(Long Island, N.Y.) Sundays are tough enough to get through once the football season ends. The latter part of the weekend up until Monday night takes a serious nosedive following the Super Bowl, so pigskin fans don’t even want to think about a potential NFL lockout.
It’s even hard getting pumped up for the upcoming draft next month with so many questions remaining. Talk about putting a damper on the gala annual event taking place over four days at Radio City Music Hall.
After what seemed like forever, negotiations broke down between the league, owners and players union. Roger Goodell commented, “We had 17 days of mediation (in Washington, DC),” the commissioner said. “We worked hard. We didn’t reach an agreement obviously. As you know, the union walked away from the mediation process (on 3/11/11) to decertify. We do believe that mediation is the fairest and fastest way to reach an agreement that works for the players and for the clubs. And we believe that ultimately this is going to be negotiated at the negotiating table.”
“They decided to pursue another strategy and that is their choice,” continued Goodell. “But we will be prepared to negotiate an agreement and get something done that is fair to the players and fair to the clubs.”
So much of the business side of sports can be quite dull and the behind-the-scenes negotiations that took place in the nation’s capital would bore the average fan to sleep. But the meat and potatoes of the talks have to do with money, of course.
With that said, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the talks is the proposed 18-game regular season schedule. The owners want it because it will generate more revenue in terms of ticket sales and television contracts. The players want to avoid that because it will result in more injuries. The owners have said that they will reduce the preseason schedule from four games to two to compensate, but the player’s union knows that the majority of starters (and players who will make the final roster) barely break a sweat during exhibition games before bowing out to the fourth stringers who will be packing their lockers up before Labor Day.
Getting back to the bargaining table is a must and hopefully a break like this will help cooler heads prevail. No one wants a lockout and strike, players and owners alike. All will lose money and the first work stoppage since 1987 is something we all want to avoid. Don’t worry about scab games, though. The NFL has already stated that replacement players will not be signed if the NFL Player’s Union strikes.
Getting back to the bargaining table is a must and hopefully a break like this will help cooler heads prevail. No one wants a lockout and strike, players and owners alike. All will lose money and the first work stoppage since 1987 is something we all want to avoid. Don’t worry about scab games, though. The NFL has already stated that replacement players will not be signed if the NFL Player’s Union strikes.
Hopefully this can get rectified before training camps are scheduled to open during the summer. It will be bad enough not being able to follow free agency, roster moves, OTA’s and mini camps. Picture having the warm weather begin to leave and not having any NFL action to make the transition easier?
The cooler weather will sneak up on us, the leaves will be on the floor and we’ll have no excuse to leave them there because 10 hours of football will not await us every Sunday. The average man cannot handle that, so get this thing worked out.
