NFL Lockout: Advice That Both the Players and Owners Need To Hear

The NFL lockout is making owners, players and fans alike question whether or not there will be a season in 2011. Fans are trying to figure out how they will spend their Sundays with no NFL to watch. The players and owners are trying to find ways to get the fans on their side. The best advice to both the players and the owners is this: stop trying.

No, don’t stop trying to get a deal done. By all means, keep doing that. Stop trying to get the support of the fans. Most, if not all fans just don’t care how a deal gets done or what different agreements get made; we just want a deal done.

I am largely indifferent as to what agreements are made in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Despite that, there are a few things that I do care about.

1. An 18-game season is not a good idea. That hasn’t been a popular suggestion. The problem that we, the NFL fans, have is that every year we are forced to buy full priced tickets to two preseason games as part of our season ticket packages. Get rid of that policy.

2. If at all possible, avoid a hard salary cap. Actually, I would actually much rather see a salary floor. A 32-team league with a hard salary cap diminishes the quality of the teams. It is actually nearly impossible to argue against this point. The more teams there are, the more the good players get spread out. The games may be more competitive but the teams simply aren't as good as they were in a smaller league without the same restrictions.

3. The retired players need to be protected better. They played in an era where they did not make the money that the players today make. They also played in an era where their health was not as protected as it is now. One way or another, they need to be taken care of.

4. A rookie wage scale is a good idea; it just needs to be modified from what the NBA does. The NBA pays players exclusively based on where they are drafted. The NFL needs to factor the position the player plays to at least allow a quicker buyout.

When the lockout first started, whatever sympathies that I had were with the players. For one, they are the talent. Patrick Willis is my favorite player; every fan has one. Does anyone have a favorite owner?

Reason No. 2 is that they are the ones being locked out. If it was a strike, I would have been more sympathetic with the owners. My sympathy for the players was only heightened when Commissioner Roger Goodell sent an email to the NFL fans. This email tried to explain how unreasonable the players were being.  

Then Adrian Peterson opened his mouth, saying that NFL players were modern day slaves. With that comment, any sympathy that I had for the players was gone.

We, as Americans, have the right to our opinions and the right to voice them, no matter how unpopular they may be. We also have the right to remain silent. Peterson should have exercised that right. The owners should have done the same; neither did.

Don’t get me wrong, both sides have legitimate arguments. The problem is that they are each trying to gain the sympathy of the fans. We don’t want to hear these complaints, ever. We don't want to hear them in a good economy. Certainly, we don’t want to hear them in a bad economy.

The least valuable teams are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The smallest NFL contracts are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Many of the fans that the respective sides are trying to win over don’t currently have jobs. Other fans do have jobs, but those are far from secure. We just don’t want people who are worth that kind of money looking for our sympathies.

Keep the arguments in your head. Use them at the negotiating table. Use them in the courtroom. Just please stop wasting everyone's time trying to gain public sympathy. If it is decided in the courts, the side that comes out on the losing end would not be wise to complain publicly.

The only thing the fans want is a deal. When the leaves start changing and the weather gets cooler, we want the players playing football. We want to see the players that we have come to know and love (or hate), not replacement players that a good high school team could beat.

As it relates to their constituents, the job of these people is to get the deal done that they want. As it relates to the fans, their job is to get the deal we want. We aren’t picky, we just want the games.