Evolution Of Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA)

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Quinn (2012) analyzes the evolution of Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) throughout history in the NFL, focusing on the changes to the league structure addressed in the most recent 2011 CBA. The NFL has gone through many different labor negotiations between the League owners and the player Union (NFLPA). The NFLPA was established in the 1956 season where negotiations began, however the NFL did not fully recognize them as a union until 1968 (Quinn, 2012). Quinn goes into detail about the myriad of strikes, opt-outs, and lockouts that have riddled the NFL every few years since. In the 1993 CBA a league wide salary cap was agreed upon. This sent player salaries almost 38% higher than the previous agreement (Quinn, 2012). In fact, the salary …show more content…

One of the ways the league attempted to increase competition was by transferring $500 million from the top 15 teams to the bottom 8-12 in order to mitigate the discrepancies in things like stadium construction and maintenance (Quinn, 2012). However, certain clauses relating to prorated bonuses to achieve compliance with salary cap requirements gave a deceptive positive outcome for competition when in 2009 “actual pay as a percent of team revenues varied from 34.4% -71.8%. This meant that richer teams had more flexibility in attracting better players than their less well-off brethren (Quinn, 2012).” It encouraged and widened the gap between good teams (more wins) and bad (less wins) rather than promoting competition between teams. This would then support the idea that the “better” teams had higher payrolls and thus more regular season …show more content…

These players are typically high paid among their teammates, as they yield a higher productivity for the team than those who are less skilled. While team statistics can be boosted through this recruitment effort, it tends to lead to increased inequality of pay within teams, threatening team cohesion and each relatively low-paid member’s motivation to cooperate with coaches and players. Congruent with his hypothesis, Borghesi (2008) finds in his study of 19,256 player-performance-year observations and 2,696 NFL regular season games between 1994 and 2004, that teams with the highest pay distribution inequality are the most likely to perform the