Form A Union & Sue The NFL

The NFL has a problem and it’s not whether the rain in Miami will spoil the festivities of this years Super Bowl.  No, they have a CBA problem.   See, they don’t have one and apparently they are not even close.

The NFL owners are prepared to play 2010 without a salary cap and that is now a foregone conclusion which means that teams will be able to dump salaries at their discretion without penalty.  It also means that the top 8 teams in the NFL will face restrictions in free agency.  Yet, that is not the problem.

The problem is 2011 when the owners will lockout the players, halt the season, and put the future of the NFL in question.  The owners want the players to take a paycut among other items and the players don’t want to budge.  So the 2010 season could be it for at least an entire year.  So, I say we fans form a union and then sue both the NFLPA and the NFL.

See, we are the NFL.  Not the players without the fans the players would be nothing.  Ex-college jocks working in construction or business without the pedigree of an NFL career behind their name to boost business.  Without us, the fans, the owners would be business owners with a lot of cash to fuel other hobbies instead of stadium renovations and concession stand takes.  Do you think that NBC, CBS, FOX, and ESPN would pay so handsomely for a product if no one was watching?  Of course not.

We buy the jerseys that add dough to the NFLPA.  We buy the season tickets and NFL TV ticket that feeds dough into the NFL.  We buy hot dogs, beer, and pay 20 bucks to park at the stadium yet year after year we get to see the ticket prices go up, the merchandise quality go down, and the play on the field mediocre in about 90 percent of the league.

We do it every year and we complain about it knowing that no owner is going to give something back to us, no player is going to pay our money back.  We buy a jersey with a players name and the player gets traded, cut, or arrested…or they change it to “Ocho Cinco”.  We eat the bullet.

We try and get a couple of autographs and most of the time we have to pay for it, if they will give it to us to begin with because they fear someone will sell it on Ebay.

This feels so much like one of those lovely government bailouts.  I feel like I’m dealing with Citibank again.  They complain to the gov. that they need to be bailed out, the gov. gives them billions in tax-payer money…my money…then Citi turns around and lowers my limit, increases my interest rate, and uses the money I am paying them with the changes to pay back the government…the money the government took from to pay Citi!  WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON???

Now, the NFL wants to do the same thing.  The owners will tell the NFLPA they don’t want to pay these ridiculous salaries or renovate their stadiums that were funded with public money and the players will say they don’t care.  They won’t give up the dough.

In the end, the NFL will close their doors in 2011 and the players will hold signs telling the world that they are being mistreated and that their families are starving.  All the while we fans have some moth-balled football jersey that is collecting dust and season tickets that we really will no longer give a crap about.

MLB and the NHL both locked out their players and it’s taken years for baseball to recover and the NHL is still an afterthought for many.  But the players in the MLB are back to getting paid and the owners are back to complaining that they are not making the money.  And the fans are starting to buy low quality overpriced jerseys to wear to a game that costs them more and more each year.

The economy is in a bind and has been for over a year now, gas prices are expected to rise above $3.00 per gallon again all summer long, and the auto industry wants us all to buy vehicles that cost more and get a scant more miles out of a gallon of fuel instead of giving us vehicles that can actually be fuel economic.  All so they can pay us back the money they borrowed from us in the first place.

The NFL has a decision to make and they will need to do so quickly.  The players have a decision to make and they will need to do so quickly as well.  The fans, well they don’t have a say in any of this which frankly sucks because when the NFL and NFLPA get off their asses and strike a deal that will put more money in the pockets of the owners and more money to proven veterans, and then finally return to the newly decked out stadiums, it will be the fans that pay for it all…including the year/s that are locked out.

Seems to be the new “American way”.