Virtually everything I know about the NFL's collective bargaining agreement comes from Mike Florio and ProfootballTalk. I decided that that kind of dependence was not healthy as I start to comment on CBA related issues, so I went to the NFL player's association web site and downloaded all 300+ pages of it. Upon opening the file I was instantly reminded about why I not only have not read it previously, but why I am an economist/statistician and not a lawyer.
I am doing my best to work my way through it, but as I did not go to law school, I am forced to take a two hour nap for every ten pages of the document. This puts me on pace to have gone through the entire document and had 60 extra hours of sleep forced upon me, some time in 2020. By then of course, the lockout should be over and a new CBA in place, allowing me to start the process over again.
This Sisiphusian effort is inspired by the complicated issues that will be discussed at length during the next few months as the owners and players try and avoid what could be deemed the dumbest lockout in history. What is happening in this negotiation is that 33 different entities (32 teams plus the players) are all trying to decide how to divide a large and growing pie. The lockout of course will serve no purpose other than to temporarily shrink the pie, forcing everyone to finally agree on how big each entity's piece is.
I want to avoid the travesty of an actual work stoppage in the NFL, largely because I do not know what my older son will do on Sunday in the fall if the 49ers and Chargers are not actually playing. So with continued reading of Florio's site and increased nap taking, I hope to understand the issues better, so that at the very least I can intelligently explain to my son why he is staring at blank screen for 6 straight hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment