It’s officially summertime, which means those of us in the media are in the annual stretch where the content well runs a little dry. This is when you either get creative or start writing way‑too‑early previews of fall sports.
Sometimes the creative ideas come from places that have nothing to do with college football. That’s where today’s thought started.
Hat tip to Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk for pointing this out in a Monday morning article, because there’s a real reason NFL hopefuls in college football should be paying attention to what’s happening in the league right now.
Florio’s piece focused on new NFLPA executive director JC Tretter and his stance on the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. The NFL wants 18 regular season games. It wants more international games. It wants to shift more costs onto the players. And Tretter hasn’t been shy about saying so. In an interview with SI.com’s Albert Breer, he laid it out clearly.
“They want 18 games,” Tretter told Breer. “They want 16 international games. They want to lower our revenue share. They want to have us pay for more of the costs of operating the business — socializing costs, privatizing profits. They’ve said all these things publicly at this point. And that’s a long list of really shitty things for players. . . . Play more, travel more, get less money, take or cover the costs of billionaires’ businesses and then not have upside to make as much money as you can, like, that is a list where everything goes in the wrong direction.”
The NFL usually gets what it wants, but it still has to give the players something in return. If the two sides can’t agree, the emergency options come out. Owners can lock out the players. Players can go on strike.
One of those is much easier to pull off than the other. What sounds more realistic? A couple thousand millionaires holding the line and missing paychecks, or 32 billionaires who have other revenue streams and can wait it out?
It’s not a trick question. Owners have the advantage because players have a short window to make money. Owners don’t.
The NFL is called “not for long” for a reason. The average career lasts 3.3 years. The current CBA doesn’t expire until March 2031, five years from now. A lot of today’s NFL players won’t even be in the league by then.
But today’s college football players will be. That’s why they should start paying attention. In five years, players like Kewan Lacy, Trinidad Chambliss, Suntarine Perkins, Kam Franklin and Will Echoles will be in the NFL. They’ll be the ones living under whatever deal gets negotiated.
If owners decide to lock out the players when the CBA expires, the NFL Draft would still happen, but everything else would stop. Free agency. Minicamps. Training camp. Maybe even games. And that means no paychecks.
That’s where the cracks usually show in the NFLPA. Most players aren’t willing to miss checks, especially when their careers could be nearing the end.
But today’s college players have something previous generations didn’t. They’re already making money. Real money. Enough to save. Enough to prepare for a work stoppage if it comes to that.
Florio made that point clearly.
“Given the realities of the industry, most of the players who are currently on NFL rosters won’t be when the CBA expires,” Florio wrote. “Thus, the messaging should extend to college players who are and will be earning NIL money over the next five seasons.
“They need to be advised to start squirreling some of that cash away in the event that, come 2031, the members of the union will be ready to call the billionaires’ bluff and accept as much as a full season of not playing football, and not getting paid.”
Owners have the leverage now. But NIL money could change that. If more players enter the league with savings, they might be more willing to hold out or withstand a lockout.
That willingness is what the current NFLPA lacks, and it’s why owners usually win these negotiations.
If today’s college players understand that and prepare now, the owners may still get what they want.
But they’ll have to give up a lot more to get it.
