Before getting to a discussion on a true moment in the business of sports, I wanted to note the NFL’s stance towards vaccinations, as it has flexed its muscle over players in a strategic way. The league has announced that games not played due to outbreaks will be forfeited, meaning no pay for players on the “outbreak team” as well as the competing team. It is yet another salvo from the NFL to subtly (or not so subtly) pressure players to drop any hesitancy on vaccinations.
The NFL is being strategic here and, of course (). They are mandating anyone to get vaccinated. They are, rather, making life difficult,, for players who make the choice, for whatever reason, to not be vaccinated. And, as they have done so often in collective bargaining, they are using a “divide and conquer” strategy to exert their power over the labor force, even to the point of teams requiring different color wristbands for the unvaccinated, the NFL version of the Scarlet Letter around their wrists (a tactic on which the NFL Players Association says they were not consulted).
The NFL and its owners are feeling emboldened on the eve of the 2021 season, putting the “Covid season” in the rear view mirror as much as they can. And the Packers’ financial statement released last week—the only public look into NFL team finances we have—showed how, despite a downturn of local revenue due to the pandemic, an astounding $309 million of national revenue was distributed to each team. In other words, before any team turned its lights on or earned one penny of local revenue, it had $309 million to play with. To put that into perspective, the player salary cap for last year was $198 million, meaning the owners had in national distribution revenue than the required player spending limit. With a team-friendly CBA for another decade and record-setting media contracts soon to kick in, these are salad days for NFL owners and they are emboldened to do what it takes to put the Covid season behind them.
As always, these issues tend to revolve around talent and tolerance. For some players who have publicly stated their hesitancy on the vaccine or refused to discuss their status—such as DeAndre Hopkins, Kirk Cousins, Cole Beasley, Dak Prescott, Najee Harris, Josh Sweat and more—job security is not an issue. For down-the-line players, however, failure to get the vaccine will give the team an easy reason to pick other players, especially bottom-of-the-roster players on cutdown day. Lower talent = lower tolerance. Several agents have told me teams are opting against bringing in tryout players without vaccination, a real consequence to the marginal player force. The NFL is certainly not a democracy; there are different rules for marginal players, solid players and stars.
