Message to NFL Owners and Players

Dear NFL Owners and Players, Figure it out!

First off, the average American blue collar NFL fan earns roughly $35,000 per year and also has to be concerned about injuries on the job. By some estimates, one in six American citizens live without health insurance. Home foreclosures are at an all-time high. Gas prices are projected to top $4.50 per gallon and good jobs are hard to come by. How do average Americans find temporary psychological reprieve from the woes of a faltering economy? Well, frankly a lot of us turn to sports. We like to open a cold one, site down and watch our favorite professional sports teams engage each other on the field. Those of us old high school gridiron veterans who dream about what “could have been” had we not chosen a different path in life truly enjoy watching our sports heroes doing what they do best.

But a foul odor is emanating from under the proverbial porch these days. Rather than keeping tabs on the free agency market and top draft prospects, we (and by “we” I mean those of us who actually pay to watch our favorite athletes play the game) instead have to endure the deafening silence of our most cherished sport while owners and players wait for disputes to be settled in…court?

Yes, those of us “average Joes” busting our backs for forty (or more) hours per week to save enough money to pay the bills and buy the groceries somehow must figure out how to scrape together enough of what is left to buy a ticket to the big “Chiefs Raiders” game (insert your own favorite rivalry). Then there’s the hotel, beers and hotdogs at the game, a program and maybe a foam finger for the kid…or maybe a replica Lyle Alzado jersey if we have enough left over.

I’m not complaining mind you. I’m just a little put out that this prolonged feud between the multimillionaire owners and the multimillionaire players can’t be worked out, especially considering the intervention of teams of multimillionaire lawyers. I’m willing to sit idly by and watch this play out only so long before I feel compelled to remind the players AND the owners that both sides are ultimately harming the fans of the game. You see, life will go on if there is no NFL football season. Fantasy football players and die hard football fans like me will certainly be bummed out but ultimately, the fans won’t die or go broke without NFL. On the other hand…where will the NFL be without the fans?

You see, when people like me (struggling to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck) turn on ESPN in hopes of forgetting our problems for a while, have to listen to people like you (even those of you earning the league minimum) argue over money, well it gets a little maddening. Tom Brady and Jerry Jones…are you hearing me? No…are you really HEARING me? Peyton Manning and Jim Irsay, are you listening?

Your refusal to come to some sort of agreement with one another, your stubborn refusal to compromise with each other for the sake of the game and for the sake of the fans is being seen by the know nothing, beer swilling, armchair quarterbacking, cheap seat buying, jersey wearing, blue collar NFL fanatics as nothing but a greed induced stalemate.

Players…shut up and play the game.

“It’s not about money; it’s about working conditions and…” Shhhhhh! It IS about money and you know it. You have to know it, because even I know it. Look, is a private company obligated to open its books to its employees? Of course not. Unless an employee is also a stock-holder the employee has no business in the books.

If the books were open to everyone, what is to stop an employee from one company running off to “sell” financial information about that company to a competitor? If Nnamdi Asomugha knew first-hand what Al Davis could and could not afford to pay in order to retain his services, Nnamdi would then be able to essentially fix his own price and choose the team he wants to play for. Nnandi could essentially simply tell someone like Jerry Jones…”Mr. Davis can only pay me $”X” Million, so if you offer me $”X+1” Million, I’ll come to Dallas”. But hey, I guess buying championships worked for the Yankees, why not Jerry Jones? If players get to choose the team they played for, would Detroit still have a franchise? Would Carolina? Look up the word parity.

Are the owners hiding something in their accounting? YES! They are hiding the fact that ticket prices are ridiculously expensive, indeed too expensive for many fans. They are hiding the fact that they make 9000% profit on a hot-dog. Players…figure this out…you went to college. If YOU see the books, EVERYONE sees the books. It’s not about keeping secrets from valued franchise players, it’s about maintaining a competitive edge over other teams…about remaining solvent as a business.

Owners…shut up and share the wealth.

Any good business leader knows that to get the best out of your employees, you must reward good behavior and offer incentives. When players like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Aaron Rogers are at their best, they are winning games. When the team is winning games it is filling more seats. When more seats are filled, you make more money. When you make more money you share it with those who are directly responsible for filling those seats, and the cycle spins upward. This isn’t rocket science.

And besides, how much money is enough money for you? I don’t know of a single NFL owner who lives in a hovel on the “other side of the tracks”. I don’t know of a single NFL owner who drives a 1976 Ford Pinto Wagon (not that they aren’t quality automobiles). Open question to any of the NFL team owners reading this…”Have YOU had to choose between groceries and prescription medications lately?” I didn’t think so, so shut up about revenue sharing and make some concessions. Besides, what is in your best financial interest is to ensure that when the season rolls around, the league is in full swing. No season, no ticket sales, no ticket sales, no revenue, no revenue….well, you can surely do THAT math can’t you?

Is it really this difficult? And do we really need to be clogging up the Federal Court system with this sort of nonsense? I’m an overweight, middle aged, balding man with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and I can figure this out…why can’t you?

I have an idea; Pay me to serve as arbitrator in this case. I’ll take $100,000, Super Bowl tickets for life, and $5000 credit at the NFL online store. Get me a nice meeting room somewhere in Hawaii, order some hot wings and beer for everyone and I’ll have this matter solved in the matter of 24 hours (48 depending on how much food you order). I just need two player representatives (one of whom I would like to be Charles Woodson), two owners (Not Al Davis), me and a panel of about six or seven other fans, my fantasy team’s commish…oh and my mother, she’s an accountant. With this, I could guarantee that if you would only get back to “business as usual” no NFL team or player will be going broke anytime soon and players will have an incentive to perform and their health and safety would be guarded as best possible. Heck I’d even throw in a no-fail plan to sell out all games (even in Detroit) all season long if you also ask William Shatner and the Priceline people to attend. No lawyers, no judges, no lock-outs, no injunctions, none of that crap. Which side would I rule in favor of? The “side” that the owners and the players both seem to be forgetting …the fans.