The Redskins are facing some very painful decisions in order
to get under the league-mandated salary cap if there is no new CBA with the
players association by midnight on Thursday. It appears that Redskins owner Dan
Snyder is willing to forgo a considerable amount of money, perhaps as much as a
billion dollars, in order to avert such a scenario.
According to a report by Dave
Elfin in Wednesday morning’s Washington Times, Redskins owner Dan Snyder is
willing to change his position on NFL revenue sharing in order to get a CBA
extension done. Since Snyder and eight to ten other owners of high-revenue NFL
teams have been steadfastly opposed to sharing a significant portion of local
revenues with the rest of the teams in the league, that would mean that Snyder
has pushed some more of his own chips into the pot in this high-stakes poker
game.
These are high-roller chips, no doubt about it. We don’t
know the kind of money being talked about here, but we can take an educated
guess. Just to use a round number, let’s say that we’re talking about Snyder
giving up 10% of the team’s revenue to go into a pot. According to Forbes,
that would be about $28 million per year. Even if revenues are static, which
they won’t, and Snyder owns the team for another 25 years, which is probably on
the low end, he will be giving up $700 million. It’s easy to see revenue
increases pushing that figure over the $1 billion mark.
That’s a billion, with a “b”. You have to look long and hard
to find a business in any field that is willing to give up that kind of money.
In the Times article it was also reported that Denver owner
Pat Bowlen was also among the higher-revenue owners willing to give up local
revenues in order to get a deal done. His team also is faced with the need to
make some salary cap choices if there is no new CBA. If Snyder, the king of the
hill with the highest revenue in all of professional sports, and Bowlen are willing
to share that much cash, it would be very difficult for the other “rich” owners
to maintain their positions that the rest of the teams simply need to work
harder to generate more revenue.
Will Snyder’s last minute gambit get a deal done? We’ll know
in the next 48 hours.
Rich Tandler is the author of The Redskins From A to Z,
a unique book that chronicles every game the Redskins played from 1937 through
2001. To get details on the book and to find out how to order, go to http://www.RedskinsGames.com.
