Posted on 02/20/2011 6:36:39 PM PST by Harley
Why is the looming NFL strike different from all other strikes? Well, first, it's not a strike, it's a lockout. Or at least it will be on March 4, when the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the National Football League and the player's union expires and the owners padlock the gates.
Apparently most sportswriters are rusty when it comes to covering sports labor issues - or perhaps they were never taught that much in the first place - so they don't know the difference. There's a big difference, and even some veteran sportswriters don't seem to know it.
Here's the Daily News' Gary Myers, one of the best football writers around, back on January 28: "[NFLPA DeMaurice] Smith needs to keep about 2,000 players in check, while [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell only has to worry about 32 owners."
Myers doesn't seem to understand that this actually gives a big edge to Smith: he can communicate with all the players through the press while Goodell must constantly be making calls to and answering calls from his employers - which is what the NFL owners are.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.villagevoice.com ...
Wow - who should root for? A league that smeared Rush as a racist, makes Vick a hero again, has monopoly status, runs pro-Obama commercials and panders to billionaire owners who shake down taxpayers to get stadiums built.
Or loads of thugs and prima donna’s who sometimes break laws and get away with it.
I hope they strike and the season is canceled.
I could care less i would not even miss the NFL if it all went bye bye forever
Several Packers have spoken out publicly in support of the anarchists in Madison. I’m damn sorry I pulled for them two weeks ago.
Over paid over grown felonious minstrel show!
Yeah, a conflict devoid of a good guy. Mutual Assured Destruction sounds like a good option in this case.
Looks like VV kicked of the clueless coverage themselves:
“Smith needs to keep about 2,000 players in check, while [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell only has to worry about 32 owners. Myers doesn’t seem to understand that this actually gives a big edge to Smith: he can communicate with all the players through the press while Goodell must constantly be making calls to and answering calls from his employers - which is what the NFL owners are.”
Yep, VV, the telephone and press are the only means by which people can communicate today. Definitely not possible to set up and email list with 33 people on it. Never been done in the history of humankind. Never. Not once. And you’re right, the players’ only means for communication is through the press, you know, the press like VV, right?
Missed that bit of traffic but I don’t give overpaid children that make big bucks playing kid’s games any credence anyway. I am not surprised at all.
You are right there. The news media is going to be very confused on Mar 4. This is the day that NFL collective bargaining ends and the government runs out of money. I predict Obama will be more interested in the union backed players and their plight and won’t even mention the government shutdown and the MSM will follow his lead like puppy dogs.
I would love seeing the NFL and its band of crooks and overpaid crybabies go away forever. Watching the sports addicted wackos would be plenty of entertainment. It is so sad and yet funny to see the morbidly obese middle aged guys out wearing jerseys and screaming at the game on a widescreen like they were part of it.
The owners deals are insane. How much did Jerry Jones hose the taxpayers around Dallas for?
The NFL was the final straw for me and Obama TV. I canceled Tv over a year ago. They had a 2 minute slow motion video of Obama throwing the football around. I blinked my eye in disbelief It was like Joe Stalin or Hugo Chavez. Then Rush getting smeared when he tried to buy the St Louis Rams. I think a strike could be a trifecta. The thuggish players, the owners with their monopoly and the NFL and finally Obama TV networks would be screwed. Bring on a strike!
Very well said. I hope the 2011 season is completely cancelled. I used to loved watching the NFL, and look forward to the beginning of each season, but now it seems to be such a circus. After a 4 yard stop they dance for seemingly an entire minute. The NFL and their demand for stadiums is crazy. I make a modest amount of money, but it would be something to consider for me and my family to go to a game. They paint a man like Rush as a racist and denying him ownership for having the courage to call out a no talent QB, that the NFL has been promoting. Screw them! There is other things to do with my Autumn.
Wow. I think the same thing. Sports talk radio is the worst. People flying team flags on their cars, trucks or homes especially when the team is in another state.
I just hate how they hype up the sport so much. I guess they are effective.
I went to a party months ago. It turned into a state u is playing a ball game on TV party. Well state U got beaten by AL. The school where the idiot fan poisoned Auburn’s beautiful trees.
Anyway, one of the guys at the party went on suicide watch because his alma mater got crushed. It was weird.
I'm a one-time die-hard NFL fan who has proudly gone for about the ninth straight year without watching so much as ten seconds of the Super Bowl.
I agree with you.
When a bunch of crybabies “strike” against being paid to play a game... they’re so over and done for me.
I quit following professional baseball (which I loved as a kid) when they went out on strike in ‘81. I could not fathom how a bunch of guys who had the privilege and honor of playing baseball could be so crass as to strike. Against what? Being paid more than any working stiff was going to see in his lifetime? Being hit by a wild pitch? Spraining an ankle when they slid into base? What was there to strike “against?”
Never got it. Turned me off professional sports since.
Let all of them eat dirt from here on.
Did you bother to read the article? It will be a lock out by the owners not a strike by the player. I believe this was the whole point of the article.
As a group, journalists are among the least intelligent life forms in the world.
Sportswriters are even more ignorant. They generally have no lucid understanding of the sport they cover -- only the personalities.
LOL! Obama loves to protect union teachers and govt workers with gold plated pensions, health care and benefits who are spoiled like millionaire ball players. Not that the owners who screw taxpayers are any better.
It makes it tough when the title of the story on FR in huge type says “The Looming NFL Strike.”
A pox on them and the TV networks. Hopefully they kill each other.
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