This Thanksgiving week, I’ll give you some NFL business items and my positive memories of playing on the holiday, which the Packers will do again this week, as it seemed we did so often when I worked for them.
Report cards bring the lawyers
Over the past couple of years, the NFL Players Association has been surveying its players and releasing report cards on their teams’ workplace conditions. The results have sometimes been embarrassing, such as the Jets receiving an F for ownership, the Bengals an F- for “treatment of families” and even the Chiefs who received an F for their training staff. Now, the NFL is fighting back.
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The league filed a grievance alleging the report cards violate the collective bargaining agreement, which has its own provision requiring the league and the union to conduct joint health surveys on medical and training staffs. The NFL further argues that the report cards violate the CBA obligation of the NFLPA to “use reasonable efforts to curtail public comments by players which express criticism of any club, its coach, or its operation and policy.”
Is the NFL grievance a thin-skinned response by owners who want to avoid public embarrassment? Yes. Does this have some legal standing? Also yes, as both of these things are true. And I’m sure this grievance wouldn’t have been filed if the results of the report cards would have been kept quiet. But the failing grades are media catnip, and embarrassment is part of the union’s objective.
The grievance will be an interesting one to follow.
I had to smile watching the NFL game in Madrid in Week 11, thinking back to running the Barcelona Dragons of the NFL’s World League in 1991, when our end zones were seven yards deep, our fans cheered at all the wrong times and did “the wave” the entire game.
The Madrid game was the last of seven overseas games this year, from Brazil to Dublin to London to Berlin to Madrid, with an average viewership of 6.2 million, up 32% from last year. And there will be more, as the Saints are already rumored to be playing in Paris next year.
Commissioner Roger Goodell has already spoken of a full slate of 16 international games soon, meaning all 32 teams would play internationally every year. As to why, well, follow the money. It would lead to: (1) an expanded international footprint with expanded revenue from new and emerging markets and (2) the potential carving off a separate media rights package of international games to generate roughly another $1 billion annually (on top of the current $11 billion in annual media revenue).
The idea of an international team or league is probably off the table; the league has it too good with these one-off games in more and more markets that want their product.
During my 10 years with the Packers, we seemed to play the Lions in Detroit on Thanksgiving an unusual number of times. That matchup is happening again on Thursday. When we did this, we actually loved it**.**
Yes, there was limited preparation that week, but the flight was 35 minutes and we would have a full day of preparation on Wednesday before flying out. And on Thanksgiving Day, the schedule was perfect for getting home for our holiday meal. We would play the game at 12:30 p.m. ET (and we usually had a nice win over the Lions), then we hoofed it back to the airport for the 35-minute flight home. We were all at our Thanksgiving dinner tables by 6 p.m. CT, with a free weekend ahead of us.
I loved it when we played the Lions on Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
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