Fans Will Fault NFL Owners for Lockout

The NFL is headed for a lockout and the court of public perception is forming. For the first time in labor history, the jury is going to convict the guys in the $3,000 suits.

That's because they're acting like the guys in the $2,000 suits. NFL owners are emulating the players, which is the one sure way to infuriate an already fed-up jury pool.

That's me, you, your neighbor, your neighbor's hamster and everyone else who's being squeezed by the Great Recession. Even in the best of times, it's aggravating to see college dropouts making $8 million a year for playing a game.

For once, the dropouts seem to recognize this. Neither side is going to win this PR battle, but the NFLPA is at least trying not to look like a bunch of greedy buffoons.

Meanwhile, the owners are huffing and puffing and alienating any fan who is bothering to follow this nonsense. The actual issues don't matter to most people, though a few things should be noted:

The owners are the ones who opted out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. They won't open their books. They want this fight.

The players?

"Let us play," they're saying.

And they're saying it over and over in a commercial released during Super Bowl week. You see a padlocked fence and an empty stadium. You hear flags quietly fluttering and a shower slowly dripping. Players, stadium employees, fans (including the requisite tyke in a helmet) say "Let Us/Them Play!"
The Other Side

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Most fans, in other words, think about the absence of games from the position of labor. That's because the vast majority of us are laborers, that is we work for someone. The players have a direct connection to the team, they are the faces of the franchise, they are the ones that the fans won't see jogging back onto the field come September.
-- Clay Travis on why the fans will blame the players in the NFL labor dispute
It's just a commercial, and it won't sway any members of the Owners' Party. But the target audience is all those independents who aren't already convinced the players can't produce valid U.S. birth certificates.

In most labor battles pro athletes have barely tried to court public opinion. When they did, they court it right over the owners. During the 1994 baseball lockout, Detroit All-Star Lou Whitaker wheeled up to a players meeting in a stretch limo.

"I'm rich," he said. "What am I supposed to do, hide it?"

Well, yeah. Or if you can't bring yourself to hide it, at least don't flaunt it.

Then there was Patrick Ewing's classic justification of the union position during the NBA lockout.

"Sure, NBA players make a lot of money," he said. "But we spend a lot of money."

Owners are usually content to sit back and let the players self-immolate. But this time they are the ones staking the low ground.

It has nothing to do with the lockout, but Washington owner Dan Snyder set a nice tone when he sued a small local weekly for daring to make fun of him. Then Super Bowl week left most Americans shaking their heads at the NFL's unquenchable thirst for a buck.

The centerpiece was Jerry Jones' $1.2 billion football palace. For the privilege of paying $800 to get in and buy $19 margaritas, fans could show up and stand like cattle in holding pens for hours before the stadium opened.

Then 1,200 loyal subjects went to their seats and found they didn't exist. Jerry hadn't gotten around to getting the fire marshal's approval for the temporary bleachers because of the blizzard that week. After all, whoever heard of crappy weather in North Texas in early February?

Fan comfort and safety took a back saddle to showing off the Jerry's Pleasure Dome. Every NFL owner wants one just like it, which is a big reason we're having this labor fight in the first place.

"We signed a (bleep) deal last time and we're going to stick together and take back our league and (bleeping) do something about it," Carolina owner Jerry Richardson said, according to Yahoo!

Good thing he doesn't tweet or Richardson might have out-cursed Antonio Cromartie. The Jets' cornerback took to his computer and ripped the union and owners, prompting Seattle's Matt Hasselbeck to tweet "Somebody ask Cromartie if he knows what CBA stands for."

We expect players to act like inmates. The owners of the asylum are supposed to take the high road, only they seem to have lost the map. Richardson turned into a Boss Hogg of condescension at a negotiating session the day before the Super Bowl.

"Do I need your help reading a revenue chart, son?" he asked Peyton Manning. "Do I need to help break that down for you because I don't know if you know how to read that?"

How can you pull for this goober to make an extra dime? And if he does, will he even put toward improving his 4-12 team?

Roger Goodell has tried to join the PR game, offering to cut his salary to $1 year if there's a lockout. NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith one-upped him there, saying he's cutting his salary to 68 cents.

For my money, both sides deserve to be treated like Hosni Mubarak at a Muslim Brotherhood rally. Neither is going make any friends, but the owners are actually losing some this time.

They should just shut up, open their books and stop treating fans like ATMs. And if they're really smart, make Richardson buy a ticket to every negotiating session.

If he gets it from Jones, he'll never find his seat.