Florio Should Keep Banging His Drum

Lord knows I’ve called out Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk on more than one occasion for being full of it. (My favorite time being about five years ago when he posted that Brett Favre had called a Wednesday morning press conference in which he would supposedly be announcing that he would be retiring from the NFL – until it was pointed out to Florio that Favre had a press conference every Wednesday as part of his media responsibilities. Then, of course, there was the time he posted that Terry Bradshaw was dead…)

But for all the crap I have given the guy over the course of the last two years, I always gave him credit for being way, way out front on the Michael Vick story. He would just not let go, putting every so-called reputable media source to shame in the process.

And I think he could be on to his next big story if he keeps after it.

Over the course of the offseason, Mike has been highlighting the many NFL teams that have laid off club level employees or asked them to take unpaid leave, all while citing the economy and the need to keep costs in line. When the stories started to come out, I called the Packers and was told that there had not been any layoffs at 1265 Lombardi nor were there any in the works.

Now, a cynic might suggest that the Packers have no plans to fire any employees because they are the only club that is forced to open its books, due to the fact that they are a public entity. It’s hard to justify laying people off when you’re generating a $20 million profit in an environment where the biggest and best financial firms are posting record losses. (Of course, the Packers final profit was only $4 million thanks to various investments with said best and brightest, which might bring one to wonder if some of the money men and women working in the NFL should take over Wall Street…but I digress)

The thing that can’t be ignored is this: A large number of NFL teams are laying people off or asking them to take unpaid leave. Almost all of them are citing the economy and the need to balance the books as the main reason why. It’s hard to buy that in light of the Packers’ numbers. (And the Packers, it should be pointed out, actually decreased operating expenses outside of players costs by $6.1 million without laying anybody off. How is it that the Packers can find that kind of cost cutting without firing one person but clubs like the Panthers are firing 20 people in the name of keeping costs in line?)

As a fan, it’s incredibly hard not to echo newly elected Executive Director of the NFLPA Demaurice Smith and ask that NFL teams open their books and, basically, prove that they on the level.From Smith and the NFLPA’s perspective, of course, it’s about the CBA negotiations, but it would also go a hell of a long way in the court of public opinion.

And, for the league, that’s the biggest problem. It hasn’t got a leg to stand on here, strictly PR-wise, when it comes to keeping their books closed. They can claim, as Commissioner Goodell has, that the players know the clubs’ financials ‘to the penny’. But that doesn’t change a thing for perception of a sport where every single players’ salary is available for easy perusal at any time. The players can easily be made out to be money-hungry millionaires when the public knows almost exactly how much each of them are making, down to when they receive their bonus’. These are the guys fans identify with. And fans run into players all the time. We certainly aren’t running into Bob Kraft or Jerry Jones. (Hell, Ryan Grant was stuck in in airport on a 4 hour layover today. Somehow, I don’t think Dan Snyder or Pat Bowlen are having that problem…)

Interestingly, I asked Andrew Brandt for a defense of the clubs stance on not opening their books in our interview two weeks ago, seeing how he has spent the last 10+ years working on the club side of things. More interestingly, he completely dodged the actual meat of the question.

So keep it up Florio. As Al Pacino, portraying the legendary investigative reporter Lowell Bergman, says in ‘The Insider‘:

“I’m getting two things: Pissed off and curious.”