Don't worry: this isn't going to be an article about complex math, percentages, etc. It will however be about the CBA, which is really the collective bargaining agreement, which serves as a set of standards, guidelines, or rules of fair play between NFL teams (i.e. owners) and the players. You'd have to either a) hate sports altogether or b) have been in a coffee-induced coma to not have seen at least one headline threatening us with the loss of the NFL in 2011-12. But the truth is, a bunch of very rich people are squabbling over what percentage of the "take" they're going to receive.
Seriously, where's the love? While millions of Americans, and sports fans worldwide, struggle to pay the electric bill, keep their family fed, or figure out how health insurance will work when they retire, the billionaire owners of thirty-two NFL teams (or thirty-one if you believe what you hear about the Jacksonville Jaguars) are arguing over percentages in their profit margin. Sure, I tend to side with the players in most owner-player altercations, but I'm completely unconvinced by this one. We have a sixteen game season, players (players, as in people who participate in a GAME) are paid millions of dollars, which they can't seem to save, and teachers, firefighters, nurses, and policemen are paid the minimum. And they're arguing about how much of the profit rather than shutting up and playing?
The owners supposedly have HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS saved up to comfort themselves if there's a lockout; what about the equipment managers, the security guards, the concession workers? Who would really suffer? Not the rich, again, but the poor. The owners want to make a billion dollars next year, rather than the nine hundred million they made this year? There are thirty-two of them... okay, I promised not to do much math, but that's 28.1 million each, and it ain't denarii.
This is more ridiculous than Chrysler's post-bailout commercial fronted by known statesman Eminem!
Have you looked around Detroit? Have you considered the job losses in every major city? What are you arguing about? With great power comes great responsibility, and I don't just mean using your success to engender hope in a failing neighborhood, or depleted state (New Orleans, Louisiana). But what if a team like the Saints was just the beginning: what if the NFL endured a two or three year freeze in earnings, from the owners to the coaches to the players, and everything over that, the EXCESS, was turned over to the non-profits or poverty-stricken communities around those teams? What if the "NFL gives back" really meant it?
That would be one heck of a collective bargaining agreement. And it sure beats watching the CFL next fall.
