Drew Brees to NFL Team Owners: 'Show Us Those Costs'

Filed under: Saints, NFC South

There could have been a far more interesting dialogue between an NFL owner and a current famous quarterback than the testy exchange between Carolina owner Jerry Richardson and Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning, which has been recently reported.

It could have been an exchange between New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees and Richardson.

Brees: "Show us your costs. We know your revenues. Show us your costs."

Richardson: "We've showed the players everything."

Brees insists the players have not been shown everything on the owners' books. Richardson said at the owners' meeting in Atlanta the players had everything they needed to have a fruitful labor discussion.

"Ownership in the NFL would argue that even though the revenue has gone up their costs have gone up," Brees told Sirius radio recently. "So naturally we would say, 'OK, well show us those costs.' Because we have access to the revenue numbers but we don't have access to the cost numbers.

"Show us those costs and we're all reasonable and we'll come to the table and we'll talk. But they have yet in the last year-and-a-half to show us any cost numbers so I don't know what to tell you because we're there, we're ready to talk, we're just not being given the information."

That is a reasonable demand. The owners want an additional billion off the top before the revenue slicing starts, but the players want to know if costs justify that.

We know about labor costs for owners. Salaries are up. What else is up? We don't know.

There are two things to consider here:

o. If the owners are in such poor shape and have so much fear where is all the data on their costs.

o. If the players get that data are they going to spin it non-stop, even it clearly shows the owners do need some relief?

 

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