NFL Owners Cleaned the Players Clock‏

http://bostonherald.com/sports/columnists/ron_borges/2013/03/borges_nfl_owners_bask_in_new_cba_sun

 Just as I told you at the time….. 

the NFL owners cleaned the players clock.  Year two of the new CBA and nobody is making any money but the owners.  Players have zero leverage and are getting paid less and less everyday.  Teams would rather cut a player and plead poverty (poverty they created) then sign anyone.  If they do get signed the contract will be back loaded and they will be cut long before they ever see the imaginary money.

 One salary cap year removed from the lockout, the cap is flat and salaries are in free fall. A year ago, a former seventh-round draft choice with one Pro Bowl season in his career named Cortland Finnegan signed a five-year, $50 million free agent contract with $27 million guaranteed to play defensive back for the St. Louis Rams.

Two days ago Aqib Talib signed a one-year, $5 million deal to play defensive back for the Patriots and was happy to get it after finding the market as dry as the desert air in Arizona. His hope is that things will be better next year. It won’t be.

In the history books it will say the New York Giants won the Super Bowl two years ago but the truth of the matter is 32 NFL owners won the real Super Bowl six months earlier. It is a victory they are celebrating this offseason by taking down player salaries right and left after last year gutting the pay of rookies under the new CBA. 

his year’s NFL owners meeting is more a victory lap than a convention. There’s no 50-50 split with the cattle anymore and you won’t see anything like a 57-43 divide again. 

Life is back to how it used to be: the lawyers are sitting in the sun, the bagels are sitting in the press room and the players are sitting back in their place — as employees, not partners.