What Players Fail To Realize: Owners Risk Their Money; Players Do Not

There has been much talk about DeMaurice Smith's crusade to deny football fans a 2011 NFL season. Players demand higher salaries every year and insist on earning a higher percentage of teams' revenue than what they currently earn.

The NFLPA constantly claims that players should be making more and more money because it's them who make the fans want to tune in every Sunday to watch the games or fill the stadiums and wear their favorite player's jersey.It's true, players deserve to be well paid, but aren't they already well paid? The minimum wage in the NFL is 310k a year; I doubt there are many jobs that offer such financial security for unproven professionals. Still, it's time to look at the "real problem": The "BIG FAT GREEDY OWNERS".

Players argue that revenue distribution between them and the owners is not fair due to the previously explained reasons. However, can you really label as greedy a guy who put up about a billion dollars to buy an NFL franchise or someone who probably put up all he had and took a risk by acquiring a team for an up and coming league back in the day when the NFL was not really that popular, and actually wants a return on his investment? I mean, the nerve of those guys, to actually want to get a return on their investment!

Players have to put things into perspective. No player deserves to earn even close to what an owner does because they've risked nothing. They can claim they are risking their physical integrity every Sunday and any other lame excuse they can make. Bottom line is, they chose that career path and it has its physical risks , but players earn an extremely above average salary for playing 16 games a year, plus they've got jobs millions of people would kill to have, so they can't complain in that regard.

At the end of the day, no player should be earning even remotely close to what the owner makes because, let's face it, they are employees. Players are the ones who attract fans, owners are the ones who make the league exist. I'd like to see the players risk their own money and then see what they think when their extremely well paid employees demand that the owner take a pay cut, regardless if a team is making money or not , so that they can earn even more money.

As a die hard football fan I would hate to miss out on an entire season of football, or even a few games, in 2011. However, with the NFLPA's current stubborn leader, it seems like that scenario is inevitable. But looking at the big picture, it probably is what DeMaurice Smith and friends need in order to come down to Earth.

Let's face it, NFL owners are mostly billionaires;  if there is no 2011 NFL season, they will survive. The players on the other hand will have a tougher time, and I'm not talking about the Peyton Mannings and Albert Haynesworths; I'm talking about the player making less than a million a year who recently bought himself a pimped out Hummer, spent 15k at a Las Vegas nightclub and spent about 100k in jewelry.

My intention here is not to stereotype, but the reality is that many players retire and have spent away their money within a few years. That should not happen if those players think about their futures and not just try to live large, given the minimum wage in the NFL. If that is the reason why the NFLPA wants player salaries and benefits to increase, well, that is frankly not the owner's responsibility, and a full year of not getting paid sure does not help.

If there is no 2011 NFLPA, the only ones who lose are the players and fans, and the only ones to blame are the DeMaurice Smith & Co.