NFL Labor Talks Getting Ugly at the Wrong Time
We are less than a week removed from the end of the NFL season. And as wonderful as that end was, with the Green Bay Packers dispatching the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV, the ongoing labor negotiations probably couldn't get any more hopeless.
As you may have heard, things got rocky enough between the NFL Players Association and the owners during a Wednesday meeting to make the owners walk away from the table in frustration. Mere moments passed before they swiftly canceled a meeting scheduled for Thursday.
According to ESPN, the notion that so revolted the owners was a proposition by the NFLPA that the players take an average of 50 percent of all revenue generated by the league.
In case you're not familiar with the negotiations to this point, much of the strife has been over the owners' desire to cut player salaries and to introduce a rookie salary cap. In other words, they have in mind to take money away from the players, not the other way around.
On balance, both sides have a point. On the one hand, the players proposing that they take half of the league's annual revenue is akin to a bunch of store clerks running the same idea past their manager. Of course, given the toll that the violence of the game takes on the players in a relatively short amount of time, perhaps they have a right to ask for something like this.
To the casual fan (and even the hardcore fan for that matter), all of this is infuriating. After all, the NFL is the most successful of the four major American sports leagues by a pretty wide margin. This is a business that brings in billions of dollars every year, and generally speaking, what we have here are a bunch of multi-millionaires arguing over who gets how much.
Is there an end in sight? Any light at the end of the tunnel?
Right now, the answer appears to be a resounding no. The deadline for reaching a new collective bargaining agreement is March 3rd, and it's basically going to take a miracle in order to get something done before them.
In other words, you can rest assured that the negotiations will probably carry well into the spring. If they carry into the summer, then the 2011 NFL season could very well be in jeopardy.
There have been strikes and work stoppages before in the NFL, but none have erased an entire season. This is of course the worst case scenario.
But for American sports fans, you get the sense that this would be a fate worse than death.
We shall see.
The good news, my fellow NFL fans, is that the NFL Draft is supposed to go off without a hitch. For a look ahead at who might go where, check out out latest 2011 NFL Mock Draft.
Anibal Sanchez John Baker Brad Davis Logan Morrison Mike Stanton Baltimore Orioles
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