or the other owners playing in older facilities?

It's much easier to make the case that they should be giving the players a cut than it is to argue that other owners should get a piece of the pie. It's like telling Broadway actors that they will get a cut of the ticket sales from the balcony and the far reaches of the lower level of the theater, but nothing from the expensive seats up front.

The effects of a stalemate are closer than you may think. According to ESPN's John Clayton, if a new labor agreement is not reached by this date next year, we will not be talking about June 1 cuts. Since 2007 is currently an uncapped year, there would be no delaying of the acceleration of accrued signing bonuses should a player be cut after June 1. There would be no difference in the cap hits for releasing a player on May 31 and on June 1.

The US Senate recently averted the so-called "Nuclear Option" with a compromise deal. Upshaw is threatening a less severe but still ugly scenario, the "Train Wreck Alternative":

Under the current labor agreement, a salary cap will be in effect for the last time for the 2006 season, and if there is no extension, the 2007 season would be uncapped, meaning teams could spend as much as they want to sign free agent players. Upshaw said if it came to an uncapped year, he would decertify the union, a move that essentially would mean all players would become free agents.

"Once you get to an uncapped year, you can't go back," Upshaw said. "I think that's something they don't want to see happen. I think we need to do this before it gets too late. I'd much rather talk to the players this fall about what we can agree on rather than telling them you better prepare for a train wreck, because that's what it will be."

There's still time but the clock ticking or, should we say, the trains are headed towards each other and they're on the same track.

Is It About the Money?

Here we all have been, thinking that Sean Taylor has been boycotting the team's voluntary workouts because he wants a new contract. According to Joe Gibbs, quoted in a Washington Times article, that isn't the case:

'I really don't think [it's] contractual,' Gibbs said after the first of 14 days of voluntary organized team activities that followed offseason workouts that began March 21. 'I think Sean understands he's got a contract. And we expect him to honor it.'
Having yet to hear from Taylor this offseason, Gibbs recently sent contract negotiator Eric Schaffer to meet with Taylor's agent, Drew Rosenhaus, but to no avail. Rosenhaus maintained his no-comment policy on Taylor's situation yesterday.

Taylor dumped the agent who negotiated his rookie contract and hired Rosenhaus, whose biography was entitled "A Shark Never Sleeps". Given that Rosenhaus has been asking for new deals for his clients from Ruben Droughns to Terrell Owens, and that a kind assessment of the contract that Taylor signed last year was that it favored the Redskins, it was a logical conclusion to figure that Taylor wanted to renegotiate. But maybe he just wants to hang out in Miami rather than in Ashburn. His teammate at Miami and now with the Redskins Clinton Portis:

Sean knows his responsibilities. He had a long season, going through the alcohol thing (a DUI arrest for which he was acquitted) and all that. When you're under the spotlight forever [and] you finally get away from it, you want to stay out of it for a little while. . .I'm not justifying Sean's actions ... [but] I'm sure if he has a Pro Bowl-type year, everybody will forget about this.

And it's possible that nobody would be paying much attention to this in the first place if not for the hiring of Rosenhaus, the DUI incident which cost Taylor a one-game suspension for missing practice, and Taylor blowing off the last part of a mandatory rookie orientation. No major transgressions to be sure, but there's enough of a cumulative effect there to cast a growing negative public image of Taylor.

Keep in mind that Taylor has drawn the ire of the fan base and of his head coach and hasn't missed a single mandatory activity this offseason. Minicamp will be next month and that's going to be the first indication of if there will be a holdout or not.

Meanwhile, we are left to guess. It would seem odd for Rosenhaus, whose contract negotiations for other players such as TO have been very much held in the public eye, to decline any comment on Taylor's status. Even if he's keeping things behind closed doors, it would appear that he hasn't even taken the first step towards renegotiating a contract, which would be to go to the man in charge (Gibbs) and say, "My client requires a new contract if he is to participate in the 2005 football season."

It's not that the OTA's that Taylor is missing now aren't important and clearly it would be better for the Redskins if he were there. But, as Portis said, Taylor managed to have a great season despite having missed the time in Ashburn in May, nobody will remember it.

If, however, he goes through a sophomore slump he will be in the crosshairs of public and press criticism even more than he has been. It's apparently a chance he has chosen to take.

Haves vs. Nots?

Is the NFL headed towards a multi-lateral war?

At least one team owner thinks it may be. From David Elfin in the Washington Times:

After 45 years as a pro football owner, Buffalo's 86-year-old Ralph Wilson has earned the right to be heard. So when Wilson says the NFL's ongoing collective bargaining agreement discussion is more of a club vs. club than league vs. union problem, it requires some attention.

As an owner in one of the NFL's smallest markets, Wilson doesn't like the growing disparity in revenue between the big-money clubs and the rest of the league, nor what he perceives as the richer group's disdain for the less wealthy majority.

We've visited this before, but it's worth another look as each passing day seems to have the three sides--the so-called "rich" owners, the "low-revenue" owners and the players--hunkering down a little bit more into their respective positions. The higher-revenue owners want to be able to keep what they have in terms of income from luxury seating, stadium naming rights, concessions and parking, the less-wealthy owners want their cut and the players want a bigger slice of the pie.

Wilson's remarks had the same whiny tone as have those of Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney:

There's about eight or 10 of the high-revenue clubs that seem to be united in a bloc. They want to keep the disparity. They want to knock us down and have us get up at the count of nine, so they can have another fight and knock us down again.

That doesn't mean he and his fellow have-not owners don't have a case, at least a partial one. Nobody would buy a $250 club seat and a $7 beer to watch the Redskins play the Redskins, or at least they wouldn't do it eight times a year. As Marvin Gaye sang with Kim Weston, "It Takes Two." There needs to be a reasonably competitive contest on the field for people to shell out that kind of money. If the Bills visit FedEx Field, they are entitled to a reasonable share of the revenue that such an event generates and the definition of reasonable could include a cut of the luxury seat revenue, concessions, and parking.

Where the case of the owners like Wilson is at it weakest, however, is when he frets about competitive balance being affected.

We just want to have enough revenue under the new collective bargaining agreement that gives us a chance to field a competitive team. If we don't get that, then along the line the league is going to be totally unbalanced. It's not going to be the league it used to be.

Let's see here, Wilson's team was eliminated from the playoffs on the last weeked of the season. The Colts, who, according to this article, take in about half the revenue that the Redskins do, have gone deep into the playoff for the last few years. Rooney's Steelers went 15-1 and lost in the AFC title game. Meanwhile, two of the primary teams in the gang of ten bullies, the Redskins and Cowboys, both went 6-10. It's hard to make a case that this "imbalance" in revenue is having any effect on the field.

And hey, Ralph, if you want to play in Ralph Wilson Stadium, fine. I'm sure that the NFL owners who have sold the naming rights for their stadiums would probably rather have the buildings named after them, too. But it's a luxury that, in their view, they can't afford. Wilson has made a choice here and the other owners shouldn't, in essence, pay him for the luxury of having his own name on the stadium.

Along those lines, what assurances are there that any revenue that Snyder, Jerry Jones and the others might share with Wilson, Rooney and company would get put towards making their football teams more competitive (assuming that that is a necessity)? Will they put the money into more scouting, better video or workout equipment, more quality coaches, or will they just pocket the cash? This is what has happened in baseball as the Yankees, Red Sox, and others pay into a fund that's supposed to help competitive balance. Some of the receipients of the so-called luxury tax have spent to try to improve their teams; others have simply put it on to the bottom line. There is little reason to believe that the NFL owners would not fall into the same line.

And changing the revenue-sharing formula is not just a matter of fairness, it's one of cold, hard fiscal reality. Ralph Wilson didn't put a dime into the stadium that's named after him and he paid off any debt he may have incurred in buying the team long, long ago. Daniel Snyder is making mortgage payments on FedEx Field and on the Redskins and when the financing was set up, it was presumed that he would have all of the luxury seating revenue in order to make the payments. Bob McNair, owner of the Houston Texans:

If you come back in and change the model and take too much away from them, then they don't have enough money to service the debut. You've got people, just like ourselves, who paid big money for the franchise based on the existing model. If you change that model, all of sudden you're taking away the value you've paid for. Those factors have to be addressed.

Most of the money we're talking about here is also exempt from being calculated into the formula that determines what the salary cap is and that, naturally, has the interest of Gene Upshaw and the player's union. Just like one could make a reasonable arguement that the visiting team deserves a share of the "untouchable" revenue, the players do, too. In fact, you could make a much stronger case for the players getting a bigger cut.

But this leads to sticky problems in that you can't share luxury revenue with the players without sharing it with the "poor" owners because they will scream that they can't afford a higher salary cap without higher revenues. So a deal with the players can't be achieved without one among the owners.

The NFL has a great way of coming up with creative solutions to issues such as this. Paul Taglibue and the rest of the league will have their imaginations taxed to the max as they try to come up with a solution to this one.

News Wars--The Readers Strike Back

In TV news, there's a saying that goes, "If it bleeds, it leads," meaning that reports on violence grab viewers. I can't come up with a similar, Jesse Jackon-esque catch phrase for it, but I've found out that nothing grabs the interest of the readers of this blog quite like a story about media coverage of the Redskins. I get more emails, see more message board responses, and generate more page hits on articles about the Redskins and the press or, more accurately these days, the Redskins vs. the press, than I do about any other subject. It's not even close.

And there's a clear pattern to the tone of the comments I receive. When I'm critical of the coverage of the team, the vast majority of the messages are of the "right on, you tell 'em" variety. If I am perceived as taking the side of Big Media, I suddenly become a moron. Even somebody as dense as I can be sometimes can see that there is a high level of discontent with the state of Redskins coverage by the media.

The comments about the most recent article about the media that appeared here on Sunday fall into a few main categories.

One is the use of anonymous sources. Some find it unsettling to hear negative reports about the team based on the words of people who won't identify themselves. There's a certain slimy quality to that, to be sure. If you've got something to say, stand up like a man and say it.

Still, anonymous sources are Journalism 101. In fact, they go back earlier than that. An anonymous source probably reported that it was the serpent that talked Eve into taking the bite out of the apple.

There are a lot of reasons why "sources" talk to reporters. They may have an ax to grind with a particular person, they may be trying to push an initiative that they favor along, they may do it as a personal favor to a reporter that they like. They may just want to get what they perceive to be The Truth out there. There is, however, only one reason why sources speak to reporters on the condition of anonymity--to keep their jobs. You can't go telling tales out of school and expect to remain employed.

So, regardless of motivation, the source tells the reporter something on the condition of anonymity and the paper or broadcaster has a choice--report it or not. This is where things get vague. We hear about double checking and trying to find a second source for some stories but the general public really doesn't know what the standard is for deciding whether or not the Post, for example, runs with a particular story based on anonymous sources.

If the Post--or any other reporting entity--wants to improve its credibility, it should put up a boilerplate page on its Website explaining the standard procedure it goes through before deciding to print a sports story that relies heavily on anonymous sources. Are multiple sources required or merely preferred? If the team denies the story, what is the standard for the decision to either print it and carry the team's denial or kill it? It would also be wise to give us a definition of the various levels of sources. Sometimes, for example, a source is characterized as a "team source" and at others it's a "team official. Exactly where is the line drawn?

If we had that information, we could better judge the credibility of a given story. To take it to an extreme, if a "source" could be a grounds keeper who overheard a conversation but an "official" can be only Gibbs, Snyder, or Cerrato, that would certainly help us figure out how much credence to put into a story.

The paper must have a policy, something in writing that defines the threshold for running a story and a standard way that anonymous sources are characterized in print. Giving full disclosure of that policy (a standard that the paper certainly would expect of another institution) would serve its readership well.

Another broad category of complaints have to do with reporters having an "agenda" to run the team down or to run some individuals down by focusing on the negative and by revealing secrets that damage the team.

Certainly, one can detect an arrogance of power on the part of the Post and the Times on occasion and it's likely that, in the short term, stories can take a slant that is intended as payback for personal slights, real or imagined. Still, I have a difficult time in swallowing the notion, as some have implied, that there is some sort of long-term agenda in place that has the purpose of making the Redskins less successful. There are too many compelling business reasons for a paper to see a team become successful. A winning team peaks interest and drives circulation and website hits. If the Redskins go to the Super Bowl, the newspaper's headline is emblazoned on t-shirts and coffee mugs, commemorative books and special editions get sold. Broadcast media’s numbers go through the roof and the announcers

And every reporter who I've heard offer an opinion has said that it's simply more enjoyable to cover a team that's winning. Who wouldn't rather spend all day talking with people who are happy and successful rather than ones who are losing? Why would any publication, in the long haul, have a vested interest in beating down the team it covers?

I'll concede that I'm perhaps being naive here and that there is some compelling reason for the Post or the Times or WTEM to see the Redskins be unsuccessful. If anyone out there could educate me on this, my email address is at the top of the page.

Other comments dealt with the Redskins.com "unfiltered" campaign. Some thought it was great and that it was all the Redskins news they needed. Others were more suspicious, wondering how any organization can be counted on to accurately and thoroughly report on itself.

Those who are willing to make Redskins.com their sole or primary Redskins news source need to realize that what their getting is far from unfiltered, with one exception. The audio broadcasts of news conferences are good, raw information, but content such as that constitutes only a small percentage of what goes up on Redskins.com. The canned interviews and stories written by staff members are not news, they are PR. Such material can be interesting and even informative, but it's not unfiltered, it's just a different filter, a different agenda, if you will.

Again, don't get me wrong here, the additional content and information that Redskins.com seemingly intends to provide are very welcome. And I certainly don't expect that the Redskins should release negative information about themselves. If they did, they would be among the first privately-owned company in history ever to do so. The materials should just be read, viewed, and listened to for what they are.

The future of Redskins.com was an interesting sidebar subject that other readers discussed. The speculation was that it would soon turn into a pay site, with subscribers getting access to the best clips, interviews, and "news" tidbits. My initial thought was that the Redskins couldn't do something on their own, that in the collective that is the NFL everyone would have to be on the same program.

And then I got some information that indicated that the rest of the NFL was headed in the same direction. From Doug Farrar, the editor-in-chief of Seahawks.net, the Seattle sister site of WarpathInsiders.com, on changes on that team's website:

In the last three months, they hired Mike Brown, the former sports director of KJR, our local sports-talk radio station, to do all the “official news”. They do breaking news via streaming video and also hired Mike Kahn, formerly an Executive Editor at CBS Sportsline, to run op-ed pieces three times a week that innocuously spin the team view of things.

So perhaps the league is pushing teams towards moving into the concept of being news sources on their websites.

As if the Redskins needed any pushing.

News Wars

There is an old adage that says that you should never pick a fight with one who buys ink by the barrel. Maybe that's changed; you might be able to get away with it if you buy bandwidth by the terabyte.

A few months ago the Redskins picked a fight with the Washington Post over what the team perceived to be overly negative and inaccurate coverage. What was a skirmish involving the pulling of season tickets on the Redskins part and some highly critical columns by Post writers has escalated. From an article in the Washingtonian:

Redskins spokesman Karl Swanson says the team is ramping up its Web site and putting up news because fans couldn?t see through the ?filter? of DC?s news outlets. Both Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and coach Joe Gibbs are behind the effort to portray the Redskins ?unfiltered.?

?"We want people to see things for themselves, as opposed to information filtered through editors or producers,?" Swanson says. ?"Our focus is to be a news source.?"

(It's difficult to read this and not recall Daffy Duck spitting out, "This means war!" after having been outsmarted for the umpteenth time by Bugs Bunny.)

Can the Redskins be a legitimate news source? Sure, in some ways. Redskins.com can be a good source for finding out some raw information such as this player was released and that one was signed and for hearing and watching interviews and press conferences that the media might not carry, at least not in their entirety.

For example, when Joe Gibbs holds a press conference, that's news and Redskins.com carries those live and archives them. You can hear every one of Gibbs' official press conferences since the day he was introduced as the returning head coach. The other media will carry selected quotes and clips and that's the "filter" that Swanson is referring to.

They've taken it one step further now with videos of interviews that involve same-day happenings. For example, they webcast an interview with Santana Moss' agent the day that Moss agreed to his new deal. Nothing earth-shattering was said and this is evidence that the Skins are moving into manufacturing news as well as making it.

The notion that this "news" is "unfiltered" is, obviously, utter nonsense. The interviews are by Larry Michael, the former Clear Channel executive who began moonlighting as the play by play announcer for the Redskins last year. The team enticed him to quit his day job and become some sort of a communications director for them. Hard-hitting these interviews are not. The information is indeed filtered, it's just a different filter, a burgundy and gold colored one.

Relying on Redskins.com for your Redskins news is no different relying on the Republican National Committee for your news on the administration in the White House. Of course, given the adverserial relationship that has developed between the Post and the Skins, relying on the Post exclusively for Skins news may be like sticking to, well, the Washington Post for your political coverage. I trust that most of us have become educated consumers of news and will take in information from a number of sources.

What's ironic here is that the Redskins are attempting to establish the idea of a website as a source for legitimate news. What's odd about that is that the team refuses to grant media credentials to any news organization that has a presence only on the Internet (most other teams in the league follow the same policy). So, in my position as the editor of WarpathInsiders.com, I can't get media credentials based solely on the fact that it's a web-based news and information source. The message that the press pass policy sends is that no Internet-based news sources are really legitimate--except, apparently, for the one that resides at Redskins.com.

The Redskins' efforts to manage the news actually started a few months ago when Joe Gibbs stopped his regular interviews with WTEM because the hosts were being too adversarial. Instead, Gibbs started doing radio interviews with Mr. Tenacious himself, Michael. Fortunately, the news takeover attempt is quite transparent and, again, most consumers of news will see right through it.

Moss Gathers Long Green

It wasn't a surprise, but it certainly is raising some eyebrows. Santana Moss will sign a new deal with the Redskins today and he will collect #1 receiver type money, not bad for a player who caught passes for less than 900 yards last year. According to Redskins, the Washington Post:

Moss's six-year deal totals about $31 million, sources said, with the first two seasons worth virtual guarantees of $11 million, including the signing bonus. The contract automatically voids the sixth year if Moss, 25, plays a minimum number of offensive snaps in any season between 2006 and 2010. Thus, sources said that the extension essentially is a five-year deal worth about $26 million.

It's safe to assume that the "virtual guarantees" are a combination of a signing bonus and a 2006 roster bonus. Until the split on that is determined, it will be impossible to calculate the cap impact of the contract.

The size of the deal was not a surprise. It was widely reported that the Redskins had reached terms with Moss even before they acquired him from the Jets in return for Laveranues Coles and the numbers in the contract have been an open secret for several weeks. The only puzzling aspect is why it took so long to get it finalized. It was thought that they were waiting to jettison Rod Gardner and his $2.1 million cap charge before inking Moss, but the Redskins have been sitting at about $2 million under the cap for the past month.

The move means that every anticipated 2005 starter on both sides of the ball will be under contract through at least 2006.

Is this too much money? Did the Redskins overpay? If these questions are to be answered in the negative, two things must happen. First, Moss must stay healthy. That's true of any player you sign to a premium deal, but in Moss' case it's a bigger "if" since he has a history of injuries, including a pulled hamstring that cost him some games last year.

The other variable is the state of Joe Gibbs' offense. The passing game was largely horizontal last year. Moss is effective in a vertical game. It appears that last year's offense was more a product of circumstances--Mark Brunell's weak arm, Patrick Ramsey's low comfort level in the offense and a weak offensive line--than of design. Gibbs has said repeatedly that he wants to throw deep more often and more effectively this coming season.