NFLPA Media Conference Call Highlights

For Immediate Release
February 20, 2013

NFLPA CONFERENCE CALL HIGHLIGHTS

The following quotes are highlights from a NFLPA media conference call held on February 19, 2013 with Domonique Foxworth (NFLPA President), Mark Levin (NFLPA Director of Salary Cap and Agent Administration) and George Atallah (NFLPA Assistant Executive Director of External Affairs)

On the salary cap:

LEVIN: “The cap dollars have actually no relation to cash dollars, which is what the players and the Players Association are concerned about. When we got the new agreement in '11, we went from a cap based system to a cash based system. In the first two years of the deal, in '11 and '12, league-wide there was a 99 percent cash spend minimum of the cap. For example, the cap was 120.6 per team in 2012. Multiply that by 32; 99 percent of that number is the minimum teams have to spend in cash on player’s salaries.”

“The cap, obviously it's seen relatively modest growth the first couple years of the new deal, largely because the revenues in the league last year came in a little bit lower than expected.”

ATALLAH: “People tend to look at the cap number in isolation. The cap number is directly proportional to what the revenue figures are. That's the way it has been and is this time around. But the thing that makes these cap figures different is the fact that we have minimum spends for the first time.”

On the different salary cap mechanisms in place:

LEVIN: “Going forward in 2013 and beyond, we have two sets of four-year buckets ... From 2013 to 2016, you're going to take the average over those four years, and the league is required to spend 95 percent. That’s 95 percent over that four-year period of the cap on cash, to players. On a per team basis, it's 89 percent in 2013-2016, and the same percentages hold true from 2017 through 2020 to the end of the deal. So you have 89 percent per team per cash requirement and 95 percent league-wide cash requirement over the four years. We never had that before under the old deal, we never had cash requirements and now that we do, that's the great thing under this deal for the players.”

“If you're doing a story about 2012, there's no per team minimum on cash in 2012. So going forward, you would have to explain that is a four-year average.”

On talks with the league on HGH testing and the role of Congress:

FOXWORTH: “Obviously we have been talking for a while, and we still are, we are trying to move closer on something that is important to both of us.”

“We've had kind of a long history in our union and the league’s relationship and that's deteriorated the trust between the two, and the players don't feel comfortable moving forward and I don't feel comfortable moving forward without the proper protections in place. As far as I understand, there's no good reason not to have those protections in place, so that's kind of the hold up as far as HGH is concerned.”

“H.G.H. testing that doesn’t give our players the opportunity to appeal, that’s just a nonstarter.”

ATALLAH: “On the Congress issue, we have always told members of Congress that we will be happy to cooperate however they ask us to, whether that's a hearing or whether that's a document exchange or whether that's more internal meetings; I don't see the idea of a hearing as a threat, per se. If that's what the house committee on government oversight wants to hold the hearing about, then we'll be happy to proceed and help them out.”

On independent sideline concussion experts on the field this upcoming season:

ATALLAH: “At the press conference that the league gave at the Super Bowl, [they] agreed that we need to have sideline concussion experts. It took us a long time to get there, but it looks like that's an issue that we are getting to some sort of agreement on. “

"We have just got to make sure that we have the right protocol in writing for this season, and that includes to make sure that those doctors, the sideline concussion experts that we proposed, do have final say on what happens with those types of serious injuries.”

On the amount of cash spending in the first two years of the new CBA:

ATALLAH: “Cap is tied to the league revenues. If the league revenues go up, the cap goes up. We have a system in place now, as Mark has been going over, to make sure the teams spend real cash dollars.”

On the rookie pay system:

LEVIN: “The only thing that really obviously drastically changed in the new rookie pay system versus the old one was the first round. Everybody else in the draft is doing better than they had under the previous system, the number of -- you have four-year mandatory deals and in the previous years you had second and third rounders sometimes getting five-year deals and that’s [now]a benefit to the players. You have more guaranteed money going to the rookies in those latter rounds.”

“It’s a myth out there that all rookies are getting screwed under the system. The first rounders, yeah, they took a haircut and some people would say a big haircut. The rest of the draft, compared to the prior years are all seeing increases in guaranteed money, easier to achieve escalators in the third round down, and mandatory four-year deals, where you had more guys doing four-year deals in previous years, some guys were doing fives in the second round. “

On the issue of trust between players and the league:

FOXWORTH: “There was a bridge beginning to be built and then there were some recent events that kind of broke that bridge again.”

“We are asking for checks and balances to be put into place so when something happens like the Bounty situation, which it was found pretty clear, and we didn't even have an unbiased person looking; we had a former commissioner look over and he found that it was unjust. So when things like that happen, it's hard for our players to believe that the league has their best interests in mind and that makes it harder for me to do my job and the PA to do our jobs and the league to do their jobs.”

“Everything we bring back to our players and they receive it from a negative place because they don't trust anybody on Park Avenue, then it's really hard to get anything done. I can't, nor am I trying to, but I couldn't if I wanted to, convince our players that you could trust Roger or you can trust the league.”

To view a PDF of the complete conference call, please visit: http://bit.ly/219confcall

###