Tag Archives: pro sports

Bears (-3.5) over Packers

So much for that “Seattle will be able to run the ball on the Bears” comment I made last week.  I let my vision get in the way of the stats.  Seattle had 12 carries for 34 yards.

Let’s break down this Green Bay matchup.  Chicago has the 28th ranked passing offense and 22nd ranked running offense and they’re facing the Packers 5th ranked pass defense and 18th ranked rush defense.  Green Bay’s 5th ranked pass offense and 24th ranked rush offense will face the Bears 20th ranked pass defense and 2nd ranked rush defense.  Seems the pass offense of the Packers and pass defense of the Bears is the matchup to watch.  The Bears are good at stopping the run, but the Packers don’t really run the ball, and Chicago doesn’t really do anything well on offense.

These teams met twice this season – the Bears winning in Chicago by 3 in week 3 and the Packers winning in Week 17 in Green Bay by 7 in possibly the worst game of all time (since the Panthers ran the wildcat for an entire game).  These games essentially fell into the home differential (3 points in Vegas) and thus don’t provide a lot of data.  It’s worth mentioning that the Game 1 loss by the Packers also featured 18 penalties totaling 152 yards by the Packers, obviously enough to swing a tight game.  I’d say it’s unlikely we’ll see a similar performance from the Packers this week.

This Vegas line has the Packers as favorites in Chicago, which is a little scary.  I feel confident in a Packers win, but these games have been tight and ugly and the Bears, while not an elite pass defense are an excellent scoring defense.  The Packers are also an excellent scoring defense.    I think this will be an ugly slug fest.  The Bears will probably cover on their home field, but I think the Packers win the game.

Steelers (-3.5) over Jets

These teams already met in Week 15 in Pittsburgh and the Jets won 22-17.  It was a pretty clean game by both teams and featured a kickoff return by Brad Smith.  Pittsburgh has the 14th ranked pass offense and 11th ranked rush offense and they’ll be facing the Jets 6th ranked pass defense and 3rd ranked rush defense.  Advantage Jets.  The Jets are the 22nd ranked pass offense (yikes) and the 4th ranked rush offense and they’ll be facing the Steelers’ 12th ranked pass defense and 1st ranked rush defense.

The Jets were able to run the ball in the last game but didn’t exactly blow it out.  They had 27 carries for 106 yards and the Sanchize was ineffective but efficient with the pass.  The Steelers actually dominated this vaunted Jets defense offensively but couldn’t translate that into scores.

These teams are virtually equal in scoring offense, but the scoring defense of the Steelers is the best in the league (14.5 ppg) to the Jets 6th ranked scoring defense (19 ppg).

I think that’s your difference in the game here.  The Steelers are the better defensive team, both scoring and yards per game and they have Big Ben.  I love the Sanchize but he ain’t Big Ben.

Greg Aiello, Senior VP of PR for the NFL, had an op ed for ESPN.com this week where he responded to the players union positions on the NFL negotiations for their next collective bargaining agreement.  One standout quote:  ”The status quo means players continue to keep 60 percent of available revenue, in good years or bad, in a good economy or one with 10 percent unemployment, and no matter how much costs have risen for the teams. Player compensation has doubled in the past decade, and the union says NFL team payrolls rose 6 percent this year. Meanwhile, other costs for teams have risen dramatically.”  Unfortunately, Mr. Aiello chooses to hide behind the dubious “costs” and does not choose to disclose actual numbers on these “costs” and thus attempt to win the public opinion battle.  His argument to the public seems to be “look at these greedy players, what jerks!”  Interesting stance given that the NFL is approximately 65% black and the owners are nearly all white.  The NBA has chosen this tactic as well in the past, the basic “we don’t need to explain ourselves, look who we’re up against”  (shaking my head) Anyway, we’re not here to talk about race or Greg Aiello wants you to think, we’re here to talk about what actually is.

For the unitiated, the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a negotiated document between the players union and the owners (ie the league).  Players union membership is conferred upon any player that joins a team in the NFL.  The last CBA has been in place since 1993 with the last amendment in 2006.  The contract was supposed to expire in 2012, but the league chose to opt out 2 years early (they had the option) and thus, the agreement ends in March of this year.

The current CBA, as Aiello states, the CBA says that the players gets 59.5% of the projected league revenue for the year.  In 2008, it was $116 million per team and 2009, it was $127 million per team.  That’s a 9 percent increase over those two years – the NFL is making money hand over fist.  The overall league revenue projected for 2009 was a hardy $6.83 billion.   Forbes quoted the operating profit for the league at 1.03 billion for the 2008-2009 season.  Revenue was projected at 6.23 billion, so these “expenses” added up to about $5.2 billion.  Of that $5.2 billion, the salary cap counted for $3.7 billion.  So, essentially, Aiello’s argument is that $1.03 billion ($32 million per team) in profit is not enough.

Let’s compare this to other leagues.  NBA commissioner David Stern claims that the NBA lost $400 million in the 2009-2010 season.  The best figures I could find listed the operating income at $233 million (revenue at $4 billion), a figure of about $7.8 million per team (where is this loss Stern is talking about?  Taxes?).  MLB listed revenue at $6.8 billion for 2010.  Their operating income (2009) was $522 million ($17.4 million per team) and their revenue at $6.8 billion.    If these figures are accurate, the NFL is doubling up MLB profits and quadrupling NBA profits.  They’re the king of money making in professional sports in the US.  Just for the record, the average valuation of an NFL team is $1 billion, more than twice the value of any other pro league in the US.

One huge source of NFL income is television contracts where they hold far more sway and generate far more money than the other sports.  They currently have independent deals with CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN and DirectTV with these contracts generating about $3.8 billion dollars a year, over half of the NFL’s revenue.  Part of the reason for wanting to renegotiate the CBA is that the NFL hopes to renegotiate these contracts before their 2013 expiration and thus wants to change how the league operates.  A work stoppage in 2012, shortly before the television negotiations, might give the networks a strong negotiating position whereas a work stoppage now will give the NFL two strong years to stabilize their position.

By the way, the TV deals don’t even include the recent $720 million contract ($180 million/year) with Verizon, their deals with radio companies including Sirius ($31 million a year), as well as the additional deal with CBS for sportsline coverage ($24 million a year).

One of the main ways that the NFL proposes to boost the income of the TV negotiations is adding 2 games to the regular season and shortening the preseason by 2 games.   No big deal, right?  Not so fast.  Fewer preseason games equals fewer opportunities to physically prepare for the season, higher incidents of concussion, and shorter careers.  The current average career in the NFL is 3 and a half years and the average NFL salary is $770,000, and if you multiply those numbers together you’ll have the average NFL player income for a career at $2.7 million.  Sounds great, but let’s break it down a little further.

Let’s assume that the average NFL career is actually 56 games.  If you include 2 more full speed games every season, the average NFL career is slightly over 3 seasons.  This matters because in order to qualify for the NFL pension (currently about $77,000), you must play a minimum of 4 seasons.  A change in the number of games in a season would decrease the number of players getting pension (and decrease the owners cost to pay said players).  With 50 years of retirement from their chosen profession and the NFL being much more debilitating than working in an office, this money could end up being much more consequential than you might think.  Throw in the fact that many of these people receive this money in their early 20s, a time when research has shown that young people have not developed the ability to understand the full consequences of their actions, many of them have misspent their money.  Think back to your own early 20s, were you fiscally responsible?  The difference between them and you is that their major earning power is going to QUICKLY disappear, yours likely will not.  Also at issue is the retirement insurance, which would fall into the same issue as the retirement plan itself.  In some ways, the insurance plan is more critical, especially as concerns over concussions and dementia have taken center stage in recent months.

It’s interesting to hear Roger Goodell talk about his goal of multiplying league revenue by 3 to $25 billion by 2027 (requiring adding $1 billion per year to revenue).  I have to wonder at what cost this will come to in player safety and long term player salaries.

From looking at the numbers, it seems like the people with the most to lose here are the players, both in terms of injury, incapacitation, and losing a very strong revenue stance as the NFL tries to multiply it’s revenue.  Many of the changes seem to be looking at multiplying the value on that TV and media deal, already the central money making force in the NFL machine and yet, the owners don’t seem to want the players to make that kind of money and for everyone to benefit mutually.

I encourage you to see this looming NFL lockout for what it is.  Rich owners of billion dollar NFL teams, making more money by far than any other professional league in the US, making a greedy move while sacrificing player safety and long-term player viability.  (oddly enough, this sounds a little like the Terrelle Pryor situation doesn’t it?  Things that make you go hmmm).

I can’t help but wonder if the extreme hubris that ownership is showing won’t be their undoing.  There is already a movement against football with parents not allowing their children to play for fear of injury and concussion and a backlash against the violence and concussions that are a part of the game.  If these things become more prevalent as ownership tries to squeeze more dollars out of a very profitable product, could the NFL’s undoing ultimately be of it’s own hand?  Time will tell.