Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The National Football League lock-out is over.

The millionaires (the players who also double as their own small-corporations with annual revenues that top the gross national product of third world countries) and the billionaires (the ones who run countries have even more resources, luck and friends in key places) have come to terms.

That means we (the guy who works the third-shift, the swing-shift and the guy who wishes he had shift will once again end up paying the check for the enterprise) will have a football season. Indianapolis will also have its first Super Bowl this February and that's a good thing. It will be an even better thing if I am there.

The NFL is determined to play, and do give them credit for working out the details. I mean, after all a guys got to make his $5 million a year. Some owners are squeaking by with only $50 million per. Could you imagine the audacity of actually expecting a player to work for a living. Maybe Dallas owner Jerry Jones has a bake sale to cover operating experiences or Jim Irsay in Indianapolis hosts a car-wash.

That aside, I don't really begrudge players making lots of money. I'd make it if I could. They do go through a lot to play professional football. I don't have the current data, but I believe the average NFL career is three years. To get a pension from the NFL, something most old-timers don't get, you have to play seven years. You have just a short-time to make your fortune and probably the players will never have that opportunity to earn that much jack ever again.

They, the players, aren't without blame, they are just a little less at fault. They have very little sympathy from me. They have just been able to wrangle a very nice piece of the pie from the owners.

My real issue is the monopoly, the trust, the cartel or whatever term that implies business exclusivity used to describe the NFL. The elite owners in the world's most powerful and most successful sports league, ever.

They've got cash from licensing from the sale of almost every conceivable product or souvenir imaginable. (My favorite is the official NFL team train set you can buy in the Sunday newspaper ads) Like an infinite fountain, only with money, owners have revenues flowing in from every direction: television rights, cable TV rights, satellite program packages, radio broadcast rights, even live updates on your HTC. Let's not forget the basics like ticket sales, personal seat licenses, parking passes,

If you can charge for it, the NFL owners do. They are masters of getting every last dime from we the people.

Hold on. Is it really the owners fault? I mean really. We the fans have blown this game or all our games into something more than a past-time.

Can you blame the owners for wanting more and more money from fans? I mean really, we've been doling it out for years. Far be it for them not to put their hands out to collect it, especially when we are so quick to pay it.

Like the addict buying more drugs after losing yet another job, or unemployed guy using his money to buy lottery tickets. Neither know the, or want to admit they have a problem.

And of course when the training camps open in a few days, including the Colts at Anderson, we'll be there with arms wide open ready to embrace them as if neither has done anything wrong.

It really hasn't. They are just giving us what we say we want with our dollars and our attention.


Sent from my BlackBerry® powered by Virgin Mobile.

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