[woodguy]

Was talking with some buddies over the holidays and this topic came up and was reminded of it by El D's thread.

Baseball has guaranteed $$$.
NBA has guaranteed $$$
Even after getting killed in the last CBA the NHLPA still has guaranteed $$$.

No guraranteed $$$ in the NFL.

The NFL is by far the biggest industry of the 4 mentioned.

The NFL player's union job is to get the best deal for the players, but any NFL contract not worth the paper its written on since the team can terminate them at will, but not the player.

I know some teams pay big signing bonus, as they are demanded by players in absence of guaranteed $$$, but the everyday lunchbucket 5 year NFL career guy gets screwed. (I know its nice to "get screwed" for a couple of million a year, but I'm talking about realtive screwing given the amount of $$$ involved in the industry)

I don't know enough about the NFL and its union to know the answer to this, can anyone enlighten me?

I'm not a union advocate, but the NFL players sure seem to hold most of the risk in this relationship.

Also, if anyone is interested in a interesting read about the NHLPA, I just finished reading "Money Players" by Bruce Dowbiggin and highly recommend it. Interesing to follow the timeline from when the players were truley exploited from the 20's to the 70's until the see-saw way over-compensated and the players were breaking (probably) some teams to the current CBA.

So, why does the NFL player's union suck at getting guaranteed $$$?

Regards,
Woodguy