Colts Players Were Very Upset At Roger Goodell Last Month
by Brad Wells on Sep 9, 2010 1:17 PM EDT
in 2010 Colts News
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PrintLast month, you might recall that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell visited Colts training camp. At the time, Goodell was touring various training camps in the Madden Cruiser along with Hall of Fame coach and former TV broadcaster John Madden.
Part of Goodell's trip to Anderson involved a meeting between Colts players and the commish. This was a closed door meeting. When it was done, there was no hint of fireworks despite an uncertain labor situation looming on the horizon in 2011. Players Union representative Jeff Saturday and Goodell gave statements after the meeting, and Goodell jumped back in the Madden cruiser bound for Canton and the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.
However, as Anthony Schoettle of the IBJ reports, the meeting between Goodell and the Colts players was anything but uneventful:
Sources close to the team said when Colts players met last month with Goodell, and demanded to know what owners want concerning the labor negotiations, Goodell stonewalled them, saying he couldn’t answer that.
Goodell might have been expecting a friendly exchange when he swooped into Indianapolis for the last of several training camp visits in August. But several players swore at Goodell angrily. Peyton Manning, sources said, became upset with the treatment toward the commissioner and Colts center Jeff Saturday, an executive member of the players’ negotiating team, abruptly concluded the meeting as emotions—and tempers—flared.
If an agreement doesn’t get done, owners, who are asking players to take a pay cut, are promising to lock out the players.
Arguments like these between players and people like Goodell (who is a representative of the owners) underscore a very deep, bitter divide between both sides. As Schoettle also points out, the owners seem to be fighting amongst themselves as well over revenue sharing, a key component to maintaining competitive balance in the NFL.
Not surprisingly, leading the anti-revenue sharing charge is the Red Skull himself, Jerry Jones.
Any kind of new collective bargaining agreement between the owners and players (if we even see one) will need to include a salary cap and revenue sharing. If not, the NFL will go the way of the MLB and the NBA (aka, become irrelevant).
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I hate it when you do that.
MLB is not irrelevant. Just because Indy doesn’t have a team doesn’t mean you have to act bitter. Now, if you’re in Indiana and you’re a CUBS fan then yes, you have a reason to be bitter, because the Cubs aren’t worth watching. However, for the rest of the country baseball is still a great sport, especially in Missouri, where Cardinals baseball is a religion.
Dallas Clark: Some tight ends catch. Some block. Clark just owns.
Not bitter
When Monday Night Football games between two bad teams absolutely destroy ratings for the World Series, the MLB is irrelevant. When an NFL preseason games gets better ratings than Red Sox v. Yankees (the signature rivalry of the entire sport of baseball), the MLB is irrelevant.
Baseball is dead.
SB Nation's Indianapolis Colts blogger at Stampede Blue and editor of SB Nation Indiana.
Baseball ain't dead, yo.
An 162 game season = / = 16 game season when it comes to ratings, sell outs, and many other factors.
Riddering makes a good point.
We get five months of football games (regular + post-season). That makes for seven months of hand wringing by its fans, equating to a relatively short time frame for all that pent up excitement and attentiveness to be released. Baseball is a 162 game affair that makes for a nice, easy cruise through the spring, summer, and fall.It isn’t surprising that the ratings for football games are higher that those for baseball games.
When you talk about “Monday Night Football games between two bad teams absolutely destroy ratings for the World Series…” Well, a MNF game between, say, Oakland and Cleveland, may indeed draw a better national rating than a World Series between the Yankees and Braves. But I’d wager if you checked the local ratings in New York and Atlanta, MNF would not come out on top that evening. Your comparison, therefore, is overly simplistic.
In other words, stick to football. Leave baseball to us grown folks, ya dig?
What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game.... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability. ~George Bernard Shaw
that's why i don't want to extend the NFL season and make each game less meaningful
among many other reasons.
"To be a great football coach, you have to be smart enough to do it well, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Can't remember whom I am paraphrasing.
Agreed
More games = Less importance per game.
A Texas Wannabe, born and raised in New Zealand. Currently located 7539 miles South west of Houston.
by distant_texans_fan on Sep 9, 2010 5:55 PM EDT up reply actions
Just because football is a more exciting sport to watch on TV,
doesn’t make baseball irrelevant. People who actually go the baseball games will argue with you to the death.
BTW- I personally think baseball is boring, but irrelevant? No.
"You can't defend the perfect throw, what can I say?" Peyton quoting Marino
"As I grow older, the list of people who can kiss my ass grows longer"-Ancient Hoosier Proverb.
How unified do the owners need to be?
That is, what percentage of owners need to vote for a lockout? 50? 66? 80? I’ve never heard this addressed, and it makes me wonder if all the owners will really be in lockstep on this one. For one, I don’t think Jim Irsay is in a huge hurry to give up his Super Bowl over a few tenths of a percent here or there.
what do you expect?
It’s NFL, Inc. He’s an administrator who started with the NFL in ‘public relations’. Hence the ‘fan forum’ and the training camp tour (Tour de Photo Op). Cue: ’I’m here to listen to *you*".
"My goal is to be the person my dog seems to think I am."
"I'm all lost in the supermarket/ I can no longer shop happily/ I came in here for the special offer/ A guaranteed personaility."
Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder
Here is my hunch. These two men are splitting up the owners and are making it hard for Goodell and ownership to work with the players to keep this great league going.
In my mind, the league’s best economic decision as a whole has been revenue sharing . It ALL stems down from this system. Without revenue sharing, and free agency, a team like say…The Packers…..CANNOT sign a guy like say…. Reggie White and make Green Bay a competitor. Guys like Reggie White then add legitimacy to a small market team and then help build legends like Brett Favre, which in turn attracts large audiences for the lucrative TV money.
The Jerry Jones and the Dan Snyder’s of the world want a league where they keep all the money and only their teams compete for Championships. No thanks. I lived in that era. It was called the 80’s….. and the 80’s had some great teams… all three or four of them.
revenue sharing, the cap, & the constraints on free-agency are all essential to the NFL's popularity
"To be a great football coach, you have to be smart enough to do it well, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Can't remember whom I am paraphrasing.
The meeting ends when Peyton says it does.
Dammit.
by Astralis on Sep 9, 2010 2:02 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Rec'd
For being funny AND quoting Peyton, Dammit is one of his favorite words.
"You can't defend the perfect throw, what can I say?" Peyton quoting Marino
"As I grow older, the list of people who can kiss my ass grows longer"-Ancient Hoosier Proverb.
Yes, because a salary cap has kept the Dan Snyder’s and Jerry Jone’s of the world from spending money like drunken sailors in free agency all ready……….. Oh wait.
Big Cat Country, The #1 Jaguars blog on the net
by Jonathan Loesche on Sep 9, 2010 3:22 PM EDT reply actions
lemme see if I have this straight . . .
Since a single football game draws more than a single baseball game, baseball is irrelevant? Ergo it follows that since ESPN dominates the sports info world, Fox Sports is irrelevant. Now, if Fox Sports is irrelevant, just what does that make this blog?? Just trying to understand your logic. Not bashing, because much like you, I would never bash management.
There is a deep divide between players and owners? Next you will be telling us that the Israelis and Palestinians have some minor disagreements.
I think you sold yourself short recently in a response to me when you said you werent a journalist. I find you to be quite a practitioner of the art of yellow journalism. You thrive on turning the mundane into the sensational. You make over the top statements that bend, if not ignore completely the truth. I recognize the difficulty in finding something interesting to write about as frequently as the blog format demands, but sensationalizing the mundane and making yourself the story through outrageous statements is not a recipe to be proud of.
signed, a fan of both irrelevant sports AND irrelevant blogs
Revenue sharing is a joke
And is bad for all sports. It props up perpetually bad teams with money and allows them to continue on being bad. Look, if you want to make it fair, then make it fair…..but don’t force the teams that win to constantly pay for the teams that are inept.
Example: The NY Yankees spend a boat load of money each year on players for their team. They’re consistently ranked in the top 5 teams of baseball each year. However, that has not guaranteed them championships. They’ve been beaten in the World Series twice by teams from small markets with modest budgets. Why? It’s not money….it’s talent!
The Yankees pay something like 30-35% of their payroll in a luxury tax. That money is given to teams who are lesser. Those teams would be teams like the Pirates, Royals, Baltimore, Florida Marlins, Tampa Rays, and so forth. Those teams for the most part have either been piss poorly managed, owned, coached, or a combination of all 3. Some haven’t even had a winning season since the 80’s. The Marlins blew out their payroll signing a bunch of players one year to win their first title and then had a fire sale in the offseason so they wouldn’t have to pay those players…
Why should the Yankees, who have continued to play well, constantly support teams that are pathetic in their own rights?
So let me go back to football with the same argument. Teams like the Raiders, Browns, Lions, Cardinals, Saints (yes, they are in this list) Buccaneers, Falcons, Jaguars, and the Bills are all in the same situation. Piss poor management, coaching, or ownership has doomed these teams to constant and consistent losing. The Lions have made the playoffs twice in like 60 years. The Saints and Cardinals were virtual clones of the Lions for many years until just recently getting turned around. The Cardinals have just proven how stupid they are by trading or letting go players on a team that was 2 min away from winning a SB just 2 seasons ago, and lost in the divisional round last year. The Browns are a joke and have been a joke for so long I can’t even think of a good team they’ve had in my life time.
There’s also another point here that I think get’s overlooked. Each team has it’s own ability to increase it’s revenue through naming rights, special tv deals, etc. Dallas went all out and got themselves a separate licensing deal for their apparel, despite the leagues deal with Reebok. They sold naming rights to the stadium. Meanwhile, the Browns stadium is still called Paul Brown Stadium. That’s between 10-30 million additional dollars of revenue the team has missed out on. Who’s fault is that? The owner. Not the league, not the market, but the team’s owner.
Instead of forcing teams to share their money, you should force owners to spend more time getting their teams in order. Paying better talent, better coaches, better management. Only then, do you begin to balance the playing field. A prime example of that is the Redskins. Despite millions of millions of millions of dollars thrown at players, they have continued to suck badly for over a decade. Most of that is due to poor coaching, poor management, and definitely poor ownership.
Meanwhile, teams like the Packers and the Colts, have constantly done business in smaller markets and done well because of QUALITY management, coaching, and of course owners who care about their team!!!!
Revenue sharing DOES not work. By constantly allowing bad teams to stay around, you do not allow for parity. The bad teams will continually make money fielding average players and raking in unearned money from other teams. Baseball has shown this for the past 10 years. Salary caps impact player signings far more than a revenue sharing will. Since the cap started in the NFL, only 2 teams have repeated as champs. Only 3 teams have even gone back the following year.
Not a solid argument
against Revenue Sharing…..
Yes, there are badly managed small market teams like the Browns, Bills, Raiders but there are also the very well managed small market teams like the Packers, our Colts, the Titans, and you can even make the case for the Panthers, the Saints, and even the Cardinals.
Bottom line is that even though the Broncos in the eighties had great quality management…they were always going to be outspent by their quality equivalent in the NFC that year…..the Redskins, the Bears, the Giants, the 49’ers are all big market teams that outspent anyone and everyone and that was the difference.
The Cowboys (Jerry Jones) took the blueprint and built a winner. I mean…. Deion got paid…and he left a great situation for one just as good (with more cash).
Revenue sharing works in the NFL… this has been proven….and if Jerry and Danny want a winner then they need to get back to what you are harping about… QUALITY management and stop hiring the Dave Campos’s, Jim Zorn’s, and Chan Gailey’s of the world.
revenue-sharing in and of itself isn't the problem.
ideally fans would make the owner that doesn’t compete suffer for it by not attending games, etc.
Part of the problem is the static/profit-driven nature of ownership (if only all teams were publicly owned like the Packers) and the set composition of the 32 teams. I’ve always admired the English soccer system, where the worst performing teams each year get relegated to the lower league (like AAA), and the top AAA teams get promoted to the big league. I wish baseball had the guts to do this. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Lions and the Raiders, instead of tanking in the last weeks of the year, were fighting it out to keep their berth in the NFL and not get relegated to the equivalent of the CFL/USFL/XFL/Arena? I know, dream on….
"To be a great football coach, you have to be smart enough to do it well, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Can't remember whom I am paraphrasing.
Yeah
All European teams do this and I agree with you..it’s fantastic.
The problem is that the NFL doesn’t have the teams to replace them unless they were to merge with the CFL or previously with the USFL or XFL. And, why would they even think about bringing those teams into the fold unless they had a signficant contribution to bring to the table?
The European soccer culture and business model also has teams that are small market teams that are fighting to get to the top flight. We just don’t have the Canton Bulldogs of the world anymore that are supported by the local fanbase. Those teams died off or where bought and moved to much larger markets (Decatur Staleys became the Chicago Bears) whereas every English, Spanish, Italian towns worth their salt have their local Watford’s, Recreativo de Huelva’s, and Palermo’s fighting and clawing to get to the top division. That culture never died.
it is a beautiful thing. I've looked at the charts showing how the soccer leagues are nested
there’s like 5 levels (or more) all connected, all fluid, and every hamlet has their “side.”
Yeah, the brutal nature of american football does dissuade such hierarchy, and it would really monkey with the draft (like, would the promoted teams get picks 1 and 2 in each round?). No reason they couldn’t do it for baseball, though. There are Louisvilles and Columbuses ready to go.
"To be a great football coach, you have to be smart enough to do it well, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Can't remember whom I am paraphrasing.
Yup
for Baseball it would be easier, but still very hard. The biggest opposing force would be that the MLB would lose their farm systems and the MLB would fight this structure…..but how cool would it be if the Indianapolis Indians, The Louisville Bats, or if the Iowa Cubs could make the bigs?
is there a draft in english soccer? just wondering. or is it strictly freeagents?
you know, if the Indianapolis Indians could make it to the big leagues, i just might become a baseball fan. Maybe. Perhaps. If they allowed tackling too — definitely!
"To be a great football coach, you have to be smart enough to do it well, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Can't remember whom I am paraphrasing.
No
No drafts exist in any soccer league except for the Mexican league (which is an outright abuse of the players, but that is another story).
All European teams build their teams in two ways… free agency (which is very expensive), and by building their team via their own talent. But their own talent is not acquired via a draft…instead scouts will sign players in their teenage years and pay for the kid’s school, training, room and board, clothing etc. etc. In turn, the family pledges the kid’s future for 10 years or so. They also give up what is known as “forming rights.” These forming rights are what make free agency so expensive.
Say you’re a talented Brazilian playing for Botafogo and many European teams have an eye out for you. The European clubs will bid for the kid’s services with his club and the player WILL have say of where he wants to go. Say that Real Madrid wins his services, Real will have to negotiate a contract with the kid but also have to pay Botafogo millions of Euro’s or Dollars for having “formed” him.
Let me know if that makes sense.
Anyways, the big clubs, the Manchester United’s, the Inter de Milan’s, and the Real Madrid’s will go out and get free agents because they have the dough… The Bourdeaux’s, Sheffield Wednesday’s, and Hercules’s of the world…..not so much, but they do look for “cheaper” talent.
that does make sense, at least as much as the NFL does
I could see a conflict (among many others) when, in your example, Botafogo has unrealistic buyout expectations and then the kid can’t progress in his career on to Real Madrid. In other ways it seems like that’s what american hoops would be like if there were no college athletics and the AAU-type organizations fed kids directly into the pros.
Do you have an opinion as to whether one system or the other insulates kids better from unscrupulous adults who would seek to profit off their talent? It bums me out when kids get screwed up priorities and see sports as a reliable way to make your dreams come true.
"To be a great football coach, you have to be smart enough to do it well, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Can't remember whom I am paraphrasing.
My opinion
This has been a great discussion.
My opinion is this. I think the European soccer system probably insulates kids better. Here is why: A Botafogo can set an extraordinary “forming rights” price but sooner or later, money will talk and if you’re good enough you will play in Europe. The money wil be too good to pass up if you’re Botafogo, Palmeiras etc. etc. Another thing is this, while the kid is playing in the Brazilian league, you have to remember he is playing for his club but he is also playing to get noticed. Here is the important part: He’s also getting paid a decent sum of money by his Brazilian, Argentininan (whichever South American nationality you can thinkg of) club if he is 16, 17, or 18. If the kid is that good and he’s playing at the top club at those ages, then he’s not just getting his school paid for and getting room and board, he is getting paid a real good amount of dough (think 100K to 300K per year)… enough money that would make a poor family feel really rich. Finally, here’s another thing, agents do exist in the business of soccer, but they are not as important as they are here in the US. In the US, you HAVE to have an agent….and a publicist…and an entourage, let’s not forget those (God Bless you Joey Votto!) and these guys cost money. The Agents in the business of soccer don’t get paid as much as agents involved in US sports. When you have time, Google a brazilian kid named Neymar. He is the hottest name in Brazilian soccer right now. He plays for Pele’s old club, Santos. He is going through this very process now and he actually turned down European teams because he felt that he was not ready for Europe. Like I said, these kids have some pull…..whereas in the US, especially for Football, you have to go to College. By the way, Pele encouraged Neymar to stay one year longer………and by the way, Pele also never played in Europe.. Santos refused to sell him….their rationale was that they would be losing a National Treasure. As I mentioned earlier, it’s not like that anymore….South American teams need the money.
thanks again for the reply...
I didn’t realize that about Pele. Good for Brazil!
I’ve always been intrigued about the club-sports model vs. the scholastic-sports model, and I wish we were more like the Europeans in that respect. I’ll try to not get too political because I don’t want to rile anybody, but I doubt anyone’s “listening” to us on this thread anymore. I work in education and I’ve settled into the conclusion that school sports are at least distorting, if not subversive, to schools’ primary purpose of education. And I’m a huge hypocrite on this, because I did run track and cross country in HS and college (D3) (ok, ok, I quit after a year in college— it just wasn’t the same fun atmosphere), and I’m obviously a huge fan of pro-football, the epitome of the sports institution. I’ll just argue that sports in schools creates or at least reinforces the social dynamics that result in the nerd-jock divide. It’s an odd teaching environment: there are pep rallies, cheerleaders making banners and decorating athletes’ lockers, and announcements that hail the sports teams; meanwhile, students are sheepish about classroom success and are more likely to under-report to classmates how well they did (of course to parents, we exaggerate!) . I often wondered when teachers gave tests back upside down if they were protecting the identities of the students that did failed it or aced it!
I was thinking for a second there you were going to go off on the idea of US college athletes getting paid. Whaddaya think? Bet you can guess my opinion. But I don’t begrudge our hypothetical Botafogo teen his dough though. Different societies, different opportunities for the mass of the population. I was lucky/foolish enough to play soccer in my host village in Zambia. Fortunately, my team was not the skins. I don’t think anybody wanted to see that gruesome spectacle. So I wore my Colts shirt in my profile pic. I could generally keep up speed-wise, but didn’t have the skills of an 8 year old. I made a couple decent crosses into the box but no one converted, and I missed spectacularly on a couple header attempts to great comedic effect.
"To be a great football coach, you have to be smart enough to do it well, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Can't remember whom I am paraphrasing.
just found this, thought it a propos
College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.
- Elbert Hubbard
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important. -- Eugene J. McCarthy
by zherebyonki on Sep 16, 2010 12:13 AM EDT up reply actions
Careful.
If someone else mentions the X league they will come back into existence!
Need parity in opportunity for success, not necessarily results.
I gave up on baseball not so much because the results were skewed by money, but because the system just didn’t seem fair. Growing up my favorite team in any sport was the Twins. Finally gave up on baseball mostly because I got sick of the Twins constantly losing their best players to the Yankees as soon as they were eligible for free agency. Even though the team did manage to win a couple World Series by developing a bunch of young stars together, the system ensured that they had to be almost perfect to be competitive. If the Twins were weak at a position, they had to develop a prospect or trade good value to another team. The big market teams just signed a free agent or traded a prospect to a small market team looking to unload a contract. You’d watch a player come up from the minors, develop for a few years, become a star for a year or two . . . and then he’d leave as a free agent or get traded for a minor league prospect. Very frustrating.
In the NFL we lose guys for money reasons because those guys aren’t as high a priority for us as they are for someone else. And they’re as likely to sign with Tennessee or Denver as with New York or Chicago. Some teams still end up dominating, but that’s because they are better run, not just because they’re in bigger TV markets. Even when a big market team like the Patriots or Giants wins the Super Bowl, they do it through the draft or by signing free agents other teams passed on. Not by signing a bunch of superstars away from small market teams that couldn’t afford to pay them as much.
Of course, there was another big reason why I left baseball – they went on strike and I found I could live just fine without checking the box scores every day. I’ve watched maybe a total of a game or two since then. Hope my love for the NFL isn’t similarly tested.
by ex-Viking fan on Sep 10, 2010 12:17 AM EDT up reply actions
your header about parity says it all
I’m glad the NFL got the structure (if not all the content) right. Furthermore I’m so glad the Colts are a team that does earnestly develop its own talent so much (unlike the Redskins, at the other end of the spectrum). I enjoy watching player develop, and it would be heartbreaking to see them get poached once they became contributors.
"To be a great football coach, you have to be smart enough to do it well, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Can't remember whom I am paraphrasing.
Now I understand
Goodell meets with the Colts, gets his ass chewed pretty good, and soon thereafter, the refs start placing the ball much slower. Then, the League says to the Colts, sorry, we’re omnipotent and we’re not going to change this (obviously bad) rule or its asinine enforcment.
Just sayin’.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.
LOL!
I don’t buy into unsupported conspiracy theories, and I don’t believe this one… but just ‘cause I’m pissed, I think I might spread this rumor anyway. 
------
"How can a pickup truck contain enough mass to unfold into a towering machine? I say if Ringling Brothers can get 15 clowns into a Volkswagen, anything is possible."
way off topic
but was just wondering if anyone knew what was going on with lacey? and if he is going to play on sunday? head injury? and not participating in practice listed on colts website
COLTS FOOTBALL
He suffered a concussion
in the Colts/Packers game. Probably won’t know his status until closer to game time
Our heads may be bloody, but they are unbowed. We will be back next year better than ever!
Indianapolis Colts News and Updates
Revenue sharing/ a couple stupid questions
Revenue sharing doesn’t seem like something even all of the owners could ever agree on, so why is it an issue in negotiations with the players’ union? Do the Jerry Joneses and the Dan Snyders on their side TOTALLY set the agenda?
BTW the pulled quote at the centerpiece of this post is awful. It is totally unclear who’s mad at whom and why. It’s almost not worth passing on. The analysis didn’t help to clear it up either.
"We ARE going to our own private island, Chris: it's called the State Fucking Fair!"
I agree, very unclear.
Also I’m always suspicious of reporting or blogging that start with “sources say”.
"You can't defend the perfect throw, what can I say?" Peyton quoting Marino
"As I grow older, the list of people who can kiss my ass grows longer"-Ancient Hoosier Proverb.
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