This week, Joe Gibbs will be teaching NFL rookies about the importance of watching their finances. He will be speaking to the incoming players from the perspective of having been in severe financial distress at one point in his life himself.
On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week Gibbs, along with some financial planning experts from Strayer University, will conduct a seminar in financial education at the NFLPA's version of the rookie symposium, cancelled this year by the NFL due to the lockout. The Business of Football: Rookie Edition will take place this week in Bradenton, Florida.
Gibbs recalled his days negotiating contracts in the NFL. "A player would be upset with his contract, (and) we'd be in serious discussions," he said. "And during the conversation, it dawns on you, 'Are you in financial trouble?' That happens over and over again. It played out a lot."
Gibbs once was in severe financial trouble himself. His annual salary on his first coaching contract with the Redskins in 1981 paid him about $100,000 a year. He decided to invest some of that money in a real estate partnership. It soon turned sour.
I got into this investment which was a land deal and a partnership and I was going to be a passive investor and make some money. Instead of just trusting God and coaching football, I was going to get rich in real estate. I don’t think I’m an egotist about football because I always know there’s somebody around the corner ready to knock our block off but in the business world I was somebody who thought he had this all worked out. I got into this investment and it was for about two years and all of a sudden I started getting late notices right before a football season started.
He coached the season and then turned his attention to the debt.
After the season I beat it down to Oklahoma and when I sat down with the attorneys there were nine banks involved and it was way over a million dollars in debt. The interest alone was over thirty thousand dollars a month. I was bankrupt.
Gibbs said that he prayed for help and he decided to pay back the banks.
I feel like I have an obligation to these banks and to these people and I’d like to work this out. I’m just praying to you and saying this is the biggest mess in the world. Only you could straighten this out . . . I went to all nine of those banks and they all worked something out.
Now, $100,000 a year is not a lot of money by today's standards but the record shows that the bigger the money, the bigger the problems can be. Defensive end Luther Ellis, who earned about $20 million playing for the Lions and Broncos for 10 years before retiring in 2005, filed for bankruptcy last year.
According to USA Today, 125 of the 254 players drafted will be attending the NFLPA's event this week. It seems a shame that nearly half of the rookies in the league will not have the benefit of the advice based on lessons that Gibbs learned the hard way.
Quarterbacks Drew Brees, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning are the best-known names among the eight current NFL players named as plaintiffs on the NFLPA's antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League.
Other players, including Vincent Jackson and Logan Mankins, are well known by most fans of the game. Some, such as Ben Leber, aren't even household names in their own households.
There is a ninth plaintiff, a "prospective professional football player" according to the filing. That player is known to most fans who keep up on the top players available in the upcoming NFL draft.
That prospective professional football player is Texas A&M linebacker Von Miller.
Miller is expected to be picked very early in the draft, probably in the top 10 selections. He is an athletic linebacker who can bring a lot of heat on the opposing quarterbacks. In what has become a passing league, such players are highly valued.
Miller is included in the lawsuit to challenge the validity of the 2011 NFL draft as well as any rookie salary cap that the league may try to impose on the players drafted absent a collective bargaining agreement.
While it may be courageous of Miller to join in the legal action, one has to wonder if it is the smartest career move for him. Joining a class action suit against your future employer before you are even hired has to be considered a risky move.
If even one team decides not to select Miller because they don't want to try to draft and negotiate with a plaintiff or aren't particularly interested in hiring a rookie who may well be distracted by by legal proceedings he will lose millions of dollars. A slide further back could cost him tens of millions.
No question that Miller will earn the gratitude of his future teammates and respect from the players around the league.
But you can't spend gratitude and respect. Miller has chosen to risk a lot for what may be very little gain.
Of course, that has been the theme of the whole CBA negotiation to date. Both sides in the dispute are taking high risks with the possibility of seeing very little in the way of a reward.
The difference is that the owners and players like Brady and Manning already have cashed in. Miller has yet to make a dime from the NFL.
Is Miller being courageous or foolhardy? Time will tell.
Forget about the Jets over the Colts in Super Bowl III and the Giants spoiling the Patriots' perfect season in the Super Bowl a few years ago. We could be on the verge of seeing one of the biggest upsets in NFL history.
It appears that the NFL owners and players just might be headed to an agreement that would end a possible lockout before it ever really gets started.
According to Mike Silver of Yahoo! Sports and some other sources, a dramatic turnaround has taken place that may, just may, lead to a new collective bargaining agreement sooner than anyone thought.
With both sides seemingly focused on winning rather than on coming to a reasonable compromise, thinks looked bleak going into yesterday's 11th-hour mediation session. The over/under line for getting a deal done is sometime in August or early September. Even the most optimistic observers thought that it would be great if something could get done before the the April 28 draft. And you didn't have to be too far on the doom and gloom side to see at least some of the season being lost to the labor strife.
But things turned around yesterday. Until Thursday, the owners line has been that the players had to take the billion-dollar per year pay cut, play 18 regular-season games, and take their proposal for a rookie salary cap or go pound sand.
But, for reasons unknown but that we will speculate on in a minute, the owners made some meaningful concessions. That sparked some hope, leading to the 24-hour extension.
It seems that the owners were spooked by the prospect of bringing the case to the courts, especially the court of Judge David Doty, whose rulings generally have not gone in favor of the owners. With the union set to decertify, the owners faced the prospect of the whole process being thrown to the courts, where they would lose control of the process. And if there is one thing that a business person hates it is not being in control.
So they will take a shot at actually negotiating instead of trying to pound the players into submission.
We will know by the end of the day today whether or not there will be labor peace or if all hell will break loose. Silver said, "if such an announcement [of another extension of 1-2 weeks] is made, both sides would view that as an almost ironclad statement that a deal is forthcoming – and a work stoppage will have been averted."
That would be good news for all involved.
The extra 24 hours that the NFL owners and players agreed give themselves to try to decide on an new collective bargaining agreement (or, more accurately, more time to negotiate another extension) will not change the free agency rules.
According to Adam Schefter, the extension is just a negotiating extension. The deadline to sign free agents, waive players, and conduct any other player moves that were permitted prior to the start of the new league year remains at midnight on Thursday. After that, no player moves will be permitted until the labor issue has been resolved.
The signing of O. J. Atogwe apparently will have to satisfy the free agency hunger of the Redskins fans for a while, perhaps for a long while.
There is talk that there might be an extension of deadline for the NFL and the players' association to cut a deal.
According to multiple sources on Twitter and Adam Schefter speaking on SportsCenter just a few minutes ago, the two sides are discussing pushing back the start of the league year in order to give some more time to work out a new collective bargaining agreement.
Don Banks of Sports Illustrated quoted a source who said that the extension talks are "legit but fragile".
The fact that an extension is being discussed implies that there is some progress being made in the talks. If there wasn't some give and take going on, which has been notably lacking to date, there would be no reason to to extend the agreement.
An offer by the owners to show some financial information may have been the impetus to getting the two sides to talk about extending the deadline. Apparently, the owners have offered the extension and the players are considering it.
Multiple extensions were agreed to in 2006, the last time the CBA was being negotiated. The eventually did get an agreement.
This week, NFL team player representatives and alternates will meet in Washington for orientation for new reps. After taking care of some other business the players will head up to Capitol Hill to meet with our elected representatives. They will lobby to convince Senators and members of the House that they are on the right side of their labor dispute and that the issue is worth of the attention of a Congress that has a very full plate dealing with deficits, health care, unemployment, and a myriad of other issues.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday some NFL owners will meet in Atlanta for their monthly powwow to craft their strategy as we sit 56 days before the labor contract between the league and the NFL Players Association is schedule to expire.
What is wrong with this picture?
The last time that the owners and the NFLPA sat down for a negotiating session was on Nov. 22, almost two months ago. With the clock ticking towards a lockout, we have one group meeting in Atlanta and another one meeting in Washington.
How about meeting each other halfway, folks, and getting together in, say, Charlotte?
Instead of negotiating face to face, the two sides are involved in a war of words through the media and, at least when it comes to the NFLPA, lawmakers.
Get a load of this exchange, typical of what passes for learned discourse in this situation, between Bob Batterman, one of the league’s hired legal guns, and George Atallah, the union’s primary spokesman.
Batterman, who sold his legal talents to the National Hockey League owners in 2004-2005, the years that the labor dispute ended up cancelling the entire NHL season, tried to make the case that the players want a lockout so that they can litigate a settlement.
"This is not a union eager to avoid a lockout. This is a union waiting for a lockout to occur,” Batterman said.
Atallah, who represents an organization that has failed disastrously in two previous player work stoppages, said that Batterman’s remarks "come from the person that effectuated a year-long lockout for the NHL. These comments are irrelevant to the process. The owners will either let the players play or give us a good reason why they can't."
Atallah hit home only with the middle part of his comment, the part about the comments being irrelevant to the process. So are the “Lockout Central” page on the NFLPA website and the league’s NFL labor site. So is Jerry Jones saying on 60 Minutes that he did not think that a lockout would be a disaster for the sport. So was the heated rhetoric that came from the player in response.
It’s all irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is actual face to face negotiations to figure out how to split up billions of dollars. And those aren’t happening.
I’m sure I speak for most fans when I say that this PR war of words simply isn’t working. It’s only deepening the disgust that is developing for both sides in the dispute.
In a recent NFLPA conference call with the media, another favorite tool to try to conduct negotiations through the press, Browns linebacker Scott Fujita said, "There are so many things now — with player health and safety, and the future of us and our families — that aren't even being considered. And for us, it's disappointing. It feels like a slap in the face."
Well, guess what Scott—maybe if the union sat down and talked to the negotiators face to face, maybe they could address such issues.
Until then, it is the fans who are being slapped the face with the tactics of both sides, which more closely resemble taunts is a sandbox full of second graders than constructive discourse that might actually get this thing settled.
In others words, shut up and negotiate.
This week, Joe Gibbs will be teaching NFL rookies about the importance of watching their finances. He will be speaking to the incoming players from the perspective of having been in severe financial distress at one point in his life himself.
On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week Gibbs, along with some financial planning experts from Strayer University, will conduct a seminar in financial education at the NFLPA's version of the rookie symposium, cancelled this year by the NFL due to the lockout. The Business of Football: Rookie Edition will take place this week in Bradenton, Florida.
Gibbs recalled his days negotiating contracts in the NFL. "A player would be upset with his contract, (and) we'd be in serious discussions," he said. "And during the conversation, it dawns on you, 'Are you in financial trouble?' That happens over and over again. It played out a lot."
Gibbs once was in severe financial trouble himself. His annual salary on his first coaching contract with the Redskins in 1981 paid him about $100,000 a year. He decided to invest some of that money in a real estate partnership. It soon turned sour.
