Mark Madden: NFL players deserve better than owners are offering in new CBA proposal

There are many reasons the NFL Players Association should turn down the owners’ CBA proposal. Not least among them:

• It adds a 17th game, probably starting in 2022. Football is the most physically damaging of sports. The players don’t need more risk. The NFL doesn’t need to play more games. The fans aren’t exactly clamoring. But the owners and networks are.

• Players currently contracted for 16-game seasons would be paid no more than $250,000 for a 17th game. In many cases, that would be a cut in pay.

• The franchise and transition tags still exist (although teams can only use one, not two). As long as there’s a franchise tag, NFL free agency isn’t truly free.

• Contracts still wouldn’t be guaranteed. (The players seem to have given up on this. They shouldn’t. Not with contracts guaranteed in MLB, the NBA and the NHL.)

Some facets of the CBA proposal might appeal to the players, a few perhaps more than they should:

• The players’ share of revenue goes from 47% to 48% — 48.5% when the schedule goes to 17 games. The latter moves more than $5 billion in the players’ direction. (That’s a lot of money but a small fraction.) The players get $100 million more in 2020 if they take the deal now, but that’s chump change. (The players once got 55% of revenue. How did the NFLPA let that figure drop so drastically?)

• Rosters increase from 53 to 55. That’s 64 more jobs, albeit with low-end paychecks.

• Players no longer will be suspended for flunking a marijuana test. The testing window will shrink from four months to two weeks. The nanogram limit will increase from 35 to 150. (But there will still be testing, and there will still be a drug program.)

The concession on pot is a diversionary tactic. Keep ‘em high, keep ‘em happy. To the players, it’s a major gain. But making it a focal point is reefer madness.

But the oddest thing about the CBA proposal is its timing. Why now? The current CBA has over a year to run. Why are the owners so gung-ho to get this wrapped up? (The owners have implied if the players don’t accept this CBA, negotiations will not be revisited anytime soon.)

Conversely, why would the players take the deal now? With over a year to go before a potential work stoppage, the players have zero leverage. If they wait, they will get more. The owners might huff and puff, but that’s a guarantee. It’s easy to have labor peace when one side agrees to be stampeded.

J.J. Watt of Houston seems to agree: “That’s a hard no on the proposed CBA,” he posted on Twitter.

The Steelers were the only team to vote no on the CBA in 2011. Wonder what they think?

Never mind the financial terms. Perhaps the players should take a hard line against a 17th game. (If they don’t, they should never complain about player safety again.)

The owners won’t stop at 17 games. Someday there will be a 40-team NFL playing a 20-game schedule. All the owners and networks ever want is more.

The NFL schedule is unwieldy as it is. The league won’t start Labor Day weekend (or before) because vacations decrease TV ratings. So using a 19-week grid (with two bye weeks per team, as proposed), the Super Bowl figures to be Presidents’ Day weekend, and that’s fine by the NFL. Fans will have off the day after the Super Bowl, making the game a de facto national holiday.

It might not be fine by NASCAR: The Daytona 500 will have to be scheduled accordingly.

That won’t bother the NFL one iota. The NFL’s goal is to be at the forefront of American sports 24/7, 365. It doesn’t matter what gets trampled in the process.

It’s amusing any fan would side with the owners against the players.

The owners will win. They always do. If worse came to worst, the owners would just go get new players. Players are disposable.

But the owners are monolithic billionaire greed merchants. The players have short career spans. The players get their bodies and brains broken. The players too often make themselves unsympathetic figures. But they’re far preferable to the owners.

Fans: “If the players don’t like it, they can get another job.” Sure they can. But if they opt to play football because they’re qualified to do so and have paid the price to get there, they should be treated more fairly than they have been and better than this CBA offers.