Hour 1: Guest Host Tom Pelissero, LaMelo Blockbuster Trade, plus NFLPA Head JC Tretter

24:25Tom Pelissero:So what's a feasible timeline, JC? Before you think I'm not saying what picket peg a date several years from now. I'm just saying to have real substantive discussions. What's the soonest you think? While the world watches the stars of the FIFA World Cup, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent. Future stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and neither do we. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. We did it when we made advanced safety standard on every vehicle. We engineered EVs with ultra-fast charging capability. And we're still doing it every day.

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25:25Tom Pelissero:Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. That could occur. Well, I think it begins of when we want something to occur. And right now, what's been clear is the league has listed a bunch of things that they want. They have been adamant. They have been very clear. They do a very good job of messaging what they want. They want 18 games. They want 16 international games. They want to lower our revenue share. They want to have us help carry the cost of operating their business. They want to cap high earners. They have been clear publicly and privately. That is what they want.

25:57But overall, that is a long list of bad things for players. That is more work, more travel, less pay, us carrying the cost for billionaire franchises, and then less upside for hires. That is nothing good for players. We have an agreement for the next five years. So I don't even think we're thinking of, well, how fast could we get this done? It's do we want to even have a conversation if that's what's going to be slid across the table to us? And right now we have a deal I think we're happy with and we're OK with and things are operating well under. And what's the motivation to speed up a process?

26:28And I don't think we're looking to do that. In the end, we're going to be judged. Myself, the staff, the executive committee, the board are going to be judged off the success of whenever we have the next negotiation. And we have to pick our time of when we want to do that based off the conversation that would occur.

26:43Tom Pelissero:NFLPA Executive Director J.C. Tretter is our guest. J.C., so you mentioned the owners wanting to potentially cut into the revenue share. You go back to 2011, as you know well, that was sort of a seismic shift in terms of going from a cap credit system to a true revenue sharing system. When we're talking about changing the percentage, which is 48 and change right now for players, is it possible that in order to accomplish that in a way that makes sense for both sides, we once again re-envision the entire model? Or what, if anything, is on the table in terms of financially how you end up divvying this thing up?

27:20I think one of the great things about our model is that is revenue sharing business. To the league's credit, to these owners' credit, one thing they are all very, very good at is bringing in revenue. And because we are a revenue sharing model, our players receive the benefit of those deals brought it. I always kind of chuckle when sometimes the league will sign a new big deal and there'll be a comment about like, man, the NFLPA got left out of this. Like, no, we get our percentage of all those deals and that's great. And that's what it should be. I could dive into the deep details of how the revenue share is calculated.

27:52I do not want to crush your viewership numbers, Tom. I do not want to drive people to a different channel. So I will not do that to you. I respect you too much to throw you under the bus like that. But in the end, this is important on how we're compensated. Our job as a union is to deal with compensation, work rules, benefits. And you do that by your revenue share. That starts it. As you start chipping away at that or changing it, we want to expand our revenue share. Our players want more, a bigger slice of the pie and a bigger pie as well. That is what our players care about.

28:23Tom Pelissero:All right, so let's talk about something that people can actually relate to, isn't going to make their brains melt right now. Good point by you. One month from today, the Rams and 49ers report to training camp because they have a transcontinental flight to Melbourne, which is a 16 - or 17-hour time difference from the West Coast. I've heard many stories through the years. It's obviously great for expanding the revenue streams and the things overseas. I've also heard plenty of stories from coaches and players about the various, whether it's a lockdown when you're in South America, whether it's non-working Wi-Fi when you're in Europe, all these different things.

29:01Tom Pelissero:Is this the one with the time difference, the Niners leaving nine days before, that makes us recalibrate? Or do you anticipate this is going to be full steam ahead internationally, regardless of how well this thing goes in Australia? Yeah, I think international expansion is obviously something the league's been very passionate about for a long time. But I think making sure the players stay at the forefront of that, making sure they have a voice and they're prioritized in that, and making sure they're taken care of both on their way out, how they travel there, what their experience is on the ground.

29:31In the end, international expansion, these fans overseas are not going to fall in love with the Shield. They're going to fall in love with the players. And that's what we've seen from the other unions in sports that have grown internationally, professional sports, is they fall in love with the players. So making sure the players are treated well and are in a position to help grow this game would be impactful, too. And that's the way they travel, where they stay, the facilities they're at, what the travel schedule is, because there's also coming back and then have to play another game. and these guys are tired and worn down and beat up, and there's one thing to kind of go through 60 car accidents on a field and then jump back on a 17-hour flight with the inflammation that comes from it.

30:12There's a lot of health and safety stuff to go into it, too, that we need to make sure we're taking a good look at to put the players first as we continue to do this and as the league pushes. They're up to their limit almost on how many international games they can have, but that's another area they want to keep looking into.

30:27Tom Pelissero:A big story over the past several days, or over the past several months, if you've been following it on the college football level, Brennan Soresby, who dealt with a gambling addiction. He went and sought treatment for it. It jeopardized and ultimately cost him his NCAA eligibility. He then won a court injunction, which then ended up triggering the Big 12 and teams. A lot of different things happen, JC. Bottom line, he ends up in the NFL supplemental draft pool in terms of filing the petition. The NFL decides on Tuesday we're just not going to hold a supplemental draft, which from a legal rationale perspective, plain language to the CBA, says if the league chooses to hold a draft.

31:07Tom Pelissero:But there's obviously a lot of other aspects to this that I know his attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, who has a long history with the NFLPA, says is still being examined in conjunction with the union. Long version of getting to this question, JC. What do you make of the Brennan-Soresby situation and what remedies, if any, could the union pursue here? Yeah, first off, obviously Brennan is not a member of the NFLPA right now. He is going to be in the future. And I think our job, as we've not been involved in these discussions up until this point, is to make sure we do our due diligence and understand.

31:37So over the last couple of days, as that announcement came down, we've been in contact both with his side as well as the NFL to get a sense of what's going on. And then as we get all the information, we've got to make a decision on what could be possible or what we could do. And there's still more conversations to go. So I don't have a great update for you now. all of those conversations still ongoing. And we got to figure out what we can do as an organization moving forward.

32:02Tom Pelissero:Generally speaking, anytime that you have, whether it's player discipline, which hasn't been quite as front and center in recent years as it was at other times, there's always the concern that something's going to end up being presidential that league is going to overstep and suddenly do something that now is going to be what we did there that in that case, that now applies to all of the players. Historically, the PA has challenged those sorts of things. How much of a concern again, broadly speaking, not specifically on Sorsby, is something that by all accounts, and the NFL would not deny this either, has never happened before.

32:32Tom Pelissero:We've never had a case like this. How much more does that intensify, if at all, the scrutiny that you put on that type of a case? Yeah, that's why it's important to make sure we understand everything that's going on. In the end, our job is to defend the collective bargaining agreement. That is the agreement between the two sides. And though there's language in it, you make sure that you're defending the language and making sure no one's overstepping that. So that's what we're doing as of now. We are making sure we're reading into everything that possibly could be going on because you don't want bad precedent.

32:58You don't want somebody to overstep and you not push back on it. And our job is to make sure we're defending our members and making sure they're in a position to succeed. And we don't allow anything that shouldn't be allowed to go on. So there's still more time to go into that before we can make a decision.

33:10Tom Pelissero:You mentioned earlier 2 ,500 players. I think there have been roughly 10 to 12 gambling suspensions of NFL players. It's somewhere in that area. Obviously, Calvin Ridley was a very high profile one, Jamison Williams. And the rules have adjusted somewhat over the past several years in terms of penalties being slightly softened for gambling on non-NFL subjects. Which NFL players, let's be clear, just so everyone understands, can gamble. You just can't do it in the facility or historically hadn't been able to. And you definitely can't bet on games, much less bet on your own team. So that's a very small percentage, JC, of issues that have popped up at something that is so pervasive in society.

33:49Tom Pelissero:I'm curious, just from your perspective as a former player and now being the representative of all the players, how big of a topic is this? How much education is done? And to what do you attribute the fact that we honestly haven't had more types of these situations that could spiral into something bigger? Yeah, a lot of it's education. And I think both sides are motivated on the education standpoint. In the end, the game we play, the NFL game, is the most popular sport, drives a ton of revenue, which is great for both sides. And you would never want to get in a position where people are questioning the authenticity that they're watching.

34:25And I think that's really important for both sides. That's why we've been aligned on that, about educating our members on what they can and can't do. And there have been issues in the past, but we want to make sure we put everybody in a position to succeed. So the league and us have worked on trainings and education and making sure this doesn't become a bigger issue going forward. And everybody understands how this business works and what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. We don't really want to leave any gray area to that for the guys. So, so far, so good. That's something you can't get complacent on.

34:54You have to continue to educate and make sure as new guys come in the league, they understand what the rules are as well.

34:58Tom Pelissero:2 ,500 players, too, in the offseason. In the regular season, it's somewhere like 1 ,700, 1 ,800 guys that are, you know, a part of the union and active players. There's also, like, if you were thinking about players and their interests, as you talk about figuring out what guys want, it's like one half of a bell curve. You have this very small number of players that make a ton of money, and then almost everybody else is making the minimum, honestly, if you look across salaries across the league. So there's not really a other way to ask this, but, like, do all votes count equally? In other words, some of your highest profile, highest paid, most powerful guys have a vastly different set of interests than the rank and file.

35:36Tom Pelissero:How do you sort through that when you're talking about figuring out what the guys want? Yeah, I think it's important for us to represent every player because in the end, everybody's vote does count equally. Everybody's vote does get tallied up in the end. It's just a total. But in the end, you got to make sure that everybody feels like they got something out of the deal. You never want somebody within your union or within your membership to feel underrepresented or unrepresented. So even in 2020, we fought hard for minimum salary players and we increased minimum salaries by 20%. And that's great.

36:0360 % of our membership is on minimum salaries. However, you don't want the people who aren't on minimum salaries to look around and say, hold on, that's cool and all. But what did I get out of this? You know, I'm playing another game. I'm going up to 17 games in 2020. But what did I get? And you want to make sure every player understands what's in that deal that's beneficial to them. Because you're right. Patrick Mahomes probably isn't worried about minimum salary. You know, he probably has other motivations and other issues he cares about. And we got to make sure we're representing him and representing other players like him, but they're feeling like we're representing them well and negotiating on their behalf well.

36:32And that comes with having those conversations and making sure I have a conversation with Patrick, making sure I have a conversation with a guy in the practice squad about what is your life like right now? What can we do better? What are you looking for? And then my job is to go execute that in the bargaining room and bring back things that will make their lives better.

36:48Tom Pelissero:60 % is it's a wild number. I didn't know the precise percentage here, but that would be, you know, if in any business, 60 % of the people were making the minimum wage and you would say, okay, that's a very unique type of a workforce here. Are there things, you know, you raised the minimums in the last CBA, that was substantial. Are there other things you can do to help those guys? Because I can't imagine the percentage is really going to change. Yeah, I think one thing, it was a player idea originally, and it has grown in probably one of the most favorable benefits our players see, which is the performance-based pay pool, which is a formula that drives money to you based off how many snaps you played and your salary.

37:29So the lower your salary is and the more snaps you play, the higher payout you get. And now we have players almost doubling their salary or beyond doubling their salary in the performance-based pay benefit, which is great for players. And I think players would love to expand that. Every opportunity we get as a union, whether there's a true up on the salary cap or on the revenue, instead of putting it in the salary cap, we try to push as much of that money into performance-based pay because we know we're helping that 60 % and a little bit beyond that bring back way more money outside of the cap.

38:00Because in the end, the salary cap is really decided by the general managers. And it's driven to the stars and the highest paid players. If you're a minimum salary player, you don't see any of that salary cap upside. If we keep making the salary cap bigger and bigger, you're a minimum salary player. There is nothing for you there. You are not going to get more of that money. You are a minimum salary player. But that performance-based pay pool is something that every player really appreciates because at the end of the year you see that you know over a million dollars being dumped back to you uh over doubling your paycheck uh which obviously guys are are in

38:30Tom Pelissero:favor of and for those not not familiar with the performance-based pay pool it's based on how much you play your contributions relative to how much you make and so you'll have players making six figures out of that performance-based pay pool and i always laugh when it's like aaron rogers 38 like down there at the bottom like everybody's got something it all factors in uh somewhere along on the line. Just a couple other things, JC, real quick that I know fans care about. And you mentioned the NFL has put out there wanting 18 games. And that's been a discussion now for a couple of years. In your mind, I know where the players stand on it.

39:01Tom Pelissero:I know where they stood on going to 17 games. But ultimately, things have a price and there are ways that things can work out. In your mind, is 18 games inevitable on the NFL schedule? No, I wouldn't say so. Our guys have to make a decision on what they want to do. I wouldn't say any player would voluntarily go to 18 games. I think sometimes I get asked, hey, how will we know the impact of 17 games? Like how we know what that extra game is? We are we already do. Like 16 was a lot. You know, you didn't walk around locker rooms when there was 16 game season. Everybody was like, I feel great. I'd love to play another one.

39:3417 was a big ask. And guys are beaten up. You walk into those locker rooms post week eight. You go into those training rooms. It's the walking dead. It's the walking wounded in there. Guys are beat up. Going to another game is a major hit to player safety and player well-being, not just in these individual years, but also long after their career. As now a retired guy, I know how my body feels after playing a ton of NFL football. And that's something we would never just roll over and say, hey, it's inevitable. That is not something you ever just accept. Our players have to make a decision of what they want.

40:06So far, it's been clear they do not want to play more games. They are playing enough football already. So we never just say that that's inevitable.

40:13Tom Pelissero:Okay, so last thing then, again, because this is what the fans care the most about, JC is avoiding work stoppages, joining, avoiding anything that's going to disrupt their ability to consume football. Now, what, six days a week during the fall into December, into January, into now Valentine's Day for the Super Bowl here. You're talking about vastly different interests. You're talking about altering the revenue share potentially is what the NFL again wants. The 18 games is a significant type of a leap. There's potential pushes on whatever factors you identify the players really want here. I know, and there's big questions too about the media deals and the changing media landscape.

40:50Tom Pelissero:Do they opt out of that? The players have gotten the largest percentage out of that bucket of the national deals and the media deals for a long time. I know we're projecting this quite a ways out, but what is your level of confidence knowing the history, knowing the knockdown, dragout fight that led to a work stoppage in 2011, knowing how close the vote was in 2020? What are the chances in your mind that this next deal, whenever it gets done in the next, what, five years until the current CBA is up gets done without some type of a massive volcanic eruption. Yeah, I think we're still so far away from that.

41:23And it's weird how quickly these conversations have started. It's because the league is interested in doing something. They've been clear about that. But we are still five years away from this time. That is so much time. That is over a life cycle of a player on average. It's longer than the average career length. So we are still so far away from a work stoppage, a strike, a lockout. That though you're always planning for those scenarios, that that's not just something that's that we're really like diving into right now. Just because we are so far into a deal with so much more runway to go before that would ever happen.

41:56That I don't think any should be anybody should be concerned because we have five more years of football guaranteed. This is a very long time before something would happen.

42:02Tom Pelissero:As much as I enjoy camping out outside of federal courthouses to cover litigation related to any variety of matters, JC. Certainly that would be helpful if you could just accomplish that for me. J.C. Treader, thanks a lot, dude. Appreciate you. Thanks, Tom. All right. Fantastic stuff right there from J.C. And a lot of different issues. The 18 games thing alone, we'll take a quick break here, but listen, it's been talked about as inevitable. Yeah. You literally just heard the guy who is the head of the player association saying, no, players don't want it and nothing's inevitable. Let's dig a little more on that.

42:34Tom Pelissero:We'll get back to the LaMelo ball trade. We got tons of NBA news. Demarcus Beasley coming up soon, too, here on the Rich Eisen Show.

42:45The Rich Eisen Show, the podcast.

42:50Tom Pelissero:At J.C. Tretter, Executive Director of the NFL Players Association, on in the last segment. A ton of insight there. If you're into some of the behind-the-scenes things, they're going to dictate where the game goes from here. That full interview will be up on YouTube in a little bit. Tom Pellicero here, in for Rich. There were a few instructive things in my mind. Not a firm answer yet on the Brendan Soresby thing. There's been a lot of back and forth on that. It's a complicated, unique case. But J.C. acknowledged that any time you have a potential precedent being set, that's something that concerns the NFLPA.

43:24Tom Pelissero:So let's find out probably in the next, let's call it 36 hours. I would think by the end of the day tomorrow, they should have a pretty good idea if they're going to file anything and try to keep this alive for Soresby or if he's going to end up in all likelihood working out all year and then going into the 2027 NFL draft, which now has been officially set April 29th to May 1st in Washington, D.C., which should be a very unique setting. I'm not going to go down the various routes this could go considering it's on the National Mall, but let's just say I think it'll be a beautiful atmosphere to have the NFL draft in Washington, D.C.

44:01Tom Pelissero:Stay out of the reflecting pool. See, I said I wasn't going to go down all the different paths. I could have gone. There's fences up now. You can't get into it. The other part was when I asked him directly, is 18 games an inevitability? And he said, no, nothing's an inevitability. The players don't want it. They didn't want to go from 16 to 17. They don't want to go from 17 to 18. So you can sit there and say, well, he has to say that. It's leverage. It's a bargaining chip. And sure. But I think that what you're hearing from Tretter, who was previously the NFLPA president, There was obviously a lot of drama over a couple of years with Lloyd Howell in the executive director role.

44:42Tom Pelissero:JC then emerged from a field of three finalists this year to take on this role. What I'm hearing him say is the NFLPA for the first time since I've been covering the league wants to be very transparent and very proactive in terms of what they're trying to accomplish. The NFL has set the guardrails for many years, whether it was going to 17 games, whether it was we're going to claw back the revenue share, whether it was any number of different issues that they may have had, stadium credits and everything else. In this case, the union, it seems from listening to JC, is really going to target some things.

45:22Tom Pelissero:Grassfields might be one of them. And that is a significant investment. It's clearly not so significant that they wouldn't do it for the World Cup. There are real things. I thought it was interesting that he said they're going to get players to go and get out on these World Cup fields and see how they hold up because that's been one of the things the league has said, which is, well, you've got these little 180-pound guys and the field's like 40 % wider. You're not just chewing up between the hashes with a bunch of 350-pound men. All right, so get some guys out there. Run around on the literal surfaces.

45:54Tom Pelissero:And it's only a month, not four or five months. And it's also one game every number of days. Obviously, the World Cup is spread out, but you still have a bunch of games that are being played at, for instance, SoFi. Or being played, obviously, you already have a grass field in Santa Clara. But how does that field respond? Do they use the exact same type of grass? There's other places he didn't mention any of those fields. We all know, you know, Soldier Field. Nobody wants to play on that grass surface. Pittsburgh, it's the worst field in the league. It gets torn up. Pittsburgh has had people complain about it in recent years, too, because you have Pitt games on Saturday, Steelers game on Sunday.

46:31Tom Pelissero:This is going to be a significant issue. We'll see how significant it is because no one's giving anything for free. Neither the NFL or the NFL. Pierre just goes, oh, you want that? Cool, you can have that. Everything is up for negotiation. Money rules over everything else. What would you say, TJ? Cash rules everything around me. You know what I mean? Money. Dollar bills, y 'all. but there are a lot of other things involved. The Rich Eisen Show podcast. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us. We've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's OmniShade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin.

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