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red states rule
10-04-2011, 02:41 AM
What would happen if the NFL had to deal with what most employers have to deal with when it comes to unions?





Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player's been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let's face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn't get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money.

Of course, a few wild-eyed reformers might suggest the whole system was broken and needed revamping to reward better results, but the players union would refuse to budge and then demonize the reform advocates: "They hate football. They hate the players. They hate the fans." The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn't help.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the NFL in this alternate reality is the real -life American public education system. Teachers' salaries have no relation to whether teachers are actually good at their job—excellence isn't rewarded, and neither is extra effort. Pay is almost solely determined by how many years they've been teaching. That's it. After a teacher earns tenure, which is often essentially automatic, firing him or her becomes almost impossible, no matter how bad the performance might be. And if you criticize the system, you're demonized for hating teachers and not believing in our nation's children.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576601232986845102.html?m od=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

logroller
10-04-2011, 03:29 AM
What would happen if the NFL had to deal with what most employers have to deal with when it comes to unions?

I really hate this comparison, apples and oranges IMO. But let's just see how pay relates to these two fields.

In the first three years, the typical term where contracts aren't guaranteed in the NFL or education, the lowest paid NFL player will be just shy of a million dollars pre-tax. Whereas the average salary for an educator in those first three years is around $100,000. So if NFL had unions like teachers; the NFL players would make less money. That's starting, no guarantees; when considering the whole, including those with tenure or other guarantees-- the difference is even greater.

Avg NFL salary 2006 $1.4 million (yahoo:answers)
Avg teacher salary (CA, the highest of any state) 2006-2007 $63,640 ( US census )



(http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/pdf/cb10ff-14_school.pdf)

red states rule
10-04-2011, 03:35 AM
I really hate this comparison, apples and oranges IMO. But let's just see how pay relates to these two fields.

In the first three years, the typical term where contracts aren't guaranteed in the NFL or education, the lowest paid NFL player will be just shy of a million dollars pre-tax. Whereas the average salary for an educator in those first three years is around $100,000. So if NFL had unions like teachers; the NFL players would make less money. That's starting, no guarantees; when considering the whole, including those with tenure or other guarantees-- the difference is even greater.

Avg NFL salary 2006 $1.4 million (yahoo:answers)
Avg teacher salary (CA, the highest of any state) 2006-2007 $63,640 ( US census )



(http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/pdf/cb10ff-14_school.pdf)

The comparison is pefect LR. With teachers no matter how badly their students perform, they can''t be cut due to their contract

If you try to cut them, you are tagged as hating teachers

If teachers unions ran the NFL, the NFL would be out of business in one year