Late last month, a potential NFL contingency plan involving a mid-October start date surfaced. The league may be willing to further delay its 2020 season, if it means fans can attend games. Two teams estimated a fan-less season would cost each team approximately $100MM, and Albert Breer of SI.com adds that one NFC exec said he does not imagine much debate will ensue if the league is faced with a choice of starting the season on time without fans or moving Week 1 to November with fans if it meant fans could attend. A $100MM per-team loss would mean a roughly $48MM reduction to the 2021 salary cap, which would cause titanic fallout league-wide.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the cap was expected to rise by more than $10MM from 2020-21 and produce greater per-year spikes than the 2011 CBA brought. While Breer estimates the league would make an effort to smooth out a cap decrease so it would gradually decline over multiple years rather than plunge off a cliff in 2021, a fan-less season would have tremendous consequences.
Here is the latest from around the league:
- A delayed season would mean Super Bowl LV being pushed back. Super Bowl sites, however, are required to free up more dates in the event the game must be moved, Breer adds. The NFL moved Super Bowl XVII back a week because of the 1982 strike and delayed Super Bowl XXXVI a week because of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Super Bowl being pushed beyond mid-March would require a negotiation with the NFLPA, since it would conflict with the start of the 2021 league year. The NFL is not at this point yet, but given the uncertainty the coronavirus has injected into other sports’ seasons, the league is preparing for alternate scenarios.
- Roger Goodell recently reduced his salary to zero dollars, according to ESPN.com’s Jeremy Fowler. The 14th-year commissioner requested to the compensation committee he not take a salary during the pandemic, and Fowler adds that took effect weeks ago. Goodell makes roughly $40MM in salary.
- Pay reductions have gone into effect at the league level. Various management-level execs at the league office will see their pay slashed by 5-15%, Fowler adds. These pandemic-induced salary reductions follow similar moves made by the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball.
- The next set of NFL owners’ meetings — scheduled for May 19-21 in Marina Del Ray, Calif. — will be fully virtual, per the Washington Post’s Mark Maske (on Twitter). Considering NFL teams remain in virtual mode, this was expected.
- The NFL will release its schedule Thursday. A full 17-week season will be scheduled, with some games possible to shift to Saturdays. No London games are believed to be on tap this season, however, due to the pandemic.
What r the chances Brady play the sb in tampa
Anything is possible and a reality especially this year.
40 mil salary? per year? if you couldnt here that….it was my head exploding
That is a lot of money. However Goodell has helped make the NFL the mega-moneymaking company it is today. Even with his mistakes as Commish , he truly has earned that salary
It was already a money making giant before Goodell. He’s riding the coattails of others before him and making a stupid amount of money while trying to ruin the sport.
Top 5 places to have a Super Bowl
1. Hawaii
2. Los Angeles
3. New York
4. Miami
5. Australia
NY in the winter?
Not happening this year until Nov or past if then.
When is the NFL going to stop with the Roman Numerals Super Bowl thing? It will get unwieldy…..
Or you could just learn Roman numerals. Your ignorance is no excuse to want a tradition to stop.
It’s not hard. 1s 4s 5s 9s 10s 50s 100s are important.
I is one. V is 5. IV is 1 less than 5, X is 10, IX is one less than 10.
And when he’s done he can learn morse code, how to train carrier pigeons and how to tune the carburetor on a Model T.
Hahaha. I heard the lighthouse of Alexandria is looking for a new operator. Time to brush up on my aiming fire light with steel mirrors skills.
The Roman Numerals is actually a bit plain for my liking. They should promote this extravaganza more along the lines of:
SB III: The Search for Spock.
SB MCVII: The Wrath of Khan.
LVDICROVS!
Even if restrictions were eased up, I can’t imagine many fans would attend games. Players will be in terrible physical shape and playbook execution will be comical without a proper training camp schedule. The on field product will be worse than the XFL with the pace slowing down to a crawl with constant penalties called and play reviews. Even if a no fan season occurs I think TV ratings will drop drastically after a few games as fans see how terrible these games are.
If you honestly think the stadiums wouldn’t be packed out after millions being stuck at home for months then you are clueless.
All somebody needs to do is go to home depot, Costco, Target, or Walmart to see how desperate people are to get out of the house. They aren’t just there to buy basic necessities to sustain life.
So let me see if I understand your logic correctly. People are tired of confinement so they rush off to a stadium so they can surround themselves with 60,000 other people who also crave some space?
So why are they there genius
Clueless is thinking the world will be the same after the Covid crisis. Have you actually paid attention to how the economy has been affected or how many people lost jobs? You might want to get yourself a dictionary a look up the word “recession”. People have been forced to re-evaluate their financial priorities. Seems like paying bills and being able to buy groceries is going to be just a tad more important than spending money on overpriced NFL tickets.
hasnt the nfl and nflpa been reducing drastically the number of practices and increasing more voluntary anyways?
I still think they should be able to talk to coaches and during this craziness but i guess that would mean they are on payroll and getting full pay while nfl is potentially losing money.
Top 5 places to have a Super Bowl
1. White House lawn
2. Vince McMahon’s backyard
3. Walmart parking lot
4. Alcatraz Island
5. J.J’s Bravo Eugenia
Alcatraz Island would be awesome.
The losing team has to swim to San Francisco.
“The next set of NFL owners’ meetings — scheduled for May 19-21 in Marina Del Ray, Calif. — will be fully virtual, per the Washington Post’s Mark Maske (on Twitter). Considering NFL teams remain in virtual mode, this was expected.”
Let’s see if these meetings remain virtual, even after they put the players back on the field…
younger ones might stay virtual but i think many of these guys are older and old school want it face to face.
Hell up until 3 years ago many of our upper management that i worked at wanted paper binders of the stuff we had available online but they like the feel of it and want to make mark up the paper ones.