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- The Future Of Television - |
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Full of Kraft.
By TOMMarch 10th, 11th, and 12th, 2009 |
Okay, I am now going to make myself the most hated man in Patriots Nation;-) Okay, first of all I never claimed Bob was cheap. I feel I’ve been lumped in with Randy Moss. I also didn’t criticize Bob, or at least it wasn’t my intention. I just told a story of my experiences at PP, and my concerns. I feel people have taken my 5 part exposé (I like that word, exposé;-) as criticism of poor Bobby. I honestly don’t think I criticized him at all, and I don’t really think it was an exposé. I don’t think I really exposed anything. In fact, I did just the opposite. I was asking questions about PP, and I don’t think I answered any of them. The only things I exposed was retail businesses are having a tough time in a Recession. It that was a surprise to you than I would like to tell you a little story called pure socialism in the NFL.
Well, if I am going to take the heat, let the criticisms begin;-) In case you hadn’t noticed there is a war going on between Owners and Labor in this country. The NFL has joined the fun. I like to talk about football, and most importantly the NFL Draft. I get excited over the personal moves franchise makes, and I tend to look at football form a GM’s perspective. I don’t want to write about the business of football. I don’t want anyone to think I’m attacking poor Bobby Kraft, because he saved the New England Patriots, my favorite team. However, I keep getting madder and madder at the propaganda currently being perpetrated against the working men and women in this country. “I’m not going to do politics, I’m not going to do politics. I’m not going to do politics!”
And now back to our regularly scheduled program. I
listen to Bobby
Kraft on WEEI this week, and I must say I was shocked. “The facts are
we made a bad deal in ’06.” No you didn’t. That is a complete,
absolute, and utter lie. Everybody in the NFL is prospering beyond what
“we the people” have prospered in the past four years, and that
certainly includes the Owners, who are making HUGE
profits every year (Over 31 million on average not counting all the
intertwined companies used to hide profits from the Player’s
The Owners are not paying a bigger percentage to the players, the pie just keeps growing. The owners have profited on average 31 million dollars a year, and that is not
While “we the people” have not prospered at all. The average salary for Labor has stagnated since ’06, and is actually going down. Now I don’t want to make this a referendum on the ridiculous salaries professional player make, because I don’t believe they are overpaid. They are in the entertainment business, and deserve every cent they get, and that includes the Owners. What I am saying is that I’ve learned a few truths in life about bullshit. First, when politicians start talking about “family values”, run screaming, because they have none. The more a talk-show host tells you how they are “telling the truth”, the more they are lying. And most important of all, when billionaires businessmen are crying poverty, never believe a single word that comes out of their mouth about business, negotiations, and lawyers, because they only want more.
“About
2/3 of the NFL money come from the TV deal[s]. The players get about 2/3
of team revenue.” The Salary Cap is based on sharing all the revenues the NFL makes, so the player receive about 60% of
all revenues? This is not true! Blatantly untrue! The players essentially
receive 60% (it changes) to the TV money and the ticket sales. They do not
receive part of the 30$ parking fees, the “12 dollar hot dogs”, the 10
dollar Dixie cups of watered down beer, and of course the Luxury Boxes. The
Players receive approximately, “59
percent of what’s called total football revenue.” I have read other
reports it’s about 60 of the total revenues, but since the Owners
blatantly refuse to open their books, we really don’t know what percentage
of total revenues the
The Owners want to “Partner” with the Players Union
by cutting their share of the revenue 18% or from 59% to “41
percent” of total football revenue. I have read multiple reports that
the owners want to use this salary cut across the board and use it as a
kitty to build infrastructure in the NFL. I have read from other sources
they want to cut the players share by 15%, and use it to build stadiums,
because they are “Partners” with the Player’s
Of course they aren’t “Partners” and they never will be “Partners”. The Player Union can never agree to the kitty clause, and that’s why there will be a lockout. Okay, get this sport’s fans, the Owners want the players to subsidize their new stadiums? But they sure as hell don’t want them to be partners in their business, or part Owners. Can you imagine if the Player Union said okay, but we want 18% ownership of any stadium built with our money? The owners would laugh in their face and call them idiots, because they only want more.
Then there was Petey
King on WEEI (20:20), who is known to be a mouthpiece of Ownership. He
said, in no uncertain terms, that the Player’s Union’s thinking was out
of whack, and that they had to come back to reality, “The players who I
have talked to, and De Smith, believe that is it is preposterous to take
financial responsibility for the building of stadiums.” Of course it’s
preposterous! They are the employees and not the owners? “That the Owners
have taken on… You know since the mid-90’s, I think 21 teams have new
stadiums…. The players say in no sport in the history of sports [I say in
no business in the history of the world], have players [employees] been
responsible for any of the infrastructure of the game itself, and we’re
not going to start here now. It’s a horrible precedent to set. And the
Owners say, the world has changed. We do not have the support of local
governments, who once paid 75% of all the costs for stadiums, and now their
paying less than half in almost every new stadium that’s built [So
subsidizing half of billionaires’ building billion dollar toy stadiums
isn’t support? I don’t understand?]. So, they’re saying we need help,
and you guys are benefiting from us growing the game, and these tremendous
luxury boxes [which create multi-millions in profits each year for Owners,
and the Player’s
Yo Petey, can you imagine your Owner coming up to you and saying, “Hey, Petey, have I got a deal for you. We are going to make you a “Partner” in Sports Illustrated. We are going to make everybody in our company partners with us Owners. We are going to cut every bodies salary by 25%, and use most of that money to build a parking garage. Nice huh? Now you will benefit from it because you can park in it. Now, we want you to finance the whole thing, but we don’t want to pay any interest. In fact, LOL, we won’t even pay it back, but now we are “Partners”. I mean, you don’t own any part of Sports Illustrated or a percentage of anything. That would be ridiculous, LOL. I mean, we are the owners and you are the Employees…I mean, “Partners”. Now, when the garage is finished you won’t get your pay cuts back, or a percentage of ownership of the Garage, and certainly not a percentage of ownership of the company, and well, when we’re done with you, we’ll fire your ass and you’ll still get nothing. So how about it retards, I mean “Partners?”
You have to be kidding me! Where did the NFL Owners get their playbook from, Goldman Sacks? No it had to be JP Morgan. I can just see it now, JP in the White House. “Now listen, you are going to give us billions of dollars, but we refuse to pay any interest, we will give you ZERO percent of the company, you will own no stock or bonds in the company, and I demand that there is a complete lack of oversight, responsibilities, and consequence for stealing (“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”), I mean, accepting your billions.” Then Bush turns his head back and looks up at JP, “Okay,” he says with a smile, “but can I stop bending over now.” (for those fans of Fox Fake-news Network, it was Bush who did the Bank Bail out, not O’Bama ).
In all my time I have never heard of two such lopsided ideas. The Bank Bail out, the Recession, and the economic disaster we are still trying to struggle through is all a result of when morons trust businessmen. When businessmen are left to their won devices we get: Wall Street and all its inglorious bastards, Massive thieving banks who are “to big to fail”, and a non stop redistribution of wealth from the working men and women of this country to the massively wealthy. The greed never ends. How much is enough? Nothing. Nothing is ever enough. “In the end,” Krafty-Kraft says in full bridge the gap mode, “you can’t build relationships or do business without doing a deal, that’s good for both sides. And when it’s too one-sided, in the end it’s going to cause problems. Right now, the ownership made a bad deal, and we gotta fix it.” If you expect the NFL Players Union to except a 25% cut in pay across the board for all its members so they can pay to build capital in your business, but not share in ownership, then please don’t tell me it’s fair or anything but completely one-sided in your favor. That is an insult to my intelligence, and an insult to all the courageous players who risk life and limb to make you profits every week.
The NFL is built upon TV revenues. It’s estimated
that 2/3 of all moneys flowing into the NFL is from TV, so the TV revenues
must be slowing down. That’s what has the Owner’s in such a panic.
“Look at the Super Bowl this year,” Bobby says. “
Kraft kept claiming that he would do anything to help bridge the gap, but instead he kept trying to undermined DeMaurice Smith’s credibility. It was positively insulting. “With all due respect to all the great lawyers out there,” Bobby said (with all good intentions;-), “you can never let lawyers run your business or Run a negotiations, without the business people stepping in, because you know, sometimes lawyers collect bigger fees when there is litigation.” Now call me a cynic, but who was he talking to? When he said that, he was talking to the players, to Tom Player, Player Rep. He was telling the football player not to trust their lawyers, but to trust him, and the owners who claim cutting the players piece of the pie from 59% to 41% is an 18% pay cut, which I as I have shown above, sounds nice but is a straight up lie. It is a 30.5% cut in pay across the board for all players.
Now, you can take what I’m saying as an insult to Bobby, but it is quite the contrary. Robert Kraft is a business genius, and as such cannot be trusted in negotiations, that’s just a fact of life. Football players have made millions of dollars playing football. Our dear friend Krafty-Kraft has made millions of dollar negotiating deals that make him money. If Brady and Krafty-Kraft sat down at a table and negotiated a deal, who do you think would get the better of the deal? Kraft would wipe the floor with him, as badly as Tom would wipe the floor with Krafty-Kraft on the football field. That is how much of mismatch negotiations are between players and Owners.
The only chance the players have is to put their plight into the hands of their lawyers. What are the two things Owners fear the most, Lawyers and Agents. Businessmen make their money negotiating deals. Lawyers make their money zealously arguing for their clients. When it comes to negotiations lawyers tend to beat businessmen. As K-K clearly knows, because businessmen are more likely to compromise than lawyers, so they can make a deal and start making money. So he continued his assault on the only chance the Players have to make a fair deal, Mr. Smith going to negotiation. When asked how DeMaurice Smith, NFL Player’s Union Chief was working with the Owners “I think he [Smith] is working well,” Bobby said in full bridging the gap mode. “You know he comes once again… [from a lawyers’ perspective]. I hope, in the end, he’s a businessman [not a lawyer]. You know his background is … he a brilliant speaker [that’s how he got the job] and very capable, but he’s a litigator [a lawyer who can’t be trusted], and a lawyer. And now he’s in an environment where he has to be a businessman. He’s got a lot of lawyers, you go to a negotiating table, and I think their like eight lawyers there. I’m looking for the finance people… and they have a lot of older players there… Life at this point is about doing deals, understanding both sides, understand one-another, and concluding a deal when you got something good going.”
Everybody is making millions, and the Owners are making billions, and of course the owners want more. K-K talked about being fair. The Owners need help, because player’s salaries have gone up 500% in the past 16 years. But when you look at the facts, the Owners have profited at over twice that rate. The real figure is player salaries have gone up 367%, and by definition the Owners profits have gone up 367% as well. Yes I know inflation will cut into Owners profits a little, but also the Owners make more profits than they shared with the players. However, Owners don’t like to talk about Capital Gains. NFL Franchises are now worth over One Billion Dollars. K-K paid 175 Million for the Patriots 16 years ago. That is a gain of over 571%. That is a gain in K-K’s wealth of over 938% in the past 16 years, which is almost triple the increase in player salaries of 367%. But that is not enough.
Okay, so I was little rough with our pal Bobby. Now I purposely chose ridicule, because Kraft and his WEEI Inglorious Bastards chose to undermine the players by ridiculing DeMaurice Smith. Kraft started out by cynically attacking Smith for being a Lawyer, and viciously recommending the players not listen to their lawyers. Then explaining that the only way this deal could get done is if Smith stopped being a lawyer and be Businessman, which of course I cynically interpreted, as him saying surrender to be a businessman meant he had to accept a pay cut of 25 to 30.5% for the players. I was personally insulted when Krafty-Kraft kept insinuating that he was Smith’s friend and that he wanted to bridge the Gap, while constantly trying to undermine his integrity. Here is a small sample of my point. Now remember what I wrote up top, three god damn days ago (this article is killing me), about how the biggest problem with the negotiations if that DeMaurice Smith is a lawyer:
Big O: I got a kick-outta-you talking about the lawyers [he was not talking about lawyers, he was talking about a specific lawyer], because your right, in the end those are the guys that make all the money…. If this thing’s extended out, their the ones who get all the billable hours. Having said that…
Krafty-Kraft: Be careful though. I love love lawyers, I really do. What Shakespeare said doesn’t matter [the first thing we do, let’s kill all lawyers (Smith)].
Beach Ball: Noooo, Lawyers (Smith) would do that? Especially divorce lawyers [now Smiths akin to a divorce lawyer].
The perpetually moronic Fred: They’re wonderful.
Big-O: but how do you prevent that [Smith helping the players], you’ve done a million deals… How do you finally get to that point where both side finally say. “we got to do a deal.” Other than the lawyers [Smith] making all the money as you said.
Krafty-Kraft: Well, there’ll be a lot posturing, and that’s okay, it a process. But in the end there’s enough here … that I’ll be shocked if we can’t come to some kind of resolution. I know I’m personally going to do everything I can do, to try and be a bridge builder, and bring the sides together, because I believe the problems are solvable… And it’s not like were in a dying industry. Where in an industry where people want to see our product. People want to be a part of it. You can’t forget that. We can’t abuse that. That’s sort of what’s sad about this [Smith not surrendering]… We all have problems that come up, and you gotta deal with ‘em, and you gotta put it on the table, and you gotta make it happen… Somehow I feel deep down, with all due respect to the posturing [Smith not surrendering], that both sides, as long as business people [not evil lawyers like Smith] are looking at the facts we’ll make the decisions, and we’ll get a resolution to this. [so being a bridge builder is undermining the integrating of the Player’s representative?]
Now on the surface that is pretty harmless stuff, but
when taken in context, that he wasn’t ridiculing lawyers, he was
ridiculing a specific Lawyer, and the man in charge of zealously arguing for
the Player’s
Now I’m not a stranger to ridicule. My theme when I write about Republicans is ridicule. I do this on purpose. When I write to republicans I have two goals: first to attempt to tell the truth, and second to mockingly ridicule Republicans. I do this, because as I stated above, three years ago, I quoteth myself, “What I am saying is that I’ve learned a few truths in life about bullshit. First, when politicians start talking about “family values”, run screaming, because they have none. The more a talk-show host tells you how they are “telling the truth”, the more they are lying. And most important of all, when billionaires businessmen are crying poverty, never believe a single word that comes out of their mouth about business, negotiations, and lawyers, because they want more.” The forth truth of bullshit is that there is nothing Republicans love to do more with their pants on, than ridicule Democrats. However, there is nothing republicans hate more than when you ridicule them back.
This is not an opinion, the Republicans not only state that ridicule is their top strategy regarding Democrats, they brag out it. Their entire strategy in the past year was to ridicule everything the Democrats tried to do to help the working men and women of this country. And of course no one does this better than Junkie Limbaugh. What’s the thing all junkies have in common? Ask Beach Ball, he knows. Limbaugh has made his money ridiculing democrats, but when democrats ridicule Republicans back they freak out and act like it is a crime against humanity, and get so upset their faces turn red and they start whining like little school girls.
Oh, what do all Junkies have in common? They are pathological liars. That means that when it comes to telling the truth, their first instinct is to lie. They have to concentrate to tell the truth, because it is unnatural for them. And this is the leader of the Republican Party, a self-professed Junkie/pathological-liar who makes money by lying and ridiculing Democrats. I may not know much, but I do know that if you believe anything that comes out of junkie’s mouth than you are a fool. It’s like I always say, “Who is worse? The fool, or the fool who follows the fool.” In this case the worse fool is the fool who follows the Junkie.
I only write that last paragraph to defend myself against the fools who are offended by my mocking and ridiculing republicans like Junkie Limbaugh ridicules and mock democrats, and if you listen to Junkie Limbaugh than you are a self-professed fool. It was not intention to ridicule or mock Krafty-Kraft, like Junkie Limbaugh. I just listened his disrespectful attack on DeMaurice Smith and decided to write about it. However, when someone is disrespectful to a well respected man, than they cannot complain is someone is disrespectful back to them, even if they are a respectful man.
This is a very complicated issue, and I have gone to
great length to try and show the players side, and how the Owners are trying
to trick them and us, Patsfans. I have reached seven pages and still
haven’t really come up with a happy conclusion. So in conclusion, don’t
believe the hype of billionaire business men when they cry poverty. They are
being purposely deceitful. The players cannot concede to the “Kitty
Clause”, or taking a 25-30.5% pay cut to pay for the Owners buildings,
infrastructure, and stadiums with any compensation, benefit, or future
reimbursement. This is not a fair deal. It is a compete, absolute, and utter
one-sided deal. The Owners are making money hand over fist, and have made
billions in the past 16 years, but that is not enough. For billionaire
business Owners nothing is ever enough, and the Player’s
If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me:
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