18-game NFL season is coming, but the negotiating clash is just beginning

The percentage of revenue sharing is in play in the players and NFL team owners’ battle over an 18-game regular-season schedule. (Bruno Rouby/Yahoo Sports)

The 18-game NFL regular season is coming. It’s a matter of time, money, reorganization — and some inevitable hand grenades tossed across the negotiating table.

It’s the same as it was in 2008, when NFL team owners triggered an early opt-out clause in the collective bargaining agreement. Same as it was when the league tried in vain to get a 17th game added into the 2011 CBA (the current CBA doesn’t contain an opt-out clause). And same as it was nine years later, when players finally agreed to expand the schedule, negotiating a tradeoff for a larger share of revenue, a more accessible pension, a handful of veteran-friendly contract and franchise and transition tagging enhancements, and changes to the league’s drug-testing and suspension policies.

All of that came with a cost, of course. There were nasty exchanges between the league and the union, leaving bruises on the reputations of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and former NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith. But the pact also made the league’s team owners richer, while simultaneously pumping more money into a rapidly expanding salary cap. The exchange has helped franchise valuations soar to unprecedented levels, while paving the way to significant contract spikes at nearly every position on the field.

This is why there will be an 18th game in the NFL’s regular season. It will benefit enough people to make it worthwhile. But it’s also why there’s a dance happening right now because getting to that agreement will mean digging trenches and carefully crafting a plan of attack. That’s what the league and players union are beginning to do.

That’s what you are hearing when Goodell talks about adding an 18th regular-season game, dropping a preseason matchup and adding in a second bye week — but fails to address the key issue of revenue split, which…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-05-31 15:56:50

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