2011 NFL Lockout: The Owners Are Winning and the Players Are Getting Stomped On

The owners are clearly winning this battle, though the media generally calls it a toss up. The articles are about all the players who are having difficulties of one kind or another. Chicago tight end gets kicked off a high school football field. Ben Jarvus-Green takes up boxing. Boxing? Free agents don't know where they will land. Rookies won't have the extra time to get up to speed. And on and on the story goes.

Haven't read or heard a sob story about any owner complaining or even talking very much.

The players keep saying it is a "business." But they don't act that way. In a business, getting a union decertified brings out the high fives from the company's investors (stocks go up), bankers (risks go down) and management (get hassled less). From the employee's point of view few good things happen, if any.

Once decertified management has no obligation to bargain. Yes, courts are pressuring the owners to mediate. But the grounds are thin. The owners are stringing them a long as days turn into weeks and months of delay.

How do the owners benefit? They no longer have to share revenue. The goodies remain theirs, from stadium rights, to apparel and concessions.

As with most decertified situations, the employees will at least consider a new union. This time they may pick a professional group, as other artists/entertainers do, such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra picking the teamsters. UAW would be good; they brought realism to their membership, which they never had before and kept the owners in business.

Five years from now the owners will be the owners. Ninety percent of the current membership will be out of football, as Mike Vrabel is finally starting to realize, and he's one of the smartest of the group.

So what does that mean? He with a deadline (players short career horizon) loses to those without one (owners).

Solution: the media has to start focusing on the player's issues to try to get the season going. The players have to realize they hold the low hand in the game. And everyone has to hope the owners will act for the good of the game, not themselves, and let the 2011 or 2012 season take place. The players, above all, need to get a professional union such as the Teamsters or UAW. No time to lose.

Ron G. of the UAW should have been made Man of the Year in 2009 or 2010 for knocking heads and getting the UAW membership to accept reality, less jobs, in order to protect those that were available. Now those jobs are growing again with robust results. Yes, the UAW knocked heads with the government and the companies, but getting reality into the membership was the hardest task. It will be here too. So, I vote for the UAW and let's play ball!