Steve Young hopped back on with Tom Tolbert and John Lund on Thursday to clarify comments he made Wednesday regarding NFL ownership.
Below is a transcript of the first 10 minutes of the conversation.
Young: The headline bugged me today, and so I want to make clear…again we get chatting, chatting, chatting and I look back and think ‘my point was not made very well.’
Structurally, we talked yesterday about ownership, and I thought to myself I made it sound like Jed or John don’t want to win and they want to make money, but it’s more about structurally, not about them in particular, it’s about ownership. Owners are misaligned in the NFL. My point is players have an average career for three years. It’s an incredible meritocracy in the NFL. You play well, you win, or you’re out. And it’s now, over time, I’ve noticed that coaches are that way, right? Coaches and players have been in this game for a long time as far as meritocracy: play well, win or get out.
It’s now seeped into general managers, under pressure now that they don’t just hang around forever. They actually have to perform or they’re out too.
I think it makes the NFL better. It sharpens the saw right? What I said yesterday, what I was trying to say is we’re disconnected with ownership because ownership wins differently. And when they win differently they’re not under the gun. Now they’re clearly not going to fire themselves and that’s what I said yesterday, I get that. Also, you’ve got to figure that how they win, in team equity and how they value their company, their business. Financially it’s a business in the end. How they win is not necessarily business on the field. And so because of that owners are disconnected from that meritocracy. They make the ultimate decisions in the end, based on something that they’re not under the gun, they’re not at risk like players and coaches and general managers.
I guess my point is, how do we get more owners on the hook? You know so they actually feel that rigor, and I think it would be better for the NFL. My point is partnership to the competitive, white-hot space that the NFL is, putting owners at that risk too will only make it better. And so do we make a pool of money…why don’t we spend a little time trying to figure out how we put owners on the hook, for winning? So that they actually…that’s the point. Rather than equity, value of getting a stadium, sharing the pot…Cause in the NFL they share all the money. One of the big winning things that they did in the NFL originally was that everyone shares. Big money teams, small money teams, I get that. But how do we put owners on the hook?
It wasn’t necessarily about Jed, or the 49er organization or 49er owners. It’s that by definition when you’re 1-13, 1-14, how do we connect that rigor that everyone’s out in the parking lot cause you’re not winning, now you’re at risk. How do we put ownership at risk somehow…I guess because they can’t, they are going to own it no matter what. How do we put them at risk so we’re all connected in the decision making. When Jerry Jones is trying to figure out…Or let me think of another team that’s not playing well. When the New York Jets figure out what they’re going to do, the owner is not as connected in the rigor around the meritocracy as everyone else in the building. How do we get him, her, more connected. I don’t know if I made myself any clearer.
Tolbert: No absolutely
Young: I saw the headline that it was about Jed or it was about John and that’s not fair. My point was, by definition owners are disconnected. By definition they make money and make equity in their business differently than just winning. If it was just winning then it would all be aligned, but there’s different ways that they do it and therefore all the rest of us winning is everything, but it’s not with owners. And that’s my point: how do we get them connected to this whole thing.
Tolbert: Well, two things, one and you mention the word disconnect. Sometimes our digital team has a little bit of a disconnect between story and headline. I mean, they need to figure that out. Get a headline that fits a story. I got screwed on that a couple months ago as well. I was like, that’s not what I said and that’s not what I meant. So you guys need to get on that.
Young: Well, I mean if you look exactly…I mean can see how you misinterpret…I didn’t make my…Hopefully I made it a little bit better today. But that was my point. And so, for me, I didn’t want it just laying out there about the 49ers.
Tolbert: Oh, no. It was about everybody.
Young: It was more about how do we make the NFL better. There used to be leagues where the winning the championship, the owner got a bunch more money. But that doesn’t resonate either. I’m not sure that I have a solution. I just know part of the problem is the disconnection between everybody else that’s at risk and the ownership that’s just truly at the end of the day, not as at risk. They’re at the ultimate risk because of the business sales, people stop watching TV, you know ratings go in the tank, you know. They’re at the ultimate risk in the end. But the NFL now is so entrenched in society, that risk is kind of gone. and now we’re trying to figure out, how do we make winning the absolute white hot space for ownership as well.
Tom Tolbert: Well you don’t. I mean, they have to have it inside them and here’s what I think. Because you said this yesterday, and I don’t know if this is what you meant, but I’ve said this for a long time now, is that I think owners care about winning — most of them — but they care about winning right below making money. Like if they win, that’s great. That’s not priority number one. Priority number one is making money.
Young: It’s not necessarily — it’s not to the person though. That’s my point, I guess. Is that it’s not to the person and their decision making, it’s structural.
Tolbert: No, it’s in the league.
Young: The way it’s setup, you win as a team by building equity value in your team, because it’s a business. How do I build equity value? I get a new stadium. And yeah you have to win, I understand that. But look at — I guess that’s why I used the example of the 49ers, is that how much equity value has been gained when they’re not winning. And it wasn’t about their desire. It’s about how it’s setup structurally. And I’m not sure I have an answer. But I know it’s one of the missing pieces in making the NFL, you know — because of all the leagues with all the guys, and so many guys and the meritocracy that I feel in the NFL I want it. And I’m sure, look, there’s a lot of owners that probably would love to join that meritocracy. Look, I’ll pull myself at risk because in a lot of ways that’s how they got their team. It’s in their nature too. But the system is not setup for them to feel that as much as the players and…
Tolbert: How about this — because you can’t do what they do, I mean really the EPL in European soccer, they have it right. You lose, you get relegated. There is your motivation to win. But we can’t, obviously, can’t do that here because there’s not two leagues. How about this one: how about if you or the bottom four teams, or bottom six teams in the league, you do not get to play on national TV next year. No Thursdays. No Sundays. No Mondays. And there’s a bigger — how about a bigger pool for the owners that get a chance to play on national TV. Because now it’s in the contract everyone gets to play at least once on national TV. How about just saying if you stink, and you don’t care about winning, we won’t put your garbage brand of football on TV for people to consume. And you won’t be making as much money.
Young: Anything like that helps. And then also, if there’s money involved — like you can’t have small town teams in big town teams where they have still the same amount of money, but it all goes to the owner. In other words, the owner gets it. I mean, I like where you are going. Anything that makes it more competitive to the root of winning football games I think is phenomenal. That’s a great argument, not a bad idea at all. At least incrementally, you can start to put the pressure on. And maybe there are other ways to put pressure on owners that just consistently aren’t performing. I mean, that would be maybe from the league can start to think about how to best do that. All my point is, to me, football is so super competitive. Anyone that thinks that it’s — there’s no one, it’s such a meritocracy. Either play well, or get out. And excuse me, especially at quarterback, it’s week to week. And so you live under that rigor so long, and you see the benefits and the nastiness of it. And how much it drives you and others around you, in a weird way, I want to include everybody. Including the owners. And I’m trying to — that was my point. How do we do that. And so when you do make the big decisions. So the Jets have big decisions to make this offseason, name it, there’s 10 teams that have huge decisions to make. Who’s making them? Somebody that’s not quite, in the way I’m describing, at risk. And so it just makes the decisions much more difficult.