in any business considering the vast amount of expenses, insurances, exposure, troubles, ugly 2 a.m. phonecalls and overall risk that any business owner takes in our culture.
And once I learned about health insurance for life, no 18-game schedule and a variety of concessions made by the NFL owners’ side, I was floored that these idiot players didn’t keep negotiating and get a deal done.
The players wanted to go to court all along. It’s pretty apparent to anyone with half a brain.
So, yes, I’m with the owners in this fight.
Ultimately, the owners care about what’s good for the future of the business and the viability of their amazing growth and grip on the public’s attention, having most Americans with FAR more focus on the NFL than the most important issues of our times.
If you’re reading this than you probably care far more about the NFL than you do our wars, natural disasters, man-made catastrophes, global warming, dismal economy, pathetic education system and any other problem you can name that should be of far more significance than whether the Ravens play football this fall.
But that’s not the world we live in here in the United States circa 2011.
I loved the first Twitter comments from the great unwashed that say things like: “I’ve never put on my TV to watch the owners on a Sunday.” That’s correct.
But the reason you watch the games is because the owners have run and marketed the league properly and kept it interesting, affordable and “loveable” so you’d even be interested in the first place.
The players play and we all love and respect and pay for that. The owners do everything else and take on every risk in the deal that’s not physical. (And, yes, the players signed up to the play a tough, violent, risky game!)
These next few months appear to be rocky at best as courtrooms and lawyers will issue rhetoric, accusations and we can only hope the finger-pointing