Jerry Jones wants a weak Buffalo team…or worse

By BisonBoy  |   Tuesday, September 22, 2009  |  Comments( 148 )

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Sunday night, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was very coy about his feelings regarding the next collective bargaining agreement. Having just been fined by the NFL for making statements about another team’s financial viability, Jones should be coy about his feelings regarding any new agreement. However, Jones was seemingly very upfront about how he felt the league should be structured in terms of how teams pay players.

While basking in the glory of the House that Jerry Built, Jones stated that he thought any new deal should reward “risks” taken by owners (like him) to expand the revenue with new stadiums. He said his desire was to “grow the pie” so that players could reap the benefits of decisions like his to build successful stadiums. Thinking this through, this positions flies in the face of any salary cap that might be under consideration by the league or players union. Under current agreements, stadium revenue is not shared like TV revenue. With a salary cap in place, teams cannot use revenue disparities from new stadiums or other incomes to pay players more on one team versus another (theoretically).

The Bills are in a particularly precarious position in this regard. With an aging, publicly owned stadium and little prospect of creating a new one (including the “personal seat licenses” used today in Dallas and the new Jets venue), it is obvious that the Bills cannot compete on a revenue basis with teams like the Cowboys. Without a cap, the Bills would be unable to compete with these high-revenue teams for the best players. When asked by NBC’s Bob Costis about the “highly successful” salary cap model used by the NFL as opposed to the system used by Major League Baseball, Jones stared stoically and stated his pabulum about growing the pie.

If Jones and other owners of his ilk (the Redskins’ Daniel Snyder comes to mind), the Cowboys would become the New York Yankees of football; paying the best players outrageous salaries to win championships. The small market Bills would become the Kansas City Royals of the NFL until a new owner moves them to a better market to compete (including a state-of-the-art stadium). Some might believe this is a fair response to the positions taken by some owners to allow their teams to wallow in mediocrity (or worse) while collecting heavy revenue from shared TV contracts.

However, unlike traditional economic markets, sports teams need true competitors to survive and thrive. If a large number of teams cannot realistically compete to win a championship, we are likely to see decreasing television revenues in the long run and a scaled down NFL as teams fold. Nobody wins if the NFL becomes a league of a few Harlem Globetrotters playing hapless teams throughout the season. This is bad for both the NFL and, especially, for small market teams like the Bills.
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CommentsComments: 148  |  Sign Up  View all comments
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No.1
Amir FaSaad		07:17 AM
09/22/2009
That's why last year I said that FOOTBAlL will suspend operations if there is a hint of a strike. The owners like Jones will end ...
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No.2
bILZrok		07:47 AM
09/22/2009
I had this very same conversation with cowgirl yesterday. I emphatically told her that Jerry Jones, in no uncertain terms, was ...
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No.3
Goose		07:53 AM
09/22/2009
There are provisions against the nose picking Jones and mighty mite Synder. If no agreement is reached and 2010 is an uncapped ...
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