Category Archives: NFL Lockout

DeMaurice Smith, Drew Brees, NFL, NFL Lockout, Peter King, Peyton Manning, Roger Goodell, Tom Brady

Days of Our Football Lives

As the NFL lockout continues and labor negotiations drag on, it has become more and more obvious what is really going on here.
It is a scripted daytime soap opera.
Call it “Days of Our Football Lives” or “As Negotiations Turn” or “The Rich and the Reckless” but at the end of the day, just call it something.
It is not hard to connect the dots. With the soap industry flailing around like a fish out of water and shows that have been on the air 30-plus years being cancelled, those writers have to go somewhere, right?
And it is no secret that NFL has, over the years, actively positioned themselves to dominate the sports headlines all year long.
From changes in the draft schedule (from one day to three and in prime time) to the release of its schedule, the NFL (wisely) has looked to steal headlines from other sports February through July.
And now that the NFL has reached what should ultimately be described as their peak popularity, they have us hooked like a housewife with a box of tissues.
We are absolutely addicted to professional football. There is no real rehab program, no center for us to detox in.
And there is no placebo.
If we were logical, instead of worrying about what we are going to do without football on Sundays from September through February, we would realize that we make it through just fine during the off-season. How do we spend roughly 34 Sundays the rest of the year? And how will we make it without fantasy football? Well, what do we do the rest of the year without fantasy football?
The difference is in our mind. 
Like any addict, we think that we cannot make it. We need it, we have to have it. We need to talk trash to friends of other teams, we need fantasy scores, we need to watch games and question coaching calls and wonder why the 49ers are still employing Alex Smith. We need to know how Al Davis’ corpse will look in a 1990s/Starter era windbreaker this year.
This is not to make light of addiction, either. We truly are addicted to football – it is just that football addiction does not hold the same long term ramifications that narcotics, alcohol or cigarettes do. Or, if you are David Duchovny, the horizontal waltz.
Perhaps it’s the physicality of the sport, the speed. We can’t get the jaw-rattling hits from the NBA, we can’t get the speed of the game from Major League Baseball.
Or perhaps it’s the length of the season that drags us in. We get football for 17 weeks and playoffs – and then the action goes away. With other sports, their seasons span multiple seasons of the year. And before we can even forget they were over, baseball and basketball are back. They are never gone long enough for us to actually miss them.
Certainly, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
But why would our favorite sport go to these lengths to make us aware of that? Why the posturing and the drama?
Is the NFL that insecure that it needs to feel our anxiety over its possible absence? It’s like someone telling you how deeply in love they are with you, yet at the same time threatening to leave.
Like any good TV show, they set the stage for this in advance. 
Who knows who has been in on this nefarious plot to keep this cliffhanger going. Peter King of Sports Illustrated began writing about a possible locket back in 2009. Despite the conditions at the time being sunny, he began to warn of dark clouds on the horizon, like some football Nostradamus.
And like any good story arc, it’s taken time to develop.
The NFL played their own version of ratings sweeps when it got the courts involved, with the lockout lifted, then reinstated – coincidentally (wink, wink) giving the players enough time to swoop in and pick up playbooks for about 48 hours.
We’ve had heroes, villains and those who blurred the lines. Is Goodell a puppet? Are certain owners the power brokers? Do Drew Brees, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady really hold that much weight and respect in the players union?
Could we get more melodrama? How about union leader DeMaurice Smith telling lawyers to “stand down” a few weeks ago? That script has quite a bit of manufactured drama dripping from the pages.
When it’s all said and done, the NFL will reach an accord with the players and there will be football. Sadly, many of us will sit around talking about how close we were to losing the sport for the season, even though I now believe that was never the case.
Call me a skeptic or a conspiracy theorist, but there has always appeared to be some level of unbelievability (yes, I just made that word up) to the whole thing.
At this point, I just want to see the closing credits to this soap opera and look forward to hearing some hokey, slow, contempo, elevator style song – as a football spins in the clouds.
Slowly.
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Baltimore Ravens, Crime, ESPN, Michael Wilbon, NFL, NFL Lockout, Ray Lewis, Sal Palantonio

CSI: NFL

Well, the jig is up.
And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling football players.
Namely, Ray Lewis.
I had already planned out no less than four bank heists for this fall, you know, since there will be nothing to do on Sunday afternoons without the NFL, but then Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis had to go and expose my plan – along with thousands of others plans for crime – when he exposed our evil ways in an interview with ESPN’s Sal Palantonio earlier this week.
“Do this research if we don’t have a season – watch how much evil…which we call crime…watch how much crime picks up if you take away our game,” Lewis said.
Ever the dramatist, when Lewis was asked by Palantonio why he thought that, he sadly, yet passionately replied: “There’s nothing else to do, Sal.”
How did he read my mind? Does Ray Lewis have me on surveillance? Is Ray Lewis a part-time psychic? Does he know about those Algebra II assignments I didn’t complete all by myself in high school? I am freaking out a little.
In all seriousness (or not), let’s take a look at his claim.
Is it possible that we’re so obsessed with the NFL that in its absence, average Americans will run amok? Riots. Looting. Smashing windows. I’m picturing another “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequel. Or perhaps a new spinoff for the CSI series.
Well, if it were true, then wouldn’t crime therefore increase each year when the NFL season ends and decrease each fall?
(Hint: it doesn’t.)
There is one demographic where in fact the NFL season does serve as a potential deterrent to crime: among NFL players themselves. According to John Mitchell of Grio.com, arrests among NFL players have spiked during the lockout.
And if crime is bound to increase somewhere due to football or lack thereof, it is actually the opposite of Lewis’ take.
Justin Wolfers, a contributor to Freakonomics, reported recently on a study showing that crime rates increase during college football game days. Assaults, vandalism and general disorderly conduct increased on game days in cities of home teams, but were basically non-existent in the cities of the visitors.
Huh.
So, when people go to football games and get drunk tailgating or by having many $8 beers from the overpriced concession stands (only in the NFL, since college football bans alcohol sales inside the stadium), you are telling me that would cause them to act out after leaving the stadium? Total mind-blower.
Now, let us get back to Lewis.
Lewis thinks the NFL lockout affects “way more than us” – the owners and the players, because “there’s too many people that live through us, people live through us.”
Moments later, when discussing the root cause of the lockout, Lewis replied that it is all because of ego.
Um, hey Ray, do you think there is a little bit of super-sized ego going on when you claim that all fans live through you and they will turn to crime in the absence of being able to see you tackle someone?
Lewis has always been a bit dramatic and preachy, and it’s obvious that many players around the league look up to him. All that has served to boost his ego and put him in a place where he feels comfortable expressing his opinions.
All of his opinions.
ESPN’s Michael Wilbon made a great point on yesterday’s Pardon The Interruption, when he said that in the current media age of Twitter and Facebook, we are taking every sound bite and dissecting it like a dead frog in freshman biology. Wilbon said it is not worth it and we should not feel the need to find every angle to every little thing an athlete says.
He is absolutely right, we should not, mainly because it causes other athletes to feel like their voice is powerful and effective and worst of all, should be heard.
This blog rips and dissects all the time, but with good reason. For decades, leading up to around 2000, we blindly worshiped our sports heroes, as well as politicians, without knowing anything about them.
But we are learning more and more about who they truly are, not only because the media is 24/7 and won’t stop until it gets the quote, but also because athletes are now readily offering up opinions on their own. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes it is sad. Sometimes it is just plain nonsensical.
We can either ignore what we learn or accept it. We can still idolize them, but they become more human. We realize they do and say stupid things, just like we do. Just because someone is not a good person or has clear moral flaws has very little to do with how good they are at their respective sport. Likewise, just because someone is good at their respective sport doesn’t make them an authority on issues such as politics or race.
Or crime.
It’s not like because Ray Lewis is a Super Bowl champion and future Hall of Famer he is suddenly a renowned expert on the mind of criminals, right?
Maybe if the lockout drags on and the NFL misses games, Ray can take his two talents, one for delivering violent hits with force and the other for sniffing out evil and work for the Baltimore police department. He would not even need a gun or taser, really.
Guess I should cancel the grand theft auto I had planned for late September in Maryland.
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2011 Labor Dispute, Brian Schaefering, NFL, NFL Lockout, Rick Reilly

Where Is The Love?

Text from a friend last night:
“Dude, did you hear the lockout’s over! Sounds like football is back and so is our fantasy extravaganza!!!”
I still have not responded to the text.

Not because I am mad at my friend. (I actually did reply, I just changed the subject without acknowledging the lockout comment.)

Not because I am suddenly adverse to our fantasy football draft day. On the contrary, I’m always game for a 16-hour day of golf, fantasy draft, pizza, poker and whatever else we come up with.
It’s because, well, frankly, I just don’t care.
Something has either changed in me over the past 45 days since the lockout started, or I have been reading too many articles on our downtrodden economy.
Whatever the case may be, I’m downright furious this is such a big story.
I love football. I love the NFL. I love fall Sundays spent watching games and tracking fantasy stats. I love wearing my Chicago Bears hat like Clark Griswold when I put up my Christmas lights in December. I love playfully bantering with my wife’s family in Wisconsin about the Green Bay Packers, the Bears archrivals.
You know what I don’t love?
Billionaires and millionaires arguing over money for an extended period of time. They are the ones really engaged in a fantasy.
I don’t love media types like Rick Reilly, who makes a high six figures himself, writing about the poor players who made $680,000 last season and might have to get a “real” job supporting their family.
I don’t love the Reilly used Brian Schaefering of the Cleveland Browns as his example of someone we should feel sorry for. 
Schaefering made $200,000 after taxes last season from his $395,000 salary. He says his family is cutting back – watching their cable and cell phone bills, cutting out weekly date nights.
For dates, Schaefering says, “Now, it’s put the kids to bed and slap in a DVD.”
I don’t love how naive, egotistical and self-centered that actually sounds.
My wife and I do that all the time. $200,000 would be like hitting the lottery for us. We’ve watched cell phone bills and cable bills, grocery bills, and every other kind of bill for every year of our marriage. We’ve been crafty and creative at Christmas and haven’t bought a gift for each other in years.
There have been months we wondered if we would make it.
“If this goes into the season, my wife might start panicking a little,” Schaefering said.
Don’t worry, Brian. After six months of keeping your proverbial head above water, you stop panicking and just start doggy-paddling.
It’s called life. We just try to survive and advance to the next day.
At least, it’s life like 85 percent of America knows it.
Then there are those who don’t even have bills to worry about. Because they are homeless or jobless.
I don’t love the revelry that the owners and players treat this whole spectacle with.
“We can’t work out at the team facility! We can’t sign players to eight figure salaries!”
Meanwhile, the US dollar is falling like a brick from the sky. New estimates show that in 2016, China will surpass America in economic leadership. Gas is hovering near $4 a gallon, higher in some places.
Inflation keeps rising, but salaries for most normal jobs don’t. Unemployment hovers at 9.2 percent of the work force, a figure that has not been that high in nearly 30 years.
We do not really make anything in America anymore.  
I suppose that is not entirely true. We make reality shows and manufacture drama.
Mainly, we just consume. We’re obese and in poor health and then wonder why our medical bills are so high.
I don’t love billionaire owners arguing over more billions with millionaire players and I don’t love billionaire owners who scratch and claw for more money after fleecing cities for years by getting taxpayers to foot the bill for stadiums and arenas.
I don’t love the players pretending that this is the only possible profession in life and they are desperate.
I don’t love players who bemoan their medical care in a violent sport that leaves people seriously debilitated and that statistics show will shorten their lives.
Good sir, you chose to play this sport and are paid a lot of money to do so – even the Brian Schaefering’s of the NFL make more in one year than the President of the United States. Who has the tougher job? Deal with the consequences or get out of the line of work.
Miners and steel mill workers deal with some pretty serious stuff, too. They get probably a tenth of a percentage of the health care benefits an NFL player does. NFL players get treatment on their back, legs, arms, ankles, knees and hamstrings. My father has stood on concrete in a factory for 42 years. There’s no trainer ready with a heat pack at the end of the day.
Pensions are not high enough? Tell that to people who work at an auto factory for 35 years only to see it close and their told they have no pension anymore because it was paid out to some conniving CEO who won’t see any prison time but who was paid a 35 million dollars to go away and stop screwing up by lying and cheating.
I don’t love how our entertainment and sports are masquerading themselves as regular people with regular problems.
You are not us.
We do not understand you because you cannot possibly understand us.
You don’t love us. You just want to argue with yourselves about how to split up our money.
Our money is the money paid to companies when we buy their products at the grocery store, that in turn goes from those companies into advertisements during the long commercial breaks during your games encouraging us to buy more of their products.
Our money is the money paid to cable companies and networks to watch your games, which in turn is shelled out in 10-year contracts from those networks and cable companies for the rights to broadcast your games.
Our money is the money paid to go to games, paid to buy $7 hamburgers, $6 nachos and $10 beers at those games and paid to come home with a $100 jersey that was made in China.
Our money is the money that’s in your bank account, in your $10 million home and your $1,000 suits.
So sorry if right now, I don’t love you, NFL.
Sorry if right now, I don’t even care.
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