Gordio Posted July 13, 2009 Posted July 13, 2009 I may be the only one here, but I would PREFER to watch the replacement players. I think it would be cool and I would accept the change for a while, especially if it got a point across. I am young enough I would even try out for the team if they held tryouts. I think replacement players would show the current overpaid players that they are not necessarily needed. (Spending on player salaries may eventually force the bills out of buffalo) This just maybe the dumbest post I have ever read on this board(& that is saying something). Yeah just what everybody wants to watch on sunday afternoons. You & your idiot friends running around the Ralph playing backyard football. Sign me & my family up for season tickets if that happens.
billsfan89 Posted July 13, 2009 Author Posted July 13, 2009 A new league to compete with the NFL will NEVER happen. The players will ultimately come to an agreement with the NFL. I predict a Rookie salary cap & an 18 game season. Well I was talking in a hypothetical sense. The players determine the quality of the league and its product. So if owners decided to not pay the top talent another league would form and pick up those pieces. In reality the owners want to play the players its just how much do they want to pay them so there will never be a league to compete with the NFL. As for Rookie slotting system its going to be in there the owners and some of the players want it. The 18 game season I am still not sure on. I don't know how much the players want it and I don't know if the owners want it either (They make huge money on pre-season games and don't want to adjust the pay scale for 2 additional games). Although if a league wanted to form some sort of minor league of football I could see that working. The NFL Europe failed and the CFL is a completely different league from the NFL (3 downs and all sorts of other funky rules). I think if a league tried to be a minor league (Like have games on Tuesday during the season) I think they could survive knowing they would be second banana to the NFL.
SouthGeorgiaBillsFan Posted July 13, 2009 Posted July 13, 2009 There is a lot of speculation about the possibility of a lockout in the 2011 season. I have no doubt that the owners would consider replacement players. (They used replacements in 1982 and 1987) Now I am too young to remember the replacement players so I didn't see the games nor was I old enough to make a decision to watch or not watch them. Would you watch replacement games? I for one wouldn't want to see replacement games. I tend to side with labor over management in labor disputes so I would take the players side (Unless they are being unreasonable but even than I still wouldn't watch the replacement games). In a normal industry I would tend to side with labor over management every time. But in the case of professional athletes who are already exorbitantly paid no matter how you try to justify it, I simply cannot bring myself to side with them. I want my team to win a championship like every other NFL fan, and every greedy player who threatens to hold out because his six or seven figure salary isn't adequate compensation for playing a game I love to play for fun, it hurts their team's chances of signing other good players and thus makes the team worse overall, so I definitely have to side with the owners on this one (the possible exception being...the Buffalo Bills). I would absolutely watch replacement players. I watch to see the teams play the game, not the individual players play their positions. As long as it is competitive, I wouldn't have any problem with the lower talent level. I mean most of us who are NFL fans also love college football, am I wrong?
SouthGeorgiaBillsFan Posted July 13, 2009 Posted July 13, 2009 The players determine the quality of the league and its product. So if owners decided to not pay the top talent another league would form and pick up those pieces. Wow. That is really an off the wall statement with no basis in reality. For one, the NCAA is no where near as talented as the NFL but every bit as popular, if not more so, and it could be argued that NCAA football is more pure and higher quality of competition simply because the players are playing to win for the sake of winning, not for the sake of a paycheck. Secondly, if NFL franchises can't afford/are unwilling to cough of the exorbitant sums of money to hire these players, how is some smaller market franchise in an upstart league supposed to be expected to do so (let's face it - any new league simply isn't going to have the same drawing power as the NFL for a very long time, even in major metropolitan areas)? How do you expect an upstart league to pay NFL players their current salaries, or even a fraction of them? Do you think NFL players feel so taken advantage of that they would be willing to play for fractions of their current salaries in an upstart league just to teach NFL owners a lesson? I think not.
billsfan89 Posted July 13, 2009 Author Posted July 13, 2009 Wow. That is really an off the wall statement with no basis in reality. For one, the NCAA is no where near as talented as the NFL but every bit as popular, if not more so, and it could be argued that NCAA football is more pure and higher quality of competition simply because the players are playing to win for the sake of winning, not for the sake of a paycheck. Secondly, if NFL franchises can't afford/are unwilling to cough of the exorbitant sums of money to hire these players, how is some smaller market franchise in an upstart league supposed to be expected to do so (let's face it - any new league simply isn't going to have the same drawing power as the NFL for a very long time, even in major metropolitan areas)? How do you expect an upstart league to pay NFL players their current salaries, or even a fraction of them? Do you think NFL players feel so taken advantage of that they would be willing to play for fractions of their current salaries in an upstart league just to teach NFL owners a lesson? I think not. Oh yeah thats right the National Championship game is the highest rated television event every year. What its actually the Super Bowl? Oh I am suppose to believe a bunch of unpaid kids are going to try harder than guys playing for millions of dollars. Pride of your school doesn't pay the rent. So your statement about the NCAA being more popular and better quality than the NFL is a stupid and just untrue statement. You may enjoy it more due to it being more "Pure" (Basically you like the fact that the schools exploit the kids and make millions of dollars for their school and only pay a portion of their team an eduction that costs them like 20 thousand dollars a year). But to say its more popular or higher quality is just not true. I would say the NFL is more "Pure" than the NCAA because the NFL doesn't hide behind armature status and try to make the league out to be something its not. And did you even read my post. I said that the whole they could go to another league thing was more of a hypothetical thing than anything that is ever going to happen. My point was that the owners want to pay the players it is just they want more of the cut.
Mr. WEO Posted July 13, 2009 Posted July 13, 2009 Wow. That is really an off the wall statement with no basis in reality. For one, the NCAA is no where near as talented as the NFL but every bit as popular, if not more so, and it could be argued that NCAA football is more pure and higher quality of competition simply because the players are playing to win for the sake of winning, not for the sake of a paycheck. Secondly, if NFL franchises can't afford/are unwilling to cough of the exorbitant sums of money to hire these players, how is some smaller market franchise in an upstart league supposed to be expected to do so (let's face it - any new league simply isn't going to have the same drawing power as the NFL for a very long time, even in major metropolitan areas)? How do you expect an upstart league to pay NFL players their current salaries, or even a fraction of them? Do you think NFL players feel so taken advantage of that they would be willing to play for fractions of their current salaries in an upstart league just to teach NFL owners a lesson? I think not. No new league will prosper---this has been proven over and over. However, college football is not comaprable for the NFL fan. There are relatively few very good teams and they spend a good portion of their season running up the score against simply bad teams--there is little "competition" there. Unless one of these elite teams is your alma mater------who really cares?
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