What is at stake?

You will hear a lot of Millionaires vs Billionaires talk but when it comes down to it, there is a LOT of things at stake in these Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations between the NFL Owners and NFL Players.

An 18-game season, rookie wage scale, and improvement in player health benefits are important, but, how the 9 BILLION DOLLAR pool of revenue gets divided is the big question.

Here's how it currently works: The NFL takes in about $9 billion a year, and the owners get in the neighborhood of $1 billion for "expense credits" associated with running the league - things such as stadium construction, scoreboard upgrades, and promotions that they say keep the game popular. The remaining money is split roughly 60 percent (players) to 40 percent (owners). The owners are asking to take out an additional $1 billion in expense credits before the rest of the pie gets divvied up.

I made a table ;)

Income	Expense Credits |	Remaining $ |	Teams cut of player $ |	Teams cut of Expense Credits |	Each teams cut of Owner $|
Current
9 Billion	1 Billion	8 Billion	150 Million	30 Million	100 Million
Proposed
9 Billion	2 Billion	7 Billion	131 Million	60 Million	87 Million
Owner Projected
10 Billion	2 Billion	8 Billion	150 Million	60 Million	100 Million

The owners argument is 2 fold:
The players have been making a LOT MORE money and the teams have been making a LOT LESS.
The salary cap in 1994 was 34.6 million, 2005 was 85.5 million, in 2009 was 128 million.
While the green bay packers operating profit has plummeted from 35 million in '05 down to 9 million in '09 (The packers are the only team that release a balance sheet every year)

On why they want it in Expense credits: This is money that will be going right back into the teams facilities, marketing and improve the overall product. Hopefully driving up attendance and over all revenue! This will help teams keep the highest quality standards because the expense credits can not be pocketed to help the bottom line.