The 2011 NBA regular season is in serious jeopardy of not starting on time as the lockout continues late into September. The 2011 season is scheduled to tip-off on November 1, as last season’s champions, the Dallas Mavericks, are set to host the Chicago Bulls. As the days march on, that start date looks less and less likely to be accurate.

With players and owners still in disagreement over the new collective bargaining agreement, training camps and the first week of preseason games, from October 9-15, were both cancelled Friday afternoon. Players were scheduled to report to training camp on October 3.

“We have regretfully reached the point on the calendar where we are not able to open training camps on time, and need to cancel the first week of preseason games,” Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “We will make further decisions as warranted.” This is unfavorable news for NBA fans, as the Summer League was already cancelled.

The Summer League serves as a venue for coaches to evaluate the talent level of rookies and young bench players. While the Summer League is not integral to having an NBA season, the combined cancellations do not provide hope for a prompt start. The only time the NBA season did not start on time due to a work stoppage was during the 1998-99 season, where the regular season was cut to 50 games.

The main issue of the 1998 lockout was that owners wanted to cut player salaries and set a salary cap because player salaries were significantly taking away from earnings. During negotiations in 1998, the problem wasn’t directly dealt with. While players’ salaries were capped between $9 million and $14 million, each party agreed to institute a soft cap.

This allowed teams to exceed the cap and pay players as much as they wanted if the teams paid a luxury tax to the NBA on the player’s salary. That decision to allow an exception is becoming a big problem 12 years later, and owners want to decrease salaries and set a hard cap.

The hard cap would prevent teams like the Los Angeles Lakers from having a $91 million payroll, when the salary cap is $57.7 million. The Lakers dish out $17 million more than the Orlando Magic, the team with the second largest payroll. Unlike smaller teams, the Lakers have a huge fan base to draw from, and can generate the revenue needed to pay the luxury tax.

There is a big push for the hard cap from smaller market teams like the Golden State Warriors, who are finding it hard to compete because they can’t pay high level talent what teams like the Lakers can pay. However, installing a hard cap would decrease every player’s salary, an issue the players are not willing to concede to at this moment.

The belief of the players is that they only earn a small piece of the money pie, and the owners want them to have an even smaller piece. It isn’t shocking to see that money is the main component for the cause of the lockout. However, owners and players need to come to an agreement soon before they lose something they both couldn’t exist without: a fan base.

 
Domenic Gareri / Shutterstock.com

The article 2011 NBA Season on the Brink appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The NFL is presently facing one of its worst labor disputes in league history. Countless meetings have been had between the Players Association and the owners in attempts to negotiate the terms of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The new agreement would in effect end the current lockout of the leagues players, a time fans have been dreaming about for over three months now. Though rumor has it that talks are “heating up,” as of late, a term the media has used all too often to describe the tiniest bit of progress, fans must begin to think about what their lives would be like should the NFL have a shortened season, or worse…no season at all.

Option A: The Shane Falco Effect

For those of you who do not understand the reference, immediately stop reading, google Shane Falco, and watch the corresponding movie. Seriously, stop.

Still here? Great.

Roger Goodell has stated that the league has no plans of using replacement players whatsoever as a bridge between the lockout and the supposed regular season. There really is no reason not to believe him, except for the the fact that he has also stated that he fully expects there to be a full NFL season and seems cool as a cucumber in every one of his interviews. Clearly he is hiding something.

A commissioner, with the media the way it is today, could never realistically reveal to the leagues loyal fans that he is contemplating replacing its all-world athletes with some broken down ex-college players who could never quite make it in the league. Granted, for those guys who just missed getting drafted, or wouldn’t be looked at ever again because of some horrific career ending injury, this could be a second chance and a dream come true.

In fact, in 1987 the league used replacements went the players went on strike early in the year. Sure, most stadiums were empty compared to what they normally had been. Fans didn’t know the names and numbers of every player, stat-lovers (the fantasy players of today) were finding day-jobs, and the players barely knew the routes they were running. The funny thing about all of that was, many fans still tuned in.

Eventually the players crossed and all went back to normal, but it was sure an interesting time that taught us something. Some football on Sundays is better than none, and the fans stayed loyal to their teams. Ratings took a hit, but they were still there, and I would have to assume that it would be the same way today. In fact, I’m sure some of these replacements would become internet celebrities after their time in the sun was over. Maybe some of them would even parlay their time into a real contract. Who knows?

If it came down to replacements, at least there would still be something. Besides all the journalists out there would have a field day.

Option B: The UFL

Okay, so most of you don’t know that Andre Dixon (Connecticut) is a running back for the Hartford Colonials in a professional football league, big deal! As we just said, football is football right?

Well, sort of. Realistically if Goodell keeps to his word that replacement players won’t be used, the UFL might be the next best thing. The newly founded league would finally get the break it has been praying for since the beginning.

There are certainly some big names there. Many former prominent NFL players and coaches that have fell off of NFL teams but still wanted to play competitively are currently filling the UFL’s rosters. Who doesn’t want to watch Daunte Culpepper throw the old pigskin around one more time?

At the very least, there surely would be a lot of “I remember that guy” moments to be had.

It might not be quite the talent level that the NFL has, but what is? It’s the same game, it has big venues, and its professional (nothing against college football, but it should be treated as a completely different entity and left out of this discussion altogether).

Surely a big-time television network would snatch up these rights and pray that fans are more desperate for football than we may have thought. Maybe the UFL really is entertaining if we would just give it a try, maybe.

For now their best bet is to send a spy into these NFL player/owner meetings to try to be an instigator. It’s really the only shot they have.

Option C: Watch old game tapes in your basement and cry because this really could have been your teams year.

Sadly, the most realistic of the options. A year without football is like cookie dough ice cream with no chocolate chips: we don’t exactly know why it has to be there, but life would just be too weird without it.

Traditional Sundays would be destroyed. These new days would be full of productivity and/or bad movies on television that we’ve already seen. That’s just not what Sundays were made for.

The bottom line is. A deal absolutely needs to get done, and a shortened season would be better than no season at all. If there is no NFL in 2011 everyone is in trouble, because I don’t know about everybody else, but I left Daunte Culpepper in 2004, right next to my Linkin Park CDs.

The article What Should Fans Do If There Really Is No 2011 NFL Season? appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

What a mess!  This sums up nicely the almost two months since the most-watched Super Bowl as well as the most-watched program of any kind in American television history was held. This past Super Bowl being played in the new Dallas Cowboys stadium between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the previous record of 106.5 million viewers which was the record for last year’s Super Bowl.

While the NFL Lockout just began on March 11, this Lockout has been in the making for over two years, going back to 2008 when the NFL opted out of renewing the now recently expired collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association.  Owners claimed the reason for not renewing their agreement was because costs were too high and the owners would need givebacks of some monetary amount from their players in order to make it worth there wild and to keep operating under what is now the former Collective Bargaining Agreement. Besides this small story in the news, we haven’t really seen the impact over the years until now.

A lot of major events have happened since the Super Bowl which have shaped the heated and messy landscape that the owners, players, and fans have been exposed too and endured this New Year. A time line of events hopefully will help to clarify the current state of the NFL as we see it today.

Before the Super Bowl on January 18, the NFL Players Association, here after called the Union, filed a collusion claim against owners regarding lack of movement of restricted free agents.  On February 6, the day before the Super Bowl, both sides met for a brief negotiations session where nothing was accomplished.  Then, Happy Valentine’s Day to you too sweetheart, the NFL filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board on February 14th for not bargaining in good faith because the Union had plans of decertifying for a long time now.  Soon after on February 18^th, renowned federal mediator George Cohen began working with the two sides in Washington to see if some type of agreement or extension could be reached.

Cohen actually fared better than most experts thought, given an almost impossible task; he was able to keep the two sides at the negotiations table for over two weeks. An impressive feat for how far apart the sides were at the start and considering how much they distrusted each other.  Then on March 1^st, U.S. District Judge David Doty, who was a major player in the Labor disputes between the NFL and NFLPA before in 1993, ruled against the NFL, claiming they violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement when they sought for a 4 billion dollar TV revenue profit guarantee even if no games were played in the 2011 season due to a lockout.

This was considered “Lockout Insurance” to Doty who implied in his judicial opinion that if there was indeed a lockout and the players brought an Anti-Trust suit claim against the owners, that he would rule in the favor of the NFLPA once again.  This ruling was seen as a huge victory to the players and blow to the negotiation strategy of the owners.  Then, potentially because of this ruling, the two parties on March 3^rd, just before the official Collective Bargaining Agreement would expire, decided to extend the deadline one more day to continue talks.

The following day, the two sides then agreed on March 4^th to extend the deadline for an entire week, in order to continue negotiations.  Sadly, to football fans across America, the following Friday, after rejecting the owner’s proposal, the NFLPA decertified giving up its right to represent the players.  Later that night, at approximately midnight, the NFL led by Commissioner Roger Goodell imposed a lockout of the players once the Collective Bargaining Agreement expired.

Now having proceeded to what can be described as an ugly divorce, headed by Demaurice Smith as the Union leader and Commissioner Roger Goodell for the NFL and its owners, 10 players filed an antitrust lawsuit and injunctive request in the federal court in St. Paul, Minnesota on March 11th.  This is the same court that Judge David Doty resides.

To try to clarify, an antitrust case is a legal action brought against a party or parties who are being charged with limiting free competition in the marketplace.  The players are essentially claiming that the league and its owners by locking out the players from all football activities have limited the players’ ability to market their services to any employer of their choice, which includes price fixing of the amounts that would be paid to the players.

In this proceeding, the alleged anti-competitive actions that have generally taken place include a lockout to prevent free-agency and by boycotting rookie players through efforts to force their salaries to be lower then what they actually would be in a free market.  This claim is seen through the proposal to implement a rookie wage scale and cap to how much rookies can make.  The suit, which seeks to end the lockout against the players, names Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Drew Brees as its lead plaintiffs along with other current NFL players

In addition to current players, the league in its effort to show uniformity included one of the incoming top rookie prospects, Von Miller of Texas A&M.  Then, surprising to the union, it is U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson and not Judge Doty who has scheduled a hearing for April 6^th.  Additionally, while some people have expressed curiosity as to why such a high profile case, would take almost a month to have a hearing, this month turnaround is actually fairly quick for cases in the legal world.

While this waiting period has been going on, a lot of interesting events have still taken place, either feeding football fans appetite for news on their beloved sport, or just angering them.  With the lockout taking place, all football operations and activities are suspended.  Essentially current NFL players are “locked out” of the facilities and are unable to communicate with coaches and other personnel.  So even though there is not scheduled to be any OTAs, minicamps, or even film study sessions at team facilities at this time with the players, one event is guaranteed to happen, the 2011 NFL Draft held in New York City.

The article 2011 NFL Lockout, The Next Box Office Hit appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.