Cuts Show Real Greed of NFL Owners

Earlier this week SI.com reported that seven teams have made some sort of cuts to employee salaries as a result of the NFL lockout. Now, only the NFL players are locked out. Coaches, front office staff, maintenance staff, etc. are all still working. With the exception of head coaches, and high ranking executives like General Managers and VPs, NFL team staff do not make the kind of money the players do. They are far from rich. They are regular working people with mortgages and bills to pay.

Ralph Wilson Jr. -- One of the seven owners to cut employee salaries

At least seven of the 32 NFL teams have cut the salaries of their support staff using the lockout as an excuse. Those teams are Miami, the New York Jets, Kansas City, Detroit, Tampa Bay and Arizona. Some teams though have refused to make any cuts. Some facts to consider:

• The lockout was imposed by the owners so they can try and pay players less and now they are using it as an excuse to pay other employees less
• No games have been missed yet which means no major revenue generators have been missed. The biggest revenue generator of the off season, the NFL Draft, still went on
• Even before the lockout which the owners imposed all NFL teams were extremely profitable

So we know the lockout was an excuse for cutting salary. The actual reason for the cuts is that the owners can. If they give them an excuse to grab some extra money they will. Not all of them do it, but some do.