Should NFL owners get paid by the win?

[Rain Man]

We've heard more talk recently about whether teams should - or do - intentionally tank seasons now to get a top draft pick. While it's for the most part stupid and crazy talk by people who don't know the difference between life and video games, the incentive does exist, and we do know that the Colts did it a couple of years ago since there were over 150,000 options better than Curtis Painter.

I don't know exactly what the profit level is for a typical NFL tam, but if you set aside a pool of TV money and gave teams a set amount per win at the end of the year, enough to make a difference in their bottom line, would it encourage owners to put the best team on the field every year?

I don't know if that number is $100,000 per win or $500,000 or $1 million. You'd want to make it enough that it would make the owner's silicone-heavy trophy wife squeal in glee after each win, but not so much that it puts a losing team in huge financial jeopardy. You'd want it to be enough that an owner would prefer an eight-win season over a two-win season if he can control it, so that fans get the best product during their TV-viewing experience.*

Or now that I think about it, maybe it's not a bad idea to make the owner of a perennial loser start taking a bath every year so he'd sell the team.



* - Because no one can afford to go to the games in person any more since the owners are maximizing revenue regardless of how bad their team plays.

[Ming the Merciless]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Clearly this is a speculative question about what would make the game better and not something that owners are likely to implement.

You misunderstand me...

Obviously it is speculative, but the owner gets paid for the hot dogs and the beer etc...and running the business...

The GM and the coaches would be the ones who would need to get paid by the win for this to work.

If the team got more money the more they won, the system would collapse with the good teams having all the cash....and the chiefs having jack shit

because we are the chiefs

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Pawnmower

I would be willing to bet the owner disagrees with you.

I would be willing to bet the GM on down the line disagree with you...

It seems more likely to say that they are both businesses....The Chiefs are more like a "franchise" or independently operated branch or something....

The chiefs are in business to sell tickets / parking and beer, hotdogs and sodas...and make money....

The NFL is 2/3 a monopoly owned by 32 team owners colluding to maximize profits of the NFL and hence each of the 32 owners acting as a collective. The other 1/3 of its identity is encapsulated as teams acting as individual businesses where the actions of the owners and their agents can affect revenue and team value.

[Ming the Merciless]

Originally Posted by cdcox

The NFL is 2/3 a monopoly owned by 32 team owners colluding to maximize profits of the NFL and hence each of the 32 owners acting as a collective. The other 1/3 of its identity is encapsulated as teams acting as individual businesses where the actions of the owners and their agents can affect revenue and team value.

Oh you mean the chiefs ARE a business?

Ok

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Pawnmower

You misunderstand me...

Obviously it is speculative, but the owner gets paid for the hot dogs and the beer etc...and running the business...

The GM and the coaches would be the ones who would need to get paid by the win for this to work.

If the team got more money the more they won, the system would collapse with the good teams having all the cash....and the chiefs having jack shit

because we are the chiefs

Dallas sells more hot dogs than Jacksonville. For this and many other reasons, the Dallas franchise is worth more than the Jacksonville franchise.

In my proposal the salary cap is still in place.

[mikey23545]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

We've heard more talk recently about whether teams should - or do - intentionally tank seasons now to get a top draft pick. While it's for the most part stupid and crazy talk by people who don't know the difference between life and video games, the incentive does exist, and we do know that the Colts did it a couple of years ago since there were over 150,000 options better than Curtis Painter.

I don't know exactly what the profit level is for a typical NFL tam, but if you set aside a pool of TV money and gave teams a set amount per win at the end of the year, enough to make a difference in their bottom line, would it encourage owners to put the best team on the field every year?

I don't know if that number is $100,000 per win or $500,000 or $1 million. You'd want to make it enough that it would make the owner's silicone-heavy trophy wife squeal in glee after each win, but not so much that it puts a losing team in huge financial jeopardy. You'd want it to be enough that an owner would prefer an eight-win season over a two-win season if he can control it, so that fans get the best product during their TV-viewing experience.*

Or now that I think about it, maybe it's not a bad idea to make the owner of a perennial loser start taking a bath every year so he'd sell the team.



* - Because no one can afford to go to the games in person any more since the owners are maximizing revenue regardless of how bad their team plays.

Absolutely one of the most truthful quotes ever on this board full of egotistical draft-tards that I've ever seen...If I knew how to give you a million positive positive reps all at the same, I would.

You'll just have to settle for one.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Pawnmower

Oh you mean the chiefs ARE a business?

Ok

The financial identity of the Chiefs is 2/3 NFL which is a monopoly. Yes a business can be a monopoly. But the decisions that the Chiefs make do not really have much of an impact on this fraction of their financial identity.

The other 1/3 is a business operating in the context of this monopoly conglomerate.

It is not a business in the same way that Microsoft is a business.

[Ming the Merciless]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Dallas sells more hot dogs than Jacksonville. For this and many other reasons, the Dallas franchise is worth more than the Jacksonville franchise.

In my proposal the salary cap is still in place.

Oh sorry, I didnt review your proposal.

I was just talking about the idea in general of paying the owners 'by the win' & how it could lead to unintended bad results like teams spiraling into some kind of death cycle
where they start losing games and cant afford stuff needed to help make the team better / stadium better / ,make
cash...leading to further collapse.

My comment wasn't directed at your proposal at all.

[Ming the Merciless]

Originally Posted by cdcox

It is not a business in the same way that Microsoft is a business.

Oh so you mean the Chiefs ARE a business?

LOL

[Ming the Merciless]

Originally Posted by cdcox

The financial identity of the Chiefs is 2/3 NFL which is a monopoly. Yes a business can be a monopoly. But the decisions that the Chiefs make do not really have much of an impact on this fraction of their financial identity.

The other 1/3 is a business operating in the context of this monopoly conglomerate.

It is not a business in the same way that Microsoft is a business.

Actually even the supreme court disagrees with you

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5214509

Although NFL teams have common interests such as promoting the NFL brand, they are still separate, profit-maximizing entities, and their interests in licensing team trademarks are not necessarily aligned," said the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for a unanimous court.

I guess other people are having this debate too!

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I'm trying to decide how much this represents a flaw in my system. Lets remember that the total salary cap (before playoff bonuses) will be the same for every team. Let's call the percentage of a player's salary that is performance based "p". If p=0.99, clearly there is a huge incentive for the best players to go to the best teams. But even then it is balanced against the ability to claim a significant portion of a teams cap. If Tom Brady can only claim 3% of a team's cap due to signing other super stars, he probably should go to another team to maximize his income. The expected income of any player is given by:

CAP * (expected value of performance bonus = f(p)) * chances of reaching team goals * fraction of cap allocated to that player

At any given point, players are trading off chances of reaching team goals vs. the fraction of the cap they can claim. Bird in hand vs. bush. For any value of p this trade off is unclear. For high values of "p" this evaluation is very important. For low values of "p" this evaluation isn't important at all. I think there is an optimum value of "p" that makes this evaluation moderately important and maintains the balance between seeking a competitive team and going to a team that can really benefit from your talents. GMs would be hugely important under this model.

Yeah, it's a good point about superstar players overcrowding the cap. Maybe that would be a strong enough force to keep superteams from coalescing.

Right now, the forces that promote players to build superteams are:

-desire to win a Super Bowl
-desire to win in general
-age if a player's tenure is growing short
-maybe more long-term opportunities like eating for free for life or making money on autographs, though those are too amorphous to really consider.
-some teams have natural advantages for players, like national visibility in New York and bikinis in Miami.

The forces that dissuade players from building superteams are:

-salary cap
-perhaps some ego in some cases if they want to be "the star", though this is probably not a big factor.

In this system, you'd add one more force to the pro-superteam side, which is that they get additional money atop their contract.

The salary cap may well override the other forces, and I agree that it's the biggest single force by far. However, it would still give me the willies if two teams made identical offers to a player, and he had a financial incentive to go to the stronger team atop those identical offers.

[Ming the Merciless]

I wonder if players could be sued for collusion by the other teams if they formed a super team for way less money, just to win a ring

[Beef Supreme]

I think Andy Reid gets paid by the screen pass.

[Ming the Merciless]

Originally Posted by BigChiefTablet

I think Andy Reid gets paid by the screen pass.

/thread

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Clearly this is a speculative question about what would make the game better and not something that owners are likely to implement.

Yeah, there's zero chance that the owners would implement this system onto themselves. It adds risk to NFL ownership and probably lowers the value of franchises that go up for sale (because those will for the most part be the unsuccessful franchises).

The only way you could implement this system would be for the owners to say that the system will go into place upon the death of the last current owner. That way, they could do it for the good of the game but do so without causing themselves any harm. It's not noble at all, but it's the only way it could reasonably work.

I'm not sure who the youngest NFL owner is, but it would probably be 40 to 50 years before the new system was implemented, and the question is out whether the NFL will even exist in 40 or 50 years. There are too many people squeezing golden eggs out of the goose.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Pawnmower

I wonder if players could be sued for collusion by the other teams if they formed a super team for way less money, just to win a ring

That would be a fun movie script. All of the league's best players are aging, and none of them have rings because the Patriots win them all. They all talk at the pro bowl and hatch a plan. They find the most sad-sack, unsuccessful franchise in the league, sign vet minimum contracts, and the season follows the new Chiefs team as they make a one-time Dream Team shot to go out with a championship.