Report: Roughly 60 NFL employees accept voluntary buyout
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.
And misers tighten belts.
At a time when the league keeps generating more and more revenue, it's cutting more and more costs. According to Sports Business Journal, roughly 60 of 200 eligible NFL employees have accepted a voluntary buyout.
Many of those accepting the offer of three weeks' pay for every year of service worked at NFL Films, per the report. Another concentration of acceptances came from the NFL's finance group.
The next step, if the league still believes payroll expenses need to be cut, will be to identify employees for involuntary termination. The fact that 200 were offered a buyout does not mean the NFL wanted to shed 200 total employees. The formula for the buyout package is required to apply to a broad category of workers. The primary factor often is the employee's combined years of age and experience.
Coincidentally, the deadline for accepting the voluntary buyout was the same day the league announced a record bump in the salary cap, to $255.4 million per team.
And, no, there's nothing wrong with businesses trying to become more efficient. But the same people who are deciding to trim the perceived fat are the same people who determined that the jobs being targeted for eradication were necessary. That's why these types of reductions typically happen only when a given company is going through tough financial times.
The NFL definitely is not. But it's still trying to save money. Earlier today, for example, SBJ reported that the league will move its in-house studio show, Good Morning Football, from New York to Los Angeles. The reason is simple; NFL Network has free space in L.A., and NFL Network has to pay for it in New York.
Never mind the fact that people will have to uproot their lives and families and move across the country. Never mind the fact that the show will presumably begin at 4:00 a.m. local time, making it very difficult for the people who work on the program to have normal lives.
The league sees it simply as another way to save money at a time when the NFL is otherwise printing cash.
It's a hell of a way to run a business. But, ultimately, it's the NFL's business. This doesn't mean others shouldn't comment on why such a successful company would risk eroding employee morale, on multiple fronts.
