RedRamage

I remain skeptical. I feel like with the big business that the NFL is today that there isn't the room for racism that they may be have been in the 80s or 90s. Teams want to win and I don't think there's the need for interviews to "discover" candidates. I mean look at Blough, for example. He's a guy with very little coaching experience and yet multiple teams were interested in him for an OC position. How did they know about him if he never interviewed for an OC job before? I dunno. I by NO MEANS trying to say that minorities don't face discrimination nor am I saying that there isn't some level of racism in the NFL. IT's also easy as a white guy to sit back and say the Rooney Rule doesn't really do anything. I just feel if I was a minority coach who got interviews part of me would always wonder if they seriously wanted to interview me or if I was just helping them check a box. Still maybe if I really WAS a minority my outlook would be different.

That's a very valid point and I shouldn't be so quick to dismiss that he never faced any discrimination just because I didn't think he was bi-racial.

I dunno... I will say that I do think they've improved the rule in applying to to coordinators and to requiring it be out of team individuals. It's better than when it seemed like Dennis Green was getting interviewed for every HC job out there without ever being a serious candidate. But I still think the rule is flawed. Maybe it's better to have a flawed rule than no rule, but I can imagine there are more situations like what we say with the Giants in 2022. You interview a candidate, who's white... you're blown away and you want to hire him, but you haven't interviewed any minorities yet. You can't officially hire him, but you also don't want to let him go and get hired by someone else, so you essentially tell him the job is his, then you interview minorities with no intention of hiring them. I wonder if it's possible to have some sort of "waiting period" where no new hires can be made? There's potential issues there too, but maybe it solves more problems than it creates? Honestly I much prefer the reward system where teams get draft benefits for developing minority coaches and executives, vs. the punishment system where teams are required to check a box to avoid fines.

Which honestly just shows how silly the Rooney Rule is. Look, I totally get that discrimination happens. Especially 20-30 years ago when it was very much an "old boys" network and owners weren't very "progressive." I applaud the NFL for trying to address it, I just think the Rooney Rule is a poor attempt to do it. Seriously, would anyone look at this guy and say: Yeah, I totally think people would reject him for being black.

Pretty sure the theme is that all the candidates are human, which honestly is pretty limiting. When you consider there are billions more creates on earth than just humans Campbell is really limiting his options by only considering humans.

Is Tee Martin just a Rooney Rule check box interview?

Hmm... that's a valid point. I'm trying to find a way to not penalize teams for creating huge contracts under the old system, but you're right. The other option might be to allow teams to go over the salary cap for a period of time with ever-increasing penalties. For example (just pulling number out of thin air for demonstration), year one if you're over you pay a luxury tax of 10% on every dollar over the cap. Year 2 you pay 20%, year 3 you pay 30%, etc. Maybe combine this with an overtly large window for Cap and Floor but that closes the gap faster? I dunno... As much as I'm in favor of a salary cap/floor situation, I also don't want to be draconian in applying it so that it unfairly punishes teams which were operating properly under the rules as they existed. In the end this is just wishful thinking I'm afraid. Any Cap/Floor system is going to require the majority of the owners onboard AND the players as well. Plus it will almost certainly require opening the books, at least to the players union. I don't see any of those three things as likely.

This would definitely be an issue, but, at least in my opinion, a rough few years of figuring out how to get to a better system is not a reason to abandon the better system... that assumes the new system is better of course. And my idea to handle this would be to make the band huge to start with, then year-by-year close the gap. Let's say your numbers are right and the cap would be 202 and floor 181.5 for 2026 if the implemented it right away. So, instead of that let's set the cap at 352 and the floor at 101.5 for 2026. In 2027 the cap goes to 342 and the floor to 111.5. In 2028 the cap goes to 332 and the floor to 121.5... and so on. This gradual approach would allow for teams with super bloated salaries to have time to get some of the major contracts off the books and allow smaller market teams to ramp up their spending rather than just needing to add 40 or 50% of the payroll so throwing it at undeserving players just to meet the floor.

Not so fast... Now hopefully this doesn't happen, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if the Tigers go back if things solidify for Fan Duel. I pointed out earlier that the big issue with MLB doing the broadcast is that teams get a percentage of money brought in by subscribers rather than a set sum. A set sum is going to be more attractive to most owners... especially if your an owner who might not be fielding a fantastic team.

... that MLB owners don't want you to know!

Right, I worded that wrong. What I should have said was: "IF they are minimal I could live with them as it helps pay the bills." But as you said they aren't, and they are pervasive and they do downgrade the experience. Look at the uniform ads, for example. Especially for the Tigers the Meijer logo is very minimal. It doesn't stand out at all. It doesn't (at least for me) effect the quality of the game, so... have at it. Bring in some more money that hopefully gets spent on the team. (Yeah, I'm probably giving Ilitch too much credit there.)

No, I do not. I'm well aware of my less than stellar will-power when it comes to things that can become addicting quickly, so I don't even occasionally bet.

I mean, I guess it pays the bills and if the on-screen notifications are minimal I guess I can accept them... but I mostly agree with you that not having them at all would be best.

I found this part interesting: Main Street and other traditional RSNs promise teams a fixed amount per season for their TV rights, typically tens of millions for most teams. Teams carried by MLB, however, are not promised a fixed fee by the league. Instead, MLB pays them whatever their telecasts wind up bringing in, via streaming subscriptions and traditional TV distribution fees. So based on this a small market team still get small market media money from MLB. It's an interesting dynamic because there's no danger of MLB "missing payments" to teams because it's not a lump sum, it's a percentage of what MLB gets. It also incentivizes teams to have a better product because that would result in better subscriptions and more money. However that uncertainty means teams might be much more reluctant to commit big to a roster if there's not guarantee they'll get x-amount of dollars in media money. I think it also fails to recognize that big market teams will get big market media money. I still think some level of pooling of media money is necessary to balance the league.

Yeah, I'm rooting for a tie.

I agree that coaching (especially on the offense) was not ideal. But I think a big part of collapse also has to blamed on injuries... again. I know it seems like a cop out, but yet again the Lions had too many important players out with injuries. McNeil, Davenport, Read, Arnold, Branch, Joseph, Paschal, Onwuzurike, and Rodriguez all missed significant time on defense. On offense, just the OL: Decker missed 3 games, Mahogany 6, Glasgow 2, even Sewell missed a game. Outside of the OL: your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd string TE all missed significant time.

I 100% agree. I thought that was a bad call in real time and even worse on replay. And sure... every game has bad calls, I get it. But when it's a 4th and 4 play and the bad call gives them a free 1st down, it really stings.

I'm not sure I'd want the Lions to try to get him. On one hand: Premium pass rusher who instantly makes the DL one of the most dangerous in the game. But on the other hand... 28 years old, missed 5 games in '24, missed 2 games in '25, would cost a LOT of cap space AND would cost a lot of assets. That last part is the part that I'm most concerned with. If Crosby was a FA I'd be much more willing to go after him guns blazing. But if we're in a situation where we have to potentially give up two firsts just to get him, then also pay him a ton plus he's got 7 years of wear and tear... I'm a bit nervous with that. Our OL needs major attention (need: Center and/or Guard, and potentially LT, plus reliable backup), we may need two new safeties. We may need TE and LB help. I don't know if I want to give up two firsts when we have that many holes.

Wait, people are questioning that the Packers were trying to cover the spread? I get that there was no chance of the Packers winning so why call a time out and try for the FG... and if the score was something like 19-3 I'd say maybe there's some possible merit. But the Packers had a chance to NOT be shutout. I think pride dictates that you try to avoid the shut out if you can.

On a side note, with the win Dan Campbell has passed Buddy Parker to become the 4th winningest coach (by number of wins) in Lions history:

Yeah, it sucks we're not in the playoffs... and yeah we would have a better draft pick if we'd lost... but the win yesterday puts us at 4 straight years with a winning record. The last time Lions have four straight years with a winning record was 1969-1972.

Intellectually it's best if they lose, but in the game itself I'm be rooting for a win. I just can't watch a game and hope for a loss, especially against the Bears and Johnson.

So you're saying he needs just one more to tie Davenport.

The idea that was swimming in the back of my head that prompted this thread was trying to figure out some way to get a salary cap, but also give the players some slice of the revenue outside of salaries... thereby eliminating the idea that MLB is artificially limiting players salary and pocketing big chunks of money without any cap there. Of course this would be a major change for everyone so I'm not sure how it would go over and I'm not sure I'm smart enough to have thought of all the unintended consequences, but my idea would work something like this: Part 1: Salary Cap and Salary Floor are set (I'm with @chasfh here of the floor being closer to 90% than 40%). I would also set the cap lower than most people probably would expect it. Part 2: All media revenue is pooled together. 70% is distributed to owners based on their teams salary. 20% is distributed to players based on their individual salary, 10% is evenly distributed to players. Now I suspect part 2 might be confusing so here's a simplified example: Owners 70%: To make the math easy, let's say the Salary cap is $100, the floor is $80. There are 5 teams. Media revenue totals $50K. Then each team's portion of the media revenue would come out like this: The idea here is that the teams that spend more on their salary get a larger share of the media revenue. This way teams are encouraged to spend more on salary to get more media revenue. Players 20%: This would work out similar to the owners 70%. Players get a chunk of money based on what percentage of total players salaries equal their current salary accounts for. Players who have a bigger contract get a bigger cut. Players 10%: This would ensure that even those who are making league minimum would get something extra from media revenue. Obviously the percentages can all be adjusted here to what makes things seem fair. But my goal here is to set a salary cap to try to enforce a bit more level playing field for all team. I also want to make sure teams can't just pocket the big market revenue and not spend it on improving their team. I also want to try to make it so that players aren't locked out of making extra money if profits for MLB go up.

Yeah... it's not an easy quick fix... maybe we should have a thread where we throw around some major ideas to restructure things in MLB. There's an idea... 😉