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Collective Bargaining Agreement


ArmyBengal

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http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/stor...john&id=2332991

One thing that I wasn't aware of is the 2008 draft would go away completely. I am curious what that would mean to the college players who are suppose to come out that year ?? Would we see a flood of college players declaring for the draft the year before ?? If so, 2007 would be a crazy draft year... Anyway, thought I'd post the web link from ESPN...

Oh yeah, sounds like a complete nightmare !!!

WHODEY !!!

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Thanks for that info.....I was curious about if we would see a "Yankees" of the NFL and apparently we will not. I know it would be bad to see this but I think at the same time it would be a sight. Even though their is no way Mike Brown would put the money down to keep us competitive.

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The first thing that strikes me -- and I've been mulling this over for a while now as I read up on the whole CBA thing -- is that not having an extension might actually be an advantage for the Bengals in FA this year. Many of the financial tricks of the trade that teams routinely use to outmaneuver the Bengals in FA negotiations won't be available. At least for this year, the other 31 teams will be forced to play by something close to "Mike Brown rules."

OTOH, I expect that if there's no new deal, we will see a lot of 1-year FA deals (probably with "no tag" clauses) this year, and that's another thing the Bengals have never been keen on.

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Losing the salary cap would be terrible for the Bengals in the long term. We just don't bring in the revenue that bigger city teams do. With our owner being Mike Brown, he will not be willing to spend a higher pecentage of his own money to compete with big market teams.

It won't be as bad as the Reds... but we can kiss our hopes of a dynasty goodbye if revenue sharing ends. We'll still get better through the draft... except this way we won't be able to keep our veterans, and will have to fill the holes with mediocre free agents.

The idea of no salary cap, or no revenue sharing looms in the back of my mind, and I am fearful that the results could send us back into another decade of frustration.

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Losing the salary cap would be terrible for the Bengals in the long term. We just don't bring in the revenue that bigger city teams do. With our owner being Mike Brown, he will not be willing to spend a higher pecentage of his own money to compete with big market teams.

Ehhh...maybe, maybe not. Football isn't baseball, or even the NBA. For starters, consider that there are no shortage of NFL teams who have tried, and failed to "buy a championship." Art Davis, Dan Snyder, and Jerry Jones come to mind as three guys who have spent obscene amounts of cash with very little result in recent years. And let's face it, for any team that has the cash on hand (for signing bonuses) and is willing to put up with an endless series of restructurings and bonuses, the salary cap is already little more than an annoyance; at most you spend a year or two in "cap jail."

I don't think losing the cap would change that dynamic. Partly because, unlike other sports, the NFL is smaller (and having no cap is only likely to shrink it further) and because it plays dramatically fewer games. Paying big $$$ for talent is most effective when you have a big pool of players and a long season; that allows you to skim off the cream, and means you have the longest opportunity for that talent to play out. But in the NFL talent levels are already much closer, and with so few games, millions in signing bonuses can be negated by a handful of bad calls, a key injury, or just some bad luck.

The biggest problem would be, of course, holding on to your own superstars after any initial contracts are up. And for the Bengals, you're right, whether Mikey would be willing to even stay in such a game is a question mark. I would expect major changes among the smaller-market teams. For example, in an uncapped free-for-all league, I could see us all rooting for the Cincinnati-Indianapolis Zebras (stripes + horses, what do you expect?) in a few years!

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I think my biggest concern overall would be, dare I say it, an

NFL STRIKE...

I don't know what the hell I would do with no football games on to watch besides college.

WHODEY !!!

I don't know if you remember the last NFL strike (I believe Boomer was the Bengal's player rep) but the owners brought in "replacement players". The TV ratings were pretty good and so the players' union caved....

That's why the NFL has a hard salary cap and other sports don't. Average fans root more for the "uniform" and less for individual players in football than other sports.

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I think my biggest concern overall would be, dare I say it, an

NFL STRIKE...

I don't know what the hell I would do with no football games on to watch besides college.

WHODEY !!!

I don't know if you remember the last NFL strike (I believe Boomer was the Bengal's player rep) but the owners brought in "replacement players". The TV ratings were pretty good and so the players' union caved....

That's why the NFL has a hard salary cap and other sports don't. Average fans root more for the "uniform" and less for individual players in football than other sports.

Oh yeah, I remember the last strike and if you want to call those games, then by all means. I prefer to call it garbage. Yes, I root for the uniform, but the game has progressed since then and I find myself looking VERY forward to watching a particular player week in and week out (see Chad Johnson)... I'm just saying this whole thing sucks and see very little (if any at all) upside.

WHODEY !!!

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