apparently is was for the owners or they wouldn't of risked the golden goose by going to battle 2 years early then they absolutely had to.

but i sidestepped the question

No, i wouldn't say it was screwed up. But imo the NFL needed draft slotting in a pretty bad way. Bad teams weren't getting a parity boost by drafting high because of the outrageous money giving to the top 5 picks. Picking in the top 5 was almost a penalty.

This article sums up exactly how I feel.

Draft Slotting - Yes. Needed.

Owners taking a larger slice, in essence taking Billions in future money from the players - Greedy as ****.

i'm talking big picture and long range.

In the immediate future, the owners did screw stuff up by locking the players out and i'm not really sure why they did it.

In the long range, having the players control the sport IS TERRIBLE for the sport. Just look at the parity issues in MLB and look at the way the NBA is trying to head the direction of the NFL and not the MLB.

In the MLB you have some teams with payrolls of 200+ million and you have some with payrolls of 50 million. This is decided by area population and t.v. contracts.

In the NBA, you have players 'taking their talents to south beach' and all sorts of empty arena/small market problems.

You must have cost control for businesses to be successful and the players salary are the biggest cost. If the NFLPA wins and continues to win in the future because of the backing of the courts, it will lead to less cost control and worse league market.

I blame the owners for the crisis. But although "how we got here" may piss me off, once I accept that the old CBA is done/over, we have to consider what is best going forward. Players want no salary cap. As long as they are fighting to the death over that issue, I'll be hoping the owners more or less "win", only for the sake of my team actually having a chance to compete down the road.

So...you support the owners because they opted out (even though you don't know why), just because you somehow fear they'll become like the NBA or MLB?

Then you should hate the owners for opting out because that's the first step in becoming like those two leagues.

maybe so, it still doesn't change the fact that having the players control the league(ala MLB) is a very bad,bad thing.

not looking at 'who to hate'

looking at who helps the fans the most by controlling the league.

By using foresight, and knowing that if they had a lockout and failed in their efforts, the players could gain control......

then the owners shouldn't have taken the risk of losing the golden goose.

The owners didn't think the players were capable of de-certifying and suing. The players weren't bluffing. They won in court (temporarily) and now the owners are looking very, very dumb.

They might even resort to CLOSING THE BUSINESS in order to get their extra money.

There is no way the players bear the majority of fault. We are in this situation because of actions that the owners set in motion - plain and simple.

If the NFL wants to operate without a CBA shielding them from antitrust law that virtually every other business has to follow, then you'd have a point. Since the NFL wants their employees to agree to provisions that are normally illegal, you don't.

If the NFL wants an antitrust exemption, then they must open their books, like every other damned major sport in the US, and bargain on the % of the pie each side gets.

"Kobe Bryant would rather Die than lose" That is just silly and false...carry on~

LMAO touche

Have you ever been a business owner in which your product is the employee?

It may be a tired phrase but watching Billionaires and Millionaires squabble over money and act if they are being taken advantage of, just doesn’t play very well to the average Joe. You know normal people that work hard all year long just to stay above water. The owners were smart enough to realize that being a gifted athlete does not make a Pearson the sharpest tool in the box and they (the owners) have been pretty quiet and let the players make the occasional asinine statement like comparing their plight to that of Slaves. More than anything the owners could have said or done statements such as these show clearly that the little guy in this issue isn’t really anything like employees in other professions.

The owners opted out of a CBA that was making them millions.