Pete Kendall, the permanent player rep for the NFLPA, said Friday that NFL owners last week, on the last day of their mediation talks with players, took off the table the players’ ability to share in the growth of future revenue by making the NFL salary cap a fixed cost. Kendall made his comments at the NFLPA’s annual meetings in Marco Island, Fla. The NFL and NFLPA had been talking about a pegged cap, but it would include a “true-up,” a mechanism that would have allowed players to share in the future growth of the league. The “true-up” would have allowed the NFL to increase the salary cap to reflect actual revenues, if they came in above projected revenues in the following year.
Kendall said the owners took the “true-up” off the table on Friday, March 11, the final day of the talks. “That was a game changer,” Kendall said. Kendall said the owners also, on the last day of the talks, changed the deal term from seven years to 10 years. “A 10-year fair deal might be something worth considering, “ Kendall said. “A 10-year deal where players don’t participate in any of the upside is .… not a deal that I think is ... something that the players should have taken.”
NFL Senior VP/PR Greg Aiello said via e-mail in response to Kendall’s comments, “The facts are that our proposal was for a fixed sum for both sides for four years. ... The ‘true up’ concept was designed to occur after the league received credit for a range of expenses. But we were not asking for those credits from 2011-14 in the proposal. Also, we made it clear that there would be a ‘true up’ beginning in 2015 to reflect revenue growth generated from new stadiums, new television contracts, a possible shift to an 18-game season, and other potential opportunities. What the union is saying now is that the cap didn’t go up by enough.”
