When it comes to the labor dispute between the NFL players and team owners, I am supporting the latter. It's not because I am a shill for management who hates the working man; in fact, this stance makes me uncomfortable at a visceral level. However, I am supporting the owners because players come and go while ownership largely stays around for an extended stretch. I guess when it comes right down to it I am supporting ownership because I care about my team and what is good for it more than I care about what is good for the transient group that are players.
I am unmoved by the fact that player careers in the NFL last only a few years. Yeah, it sucks that they can only pull down mid-six-figure salaries for an average of three and a half years. NFL minimums in those three-plus seasons would amount to about $1.2MM--not bad for a first job out of college. Hell, if they lasted just one year in the NFL, they still earn $325K for that season. I think that would be enough to get most people off to a good start in life, particularly when most players had their education paid for and are positioned to cash in on their athletic exploits as they enter the regular work force.
I am no fan of many of the guys that own NFL teams. Frankly, a lot of them seem pretty slimy. But for better or worse, owners represent the teams and, collectively, the league: as a fan, the health of those organisms matter more to me than the employment issues facing a highly paid work force. So just as I don't care what kind of guy Steve Jobs is when I buy an iPad, I don't care what sort of labor issues Apple has to overcome in order to keep producing iPods and iPhones. In the same way, I just want the Packers to remain financially healthy enough to be able to compete on Sundays in the fall; whatever the league's owners have to do assure that is fine with me.
Is that fair to the players? Maybe not, but it seems they are getting well compensated for the "injustice" they face. I would tend to care more about how Apple is dealing with its employees -- a group I am guessing is largely ununionized and compensated at a much lower level than NFL players. But, in all honesty, I don't think about them when I fire up iTunes; I just want the software to work. I feel pretty much the same when it comes to the NFL labor dispute.
Wow, I'm not a fan of this stance at all, which I'm sure isn't going to surprise you one bit. Specifically:
ReplyDelete1)You completely ignore the risk to the players physically. They are taking very real risks that will probably shorten their lives and, thus, they deserve some very special consideration.
2) The owners are claiming that they are losing money and the only remedy is to take it from the players. If this were completely true, they would do as the NBA is and open their books and prove their damages. The fact that they are not says to me that these remedies they seek are more than they need to preserve the health of the league, and is at least partly a grab for cash. I know you are familiar with a very similar situation unfolding elsewhere that shares quite a few of these points.
3)The basic problem here isn't the total revenue to the owners, but rather it's distribution. A more equatable splitting of revenues between teams would also fix this, so why then should the owners balance their scales on the back of labor.
4) The owners are the ones shaking down municipalities and states for government handouts, not the players. Why should we all give in and give them even more money when franchise value boosting alone is making them WILDLY profitable in the long term sense?
I understand the concerns about the Packers health in general, but I don't think that this should justify allowing the owners carte-blanche. Ultimately, it is the players that create the most value in this league, along with the taxpayers and the owners can kick back, lose money on an annual basis and still make out like bandits when they sell their teams.
I really wish you would reconsider.