Let the aftermath begin (updated)

Update: Clearly, I spoke too soon: Players decline to vote on owner's proposal.

Original post begins here.

- image from 2/11/11 initial negotiations, pre-lockout, via Business Insider.

Freakonomics Blog weighs in on what the aftermath of the new NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) will be if the NFL Players Association votes to approve (the blog suggests that they will). It's clear from what has been proposed that the players were always in the weaker negotiating position. The owners has a windfall year of profits plus guaranteed TV rights revenue to keep them warm through a long, football-less winter, while the players were looking at going from an average, equivalent/estimated lifetime income of $89,000/year to being unemployed. So the players, especially rookies, getting soaked and the owners getting an even larger profit (hey, a billion dollars just isn't what it used to be!), while disappointing, is by no means surprising. And though I don't have any final details of the CBA to look at, it seems to me that this is a much better result than what the owners were originally pushing for. To that end, the Players Association is to be commended for holding out for the best deal possible and not completely screwing over players of the future.

But you're not here for my political commentary on management-labor relations in 21st Century American sports... so here's the blurb on how this will affect the actual game in the 2011 season:

Free agency is going be chaotic and messy. Once the deal is finally ratified by everyone – and we are not sure when that is going to happen — then we are going to see a very rapid free agency period. Some teams are over the cap right now. Because NFL contracts are not guaranteed, some players – who will be voting for this agreement – will suddenly be out of a job. Teams that are looking to fill holes will now be looking at free agents. And the time they have to look at these free agents is very short, so I would expect some mistakes are going to be made in the next few days, i.e. overpaying for talent, passing on talent you should keep, etc… Furthermore, teams are also going to be looking at all the undrafted free agents – players who would have been contacts by teams last April – at the same time. So however your favorite team’s roster looks like right now, it could look very different in just a few weeks.