Brown: Eliminate all subsidies

PHOENIX -- The NFL annual meeting for 2007 ended with Bengals president Mike Brown still calling for an elimination of all financial subsidies -- even ones designed to help his small-market team.

Owners, by a vote of 30-2, passed a supplemental revenue sharing plan Monday -- with Brown and Jacksonville owner Wayne Weaver voting no -- to create a $430 million pool of additional shared revenue and a list of three qualifier criteria for recipients.

"The subsidy -- will it help? -- the answer is yes, but we need a system that clears the decks," he said, "where money doesn't go to us or anyone else."

Brown contends that the biggest subsidy is additional unshared revenue created by large-market teams such as Washington, New England, Philadelphia and Dallas that forces up player costs for all teams.

The Bengals, who paid in roughly $2 million in 2005 to a supplemental revenue system, received slightly less in shared revenue. He said he is not sure how much the new system would be worth to his team.

The other big issue of the meeting was player conduct.

In addition to a new personal conduct plan that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is expected to announce in the next few weeks, NFL teams, Brown said, "are going to be charged with stronger support for players in the future."

Still, Brown said, teams should be given back the authority to suspend players without pay for their off-field misbehavior.