As I said a few weeks ago, I find it almost unimaginable that the NFL is actually going to have a shortened season. In my eyes, the worst possible scenario is that we may miss one or two games because an agreement wasn’t able to be reached until mid August, and the teams will need time to prepare for the season. That would, however, be the absolute worst case scenario. I base this on two simple facts: (1) the Owners have too much to gain, and (2) the players have way too much to lose.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, the NFL is at an all time high in popularity. It has more fans, better talent, and more sponsorship/advertisement opportunities than ever before. There is just way too much money that the owners stand to gain from having a full season that I can’t see them letting it go as far as for missed games. I neglected to mention potential money loss, because I recently heard that no matter whether a single game is played, the owners stand to still make about 40% of their profits. Some might say that this is something that should worry fans, that the owners can still make money from a non-season, and that, as a result, they might not fight as hard to reach an agreement. It doesn’t, however, worry me at all. For the most part, all of these owners are greedy money obsessed men, whom if there is any money to be earned will do whatever it takes to earn it. For that reason, I find it very hard to believe that they would fail to capitalize on this peak of popularity.
As for the players, there are a large number of them who could potentially go without a season’s worth of paychecks and still be in good shape financially. Sadly, that group is not the majority. It is no mystery that a lot of professional athletes end up with money troubles after their careers are over, despite making millions of dollars per year while active. For evidence of this, one must look no further than former all-star Tiki Barber who is currently seeking to make a comeback after his failed attempts as an analyst for NBC. I don’t quite know how to explain this phenomenon, but for some reason even though these men get paid millions of dollars to play a game, it seems they often fail to set aside money adequate to protect themselves and their family, financially, in the future. My guess is that it’s because a lot of the athletes have never experienced having a sizable sum of money previously, and then all of a sudden, they leave college and become instant millionaires, and they simply don’t know how to handle it. Regardless, for this reason I find it hard to believe that the players, as a collective group, will be willing to miss an entire season; if they foolishly choose to, they will probably be regretting it for a long time to come.
It is for these two reasons, acting in concert, which makes me think this labor dispute is not akin to an immoveable object meeting an unstoppable force, like many experts would have us believe. One side is going to give way before this turns into a true disaster. Since I don’t believe that we have to worry at all about missing next season, I am going to carry on this offseason as if it were any other year. Starting soon, I will be keeping you all updated on the Jets biggest needs, wants, goals and worries for the upcoming season. And when any seriously groundbreaking changes happen in the labor dispute, I’ll make sure to keep you updated on all that as well.
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