(Disclaimer: the following was written by a life-long Chicago Bears fan, which automatically calls his supposed football knowledge into question. His unsatisfactory remarks follow.)
It was once said that a lie can get around the world before the truth can get its pants on.
Apparently, lies move at the speed of tachyons because, somehow, despite the best efforts of better writers than myself, NFL fans have gotten the wrong message.
They are, incredibly, holding the players responsible for the current mess in which the league finds itself.
In point of fact, at the wonderful ProFootballTalk.com (I'll carry the water for that site as long as it is up), they started a poll, asking who the fans supported in this situation. The results, to me, are indicative that there is a lot of bad information out there.
When I last checked in, a total of 26,192 votes had been cast. At that time, only 5,947 voters (22.71%) supported the players. 11,054 voters (42.2%) supported the owners outright, and 9,191 voters (35.09%) supported neither side.
This is significant to me, because over 25,000 votes have been cast, and that's enough of a sample size to make the following statement: Three-quarters of football fans based their judgments on the wrong information.
The following comments shed light upon the situation. The first, from "fanoredsox" says, " I know that if I went to my Boss and said "let me see your books so that I can determine how much you should pay me", I would be fired. They make a good salary for playing a kids game! GROW UP! " (Emphasis mine.)
The second, from "triplepropalm" says, " I was tempted to go neither, but I didn't want to chicken out and I sided with the owners. The economy is causing the owners to get less and less public funding to build stadiums and revenues aren't continuing to climb. I don't believe that reality has hit the players. Also, from all reports the players have been less willing to negotiate than the owners and they are pushing to blow up the fabric of the competitive structure of the league (draft, franchise tag, etc.). It's hard to make me sympathetic to billionaires, but the players and their reps have pulled it off. " (Emphasis mine.)
These two comments seem to sum up the spirit of the pro-owner side of the issue on PFT.com. They contain the errors that I believe are causing football fans to go in for the wrong side, and it is my intent to correct those errors firmly.
Error #1 - The players are employees and the owners are bosses.
The players are not employees. They are partners with the NFL. As partners, they split the profits. (As there are exceptions to every rule, there are two cases where the owners are truly the bosses: the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins. I'll let you be the judge as to the effectiveness of this type of management style, but I'll also note that neither team has been within Star Trek hailing distance of a Super Bowl since the guys signing the checks also started making the football decisions.) As partners, each has a responsibility to help the business grow, for the betterment of all involved.
Now, put yourself into business as someone else's partner. You and he have an agreement, in writing, to split the profits in a way that seems fair to both of you. You both sign the agreement. Your business profits. Then, before the end of your agreement, your partner chooses to opt out. Further, he immediately demands the first $0.40 cents of every dollar before profits are split. You ask why. He says it's because he's losing money on the deal. You, seeing more lavish appointments in the business, and more revenue streams, demand to see the books. He, in turn, locks you out of the business.
That's the situation. The owners opted out of a deal that they signed onto sans duress, demanded billions of dollars off the top of any profits made before splitting the rest, and refused to give the players any reason for doing what they're doing.
Error #2 - The players have been less willing to negotiate than the owners.
When the owners decided to opt out of a deal that looked like it was good to everyone, including the players, the players immediately offered to talk about things, provided the league demonstrate the kind of problems they were allegedly having. The owners waited until the deal was expiring before beginning with ridiculous demands, because they thought that they could use the threat of a lockout to force the players into signing a CBA that was tilted more in the league's favor. The owners dragged their feet on things because they thought they held the hammer.
All the players have ever asked for in this entire scenario is justification for the owners' demands. The owners, in no certain terms, have told the players to want in one hand and, er, expectorate in the other and see which one gets filled up first.
Meanwhile, those recalcitrant players and saintly owners did agree on one thing: a rookie wage scale. Even the players saw the growing stupidity of paying an unproven player tens of millions of dollars, sight unseen, whether that player was Sam Bradford or Ryan Leaf. If those supporting the owners were right about the players, wouldn't the players have fought against any sort of salary or bonus cuts? Seems to me that this cuts the legs right out from under the argument that the players haven't tried to negotiate in good faith. The players could have held their ground on this nonsensical issue; they'd have been wrong, but they could have. But no, the players agreed to the rookie wage scale right away because it makes sense, and because football is most effective when being played, not when being litigated.
By the way, I'd really like to know what news services "triplepropalm" surfs, because the majority of reputable sports sources (the aforementioned PFT.com, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN.com, FoxSports.net, and the major newspapers) have reported everything without a clear slant to either side, and a cursory reading of their reports on this story suggest that it is the owners who are less than willing to negotiate. Apparently, absent the coercion of a lockout, they lack the ability to trade on equal terms…
…which, of course, raises the question that no one who supports the owners can answer: if the owners are so bent on negotiating in good faith, why lock the players out in the first place?
The short answer, of course, is that they'd hoped to get the players on bread and water for a couple of months so that they would sign anything if it meant getting a paycheck again, which is a rather contemptible way to do business. So much for fairness…
Error #3 - Revenues aren't continuing to climb.
Apparently, it doesn't take much for a person to merely repeat whatever he heard on the news without thought, because this is perhaps the most vapid argument that anyone supporting the owners can offer.
For everyone complaining about how "bad" the economy is, around 90% of Americans are employed. At our rock-bottom worst, during the Great Depression, 75% of people were working. Working people spend money on things they like, and one thing Americans like is football. We like football so much that we mindlessly put up with scams that would shame Charles Ponzi.
For example, as some idiot pointed out right here, if you calculate what the owners made in television money from their current deal, and subtract that nice, fixed number that represents the salary cap, you find that there was money left over.
A lot of money left over.
Millions, even.
Some of us like to call that a "profit."
Moreover, as the idiot pointed out, this number doesn't take into consideration the increasing number of ways that the NFL has created to separate you from your money. Parking, concessions, merchandising, seats that require an oxygen mask and a Sherpa, stadium naming rights (Overstock.com Stadium, Raiders? Really? Is anyone but me a little uncomfortable with calling a football stadium The Big O?), that worthless network of theirs (Youtube is free and doesn't have Deion Sanders talking on it), and that beautiful little scheme they cooked up to make you pay twice for your season tickets (personal seat licenses…not only is a fool soon parted from his money, but apparently two times on the same deal).
Oh, and Jerry Jones figured out yet another way to get into your wallet. Hang a giant screen outside the stadium and make the fans pay to stand outside to watch the game inside.
I can't wait to see how this goes over in Detroit. They have a name for people who might stand outside Ford Field on a Thursday night with a pocket full of money: victim.
I won't even get into the utter insanity that is publicly-financed stadiums, except to say this: schools and teachers, libraries, hospitals, fire stations and firefighters, police stations and cops, sanitation engineers with big, smelly trucks, and street pavers should be publicly financed. When Soldier Field teaches someone to add, loans someone a book, sets a broken arm, puts out a fire, arrests a criminal, picks up my trash, or paves my streets, Soldier Field gets my tax dollars. Until then, if Wal-Mart has to build their own SuperCenters, then so does Mr. NFL Owner. I could argue that a Wal-Mart, as the corporation that employs more Americans than any other, serves the public good more than a 3-13 football team, but I'd be digressing…
While I can hold out hope that most fans out there will suddenly see the light, the good news is that this situation won't be decided by fickle fans already in the bag for the owners. Higher powers with more than a lick of common sense and a whole lotta law behind them are already working on our behalf to make sure that not one kickoff gets canceled.
This situation will be settled in court. The owners will lose. Football will continue as scheduled, and negotiations on a new CBA will begin off-camera. Whether it will be to the owners' liking is another matter, but now they will be forced to deal from a position of equality. Perhaps they'll even learn the oft-repeated definition of a compromise, that it's considered a good compromise when neither side is happy.
Personally, I could live with the idea that only the owners won't be happy, given that it is entirely their fault that we are where we are right now. They have taken the game from us, not the players. They have refused to negotiate in good faith, not the players. They are the ones looking like they'd steal the pennies from their grandmother's eyes if there was a profit in it, not the players. They deserve every kick in the hindquarters that is coming, and anyone who supports them in this mess just volunteered for a little boot-to-butt therapy.
To the players and anyone supporting them, I say "Solidarność !"
