Roger Goodell Drops Cryptic Clue: Could the Next CBA Revolutionize the NFL’s Financial Future?

Alright, here’s the deal: the NFL is starting to quietly lay the groundwork for what’s shaping up to be a pretty tense renegotiation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Commissioner Goodell just wrapped up this week’s ownership powwow and dropped some not-so-subtle hints that the owners are eyeballing major changes—specifically, they’re fixated on the salary cap formula and the skyrocketing costs of running franchises, from stadium upkeep to operational expenses. No, the much-talked-about “18-game season” didn’t even come up yet; this is more about dollars and cents behind the scenes.

If you’re sensing a shift in power dynamics, you’re on to something. The owners have long realized players tend to blink first when the chips are down—they hate missing checks more than a bad scalper misses a ticket sale. With the salary cap pushing near $280 million a team, some owners are probably thinking, “Maybe it’s time we keep a bigger slice of this ever-expanding NFL pie.” And hey, with league revenues breaking records year after year, squeezing more cash toward the franchise coffers instead of player pockets isn’t just wishful thinking—it’s a likely strategy.

The upshot? The NFLPA is officially in the hot seat. The owners seem prepared to play a hard game, possibly swapping the open-ended percentage-based payouts for fixed salaries that look clean on paper but might mean less actual cash for players. So, come the CBA expiration, will the players stand firm, or are the owners gearing up for another win–like they did back in 2011? Stay tuned—this showdown is just getting started!

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Again.At the end of the day (and at the expiration of the CBA), what will the players do about it? The owners could be ready to make an all-in bet that they’ll blink.Here’s the basic reality. The owners learned in 2011 that, when push comes to shove, the players will do a deal. They’ll huff and they’ll puff but they won’t miss game checks. It creates an imbalance in bargaining power that the owners — who would shut a season down in a heartbeat without blinking — have yet to fully leverage. Reading between the lines, Goodell seems to be saying that the owners are considering whether the current split of revenue between players and owners possibly isn’t working. Really, why have a “very lengthy discussion” if things are going swimmingly?“The second is just the rising cost, the cost of stadiums, the cost to facilities, the cost of operation, the cost of investment, and how dramatically that’s impacting the ownership view,” Goodell said. “So, I think both of those will form what I would call our priorities. Going into any negotiation whenever that occurs. So that was the extent of our discussion today. [the] 18-and-two [season format] did not even come up.”

If nothing else, the NFLPA is on notice. The owners could end up plotting a hard bargain that will convert unlimited payments based on percentages to fixed numbers that will look great on paper — but that will keep more total cash in the owners’ coffers.Go back and read those last three sentences again.And a new deal can be done, in theory, at any time.During Commissioner Roger Goodell’s press conference to cap this week’s ownership meetings, he was asked about potential discussions on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. With the NFL intent on expanding to 18 regular-season games (the current CBA allows 17) and 16 annual international games (the current CBA allows 10), a new deal with the NFL Players Association becomes a must.This is how it starts. With fewer than five years to go before the current CBA expires, the league is signaling its eventual objectives.“There are no formal plans on any discussions,” Goodell told reporters. “We obviously continue to be in close communication with the union on a variety of matters, but no start of negotiations have been set or are under consideration really at this point. We did spend time today talking, at length, about areas of our Collective Bargaining Agreement that we want to focus on. The two areas that we spent time on were really the cap system itself, the integrity of that system, how’s it working, where do we need to address that in the context of collective bargaining, when that does happen. That was a very lengthy discussion.”With the salary cap not at 9.2 million per team, some owners surely think that too much is being spent on players. That, as the NFL continues to make more and more and more money, the players no longer need half.It’s one thing for the NFL to make record revenues. It’s another thing to turn those revenues into maximum profits. And it’s safe to say that more than a few owners could be thinking that the ongoing explosion in cash (as mentioned earlier today, the cap has increased more than 230 percent since 2011) may be getting to the point at which the franchises should be retaining more than half of the money.Superyachts ain’t free.