Blockbuster trade today:
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It’s quite the history with the stadium there in Cincinnati, with the current stadium having replaced Riverfront Stadium that was last used for football in 1999, and the current stadium previously known as Paul Brown Stadium opened for football in 2000.
Riverfront was very high on top of the list of complaints by players for its very hard astroturf, in fact.
So now here we are a quick 25 years later it feels like it’s already dated, and well they will renovate the stadium at public expense to keep the Bengals there through the 2035 NFL season.
The preliminary agreement, announced on Thursday, came down to the wire. The parties have until June 30 to agree on a new lease or approve the first of five two-year extensions, according to the Associated Press. The deal still requires final approval from the team and Hamilton County commissioners. The agreement keeps the Bengals at their longtime stadium through June 2036, with 10 additional option years that could extend the lease through 2046.
The $470 million renovation is less than the $830 million the Bengals originally proposed. The county will contribute $350 million, and the Bengals will pay $120 million. The Bengals originally proposed improvements to the club lounges, stadium suites, concessions and scoreboards. Both parties plan to approach the state of Ohio for additional funding.
Then in 2035, will a 35-year old stadium even meet the much higher bar the NFL and other sports team owners have for the stadium experience than for all the stadiums or domes built even in the 1990s, with some of those venues replaced already, as we have seen in Atlanta and coming up now also in Washington DC?
I doubt it.
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More news is at hand here in Ohio, and no doubt the aforementioned parties in Cincinnati are watching more closely now from across the state:
If you are a resident of Ohio and looking for some money that you may have forgotten about, well get to it as noted below, for that’s a whole lot of forgotten money in Ohio!
The new dome in the suburbs of Cleveland would stand to be used by the Browns by the 2029 NFL season.
The Cleveland Browns are closer to constructing a new, enclosed stadium after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed late Monday night a state budget bill that allocates $600 million in unclaimed funds to the project. The proposal to use unclaimed funds arose in early June and was a topic of much debate in the state government. Cleveland’s stadium proposal carries a $2.4 billion estimated price tag, and thus the state funds will cover about one quarter of the cost.
Ohio has a $4.8 billion unclaimed property fund, which includes various sums of money owed to state residents. Among those with unclaimed assets is former Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield. There exists a 10-year time limit on those funds before the money is transferred back to the state.
The new Huntington Bank Field will be a fully enclosed facility, and the Browns said it will host concerts and events throughout the year to bring regional and national visitors to Cleveland. The Browns’ stadium lease with the city expires at the conclusion of the 2028 NFL season.
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lol, what the heck do they do then with a relatively newer stadium that anchors their harbour front entertainment district? Crazy…
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Who the heck knows, other than to demolish it and incorporate the land and any new construction into another structure, such as a convention centre development.
For the sake of football stadiums, the dominant trend for new venues now is to have them outside of the city, in large part due to record logistical concerns like ample new space for parking, for public transportation alone won’t suffice for such crowds and activity.
The new proposed stadium in Washington DC is a notable exception, a return to the location of RFK Stadium of yore, but that stadium sat on dedicated federal land in Washington DC with a buffer to forbid development.
By contrast for the sake of venues for baseball, basketball, or hockey, they work out better in some areas still inside the city.
Even here in Philadelphia for example, we have a sports complex area on the south side of the city with the venues for all four teams and others right there.
Only the MLS stadium is further south and in my opinion, it is a draw for only one third of the area plus more convenient for people in Delaware and in parts of Maryland so as to reach.
Bigger soccer games, like in the FIFA Club World Cup now, are still played at Lincoln Financial Field.
Until January 2025, there was a well-funded and politically-supported initiative to build a new arena in the city, but it was met with fierce local opposition and ultimately derailed:
Less than a month after the 76ers got the green light to build a $1.3 billion arena in Center City, the team announced it was walking away from the project and partnering with Comcast Spectacor to develop a new facility at the sports complex in South Philadelphia.
The decision [12 Jan 2025], which came to light Sunday, upended a development more than two years in the making, following a string of daylong public hearings, hours of closed-door negotiations and hundreds of protests and rallies organized by arena opponents.
Most locals know we have the situation right as it has been, with the entire area dedicated for major sporting events sequestered from the rest of the city.
We were also able to again raise our collective 
together at once respected hometown firm Comcast Corporation, who own NBC and part of the 76ers, which many still remember as screwing us over with their increased service rates in 2020, even during a recession during the pandemic, and even had the gall to try to shift people to pay even more for live sports on their crappy Peacock app, which they are quietly phasing out.
An interesting exercise as to the best player in draft history for every spot picked.
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Eight of the up to 15 teams are making announcements on alternate uniforms here in July, many also with alternate helmets, but the timing on the rest of the announcements is not yet known.
The first scheduled announcement is by the Commanders on 9 July.
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Pittsburgh new one couldn’t possibly be uglier than their throwback uniforms.
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Two months later, now the matter of funding for the stadium unsurprisingly heats up, along with everything else like every summer any more beyond the heat, in Washington DC:
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You have got to be kidding me. Certainly an argument against unions in professional sports. I mean we all know that NFL QB’s are underpaid, don’t we?
More to this than originally met the eye. NFLPA executive diriector LLoyd Howell kept the arbitrator’s decision from the players, the opposite of what he was supposed to do.
He also is in a clear conflict of interest by accepting $3.4 million annually for his NFLPA position and being paid by other companies at the same time that represent a clear possible conflict, something no executive director in any sport has ever done apparently.
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Obviously the Viqueens didn’t draft this guy for his brains. Although I hate to see anyone get scammed, obviously transferring $120,000 to a food truck company you never heard of before after a phone call makes this NFL player a candidate for a future Darwin Award.
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You might be surprised by #1 on the list.
This is pretty funny from last night’s ESPY awards. The origin of the tush push. Video is 2:44.
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NFL Draft Signings and Millions of Earnings
This is a ton of data I ran into after reading the article via CBS Sports, which I linked below
In short, when a player is drafted in the fourth round and above, the player is in the “million dollar club” for each season for four years on their rookie contract on salary alone.
https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cba/rookie-scale
Let’s note most importantly that there is heavy variation in how much of that salary is guaranteed for each season, and very few contracts have ALL of the salary and other compensation as stipulated in contracts guaranteed.
The complexity of these contracts has been no doubt also why many players have agents, which in many states like Nevada and Florida must also be regulated by those states in which they reside or do business like any other regulated profession, EVEN if they are also licensed attorneys, which many are as well.
That number of remaining players is perhaps only about 120 players after one season as I would hazard a guess, when you subtract the injury releases and total busts from the top 138 draft picks.
All first-rounders from the 2025 NFL Draft, except for one player, have signed so far:
Here is an article about the second-rounders, but how only two have signed so far:
I’m not sure if this is summer sports media make-news on a slow news day for certain sports, or if this is a case of “where there’s smoke, there is fire.”
Or quite simply, these efforts are all via strategies by player agents and the players for a harder negotiation.
As prophesied correctly in the last article linked in the prior post, quite a few of these holdouts have signed in the last 24 hours.
But it is noteworthy that there have been a number of those who follow sports for a living who have commented on this front:
There were a total of 257 players selected in the 2025 NFL Draft and out of that total, there were 31 players who remained unsigned going into Thursday. The problem for most teams is that they haven’t been able to get their second-round pick under contract. Of the 32 players selected in that round, only THREE had signed their rookie deal heading into Thursday morning. However, the floodgates opened over the past 24 hours with 10 more second-round picks signed their rookie deal on either July 17 or July 18.
As things stand, there are 20 players who are still unsigned, which means there are 20 players who could still hold out.
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WELL NOW!
A resignation in the dark of night on a Thursday, with NFL media reporting seeping out conveniently on a summer Friday afternoon.
Oh yeah, it’s worse than it looks.
Resignation announcements after dark can be as much of a surprise as being caught in an affair on-screen at a Coldplay concert. Lloyd Howell’s resignation Thursday night as executive director of the NFL Players Association was not that much of a surprise.
For weeks, ever since the secret documents from the NFL-NFLPA collusion grievance were leaked, the controversy and pressure mounted on Howell. Multiple investigations, questions from current players, former players, more leaked documents and conflicts of interest all coalesced into Howell stepping down after just two years in the position.
When or whether we hear key elements of the rest of the sordid story remains to be seen.
And so for now, we turn to a clever opinion piece, which contains key facts generally not mentioned in the NFL media, with the exception perhaps of at least Mike Florio, who remains a contributor to NBC Sports.
Like the fact an independent arbiter ruled in favor of the NFLPA’s grievance case there was a PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE COMMISSIONER ROGER GOODELL AND THE FORMER LEAD LEAGUE ATTORNEY ENCOURAGED TEAMS TO COLLUDE against giving players guaranteed dollars. The key part is capitalized for a reason. Howell and the union didn’t want anybody to know about it.
Essential reporting from Pablo Torre and Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio unearthed the initial ruling. ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler and Don Van Natta Jr. added layers by exposing a secrecy agreement between the NFL and NFLPA to keep the arbitration ruling buried.
What should have been a slam dunk for Howell and his union inexplicably became a “nothingburger.” If only his tenure could be described that way. “Disaster” is a better fit. “Unhealthy” is more apropos.
You think this stuff doesn’t have consequences? Look at the second-round draft picks from the 2025 class fighting for guaranteed money. Every day is a scrap for the next cent in the NFL. The NFLPA’s job is to give each player a chance in that battle.
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