If you’re anything like me you’ve been watching very carefully the NFL situation. I’m not the world’s biggest NFL fan (prefer NCAA football really), but I do watch the games for the most part and keep track of what’s going on in the league (for obvious reasons). I’m not going to go into a lot of detail regarding the current situation, but suffice it to say that it all revolves around money. I will also make a point here that this is certainly not a “who’s right, who’s wrong” type of situation. I can actually understand the issues from both sides.
The players want more money. We always hear about the “top” earners, you know the quarterbacks with the 40 million dollar contracts, the guys that are “holding out” of camp because they want a longer contract with 10 million more guaranteed. But I feel at the heart of the labor issues are the guys making minimum wage or that seem to roam from one team to the next looking for a roster spot. Now, financially I’m still not feeling sorry for these guys, last time I checked the league minimum salary was well over $300,000 a year. But, on the other hand, these are the guys that still have to attend camp, go to every practice, may or may not play special teams and still basically sacrifice their bodies to play the game they love (for a living). These guys don’t get the 10 million dollar signing bonuses and will probably never see a paycheck over a million bucks, BUT their bodies still are making the payments in sweat/blood equity. What happens to these guys long term if they never make the big bucks? What happens if they develop serious physical conditions because of the toll their profession places on their bodies? And yes, unfortunately (this does happen), what happens when these guys “live large” spend all of their money and end up penniless at the end of their careers?
(Just for the record, I don’t entirely feel sorry for this last set of players, yet some of them are only in their 20s and I know I certainly didn’t have the greatest financial planning skills at that age.)
Now, with that said, I would like to see the “particulars” of what these guys are currently negotiating. Is it really going to help the 3rd stringer who retires after ten years in the league with a variety of health problems? Should rookies be signing $40 million dollar contracts when they haven’t played a professional football down yet? Or, the better question…
As the NFL has grown in popularity over the last 20 or 30 years the owners have taken a larger and larger share of the profits. You’ve got to understand that these profits not only come from the teams themselves and the sponsorship arrangements they have in place, but it’s also the “big” share of what the NFL gets from TV, advertising, the super bowl and playoff rights, etc. The owners then are really at fault with two issues in my opinion. One, they’ve been hesitant for the league minimum wage to raise, but at the same time they’ve been signing unproven players to exorbitant contracts for marketing purposes. Two, as the revenue has increased over all of the teams these owners have been more likely to pad their own wallets (ex. the Glazer family in Tampa) instead of giving back to the fans, offering better fan experiences, investing in the team’s infrastructure and facilities and/or offering more to their employees (mainly the players).
So, where am I going with this? Sorry, for those that read this blog you probably as yourselves this quite a bit…
In my opinion, the REAL heart of the matter is a measure of value. How much value does a player or a set of players bring to an organization? I think at the end of each year, much like most major corporations, each team (and probably the league as well) should re-evaluate their performance and the associated compensation to their employees. I don’t just mean the players by the way. Should the GM collect a 5 million dollar bonus if the team stank up the field and maybe only stumbled their way to 2 or 3 wins? Heck no. Should a player get a million dollar bonus if he injures himself doing something bone-headed like celebrating a touch down? Absolutely not. What about the 3rd string guy who comes in off the bench in a dire game situation and helps the team to a victory and a playoff spot? There’s a thing in corporate America called a “spot bonus” and that should probably come into play in that situation.
I also think that if the owners make bone-headed decisions and drive the team in the ground they shouldn’t be allowed to bleed them dry and walk away.
So, in an ideal world the owners, staff and players would come together at the end of the year, perform a “post mortem” on the year and establish splits on who gets what (or nothing if the team lost money). Much like a private partnership, law firm, etc. These do exist in corporate America and they do work. (and they typically contain some pretty large egos I might add).
Now the question of “value” comes into play. How do you establish the value a particular person or set of people brings to the organization? In corporate America this is typically performed in the planning stage at the beginning of a fiscal year. Top companies set goals and then monitor the progression towards these goals as the year goes along. At the end of the year sales people are graded (and compensated) based on their achievement of goals. Boards of directors establish goals for corporate leadership and then compensate and/or make management changes based on these. Companies that participate in heavy-duty quality measurement such as six sigma or balanced scorecard do this all the way down to the individual employee level.
If all of these other large revenue corporation do this, why doesn’t the NFL, NBA, etc do this? Do they think it’s not possible or maybe too difficult?
Well ,this is my point. Up to now there has not been a way to effectively measure the real value of personnel in a professional sports organization. To my knowledge it just hasn’t been done.
I always talk about Real Sports Analytics and I think most of the people who read this blog think of it as a technology and it is to some degree. But the technology doesn’t work without the acceptance of the philosophy and approach that this entails. Real Sports Analytics is a great piece of software, don’t get me wrong it is. It’s based on a technology that was voted one of the 10 best in the information age. BUT, all of this software goes to waste unless there is “buy in” from the company leadership (yes dear reader, these teams really are “companies”) and a commitment to following through on the goals and metrics that are defined.
By the way, one of the key elements of the technology is its flexibility. Are your goals and metrics going to be exactly the same as they were at the end of the year? No way. Like any other major corporation the technology that wraps around this approach must be flexible in order to meet the changing demands of the business.
Now, you might say that an NFL team’s business is to win games and you’d be absolutely correct. But in those terms what amounts to a “changing condition” that might justify some adjustments? Well injury for one. Coaching and/or management changes for another. League restructuring would also necessitate some adjustments.
My point here is that these organizations and all or the labor/money issues that go along with it are exactly running parallel to issues that have faced Fortune 500 companies for decades.
C’mon man, isn’t it time the NFL and NBA “grow up” and embrace management philosophies and technologies that corporate America has been using for almost two decades?
If some of these approaches were adopted I think this labor issue might be a whole heckuva lot clearer and the parties involved could come to the table with cold, hard facts instead of inflated egos. Third party arbitration and an avoidance of work stoppage would also be more possible if this were the case.
