The Bizarre Cult Of Pro-Owner NFL Fanboys
 

http://deadspin.com/5800887/the-biza...er-nfl-fanboys

Here's a tidy summation of how we've managed to get to where we are with the NFL lockout. A few years ago, the players and owners agreed to a new CBA, with only Ralph Wilson and Mike Brown voting against the agreement, in Wilson's case because he's old and easily confused by things.

Then, almost immediately after that agreement was approved, all the other owners suddenly decided WHOA HEY! THIS AGREEMENT BLOWS! And so, this March, they opted out of that agreement and locked out the players. The players, for their part, were happy with the terms of the original CBA and wanted to keep playing. But then Roger Goodell, who is a ****ing stooge, told the world that players being happy with the CBA means the CBA is totally unfair.

Now, the players decided to break up and sue the NFL to get the lockout lifted, which it was for seven seconds leading up to the draft back in April. The owners then fought to have the lockout reinstated while they appealed, and managed to temporarily prevail. So here we have one side that has shut down the operations of football TWICE, and another side who A.) didn't instigate the lockout and B.) sued to STOP the lockout and get football played again. This is now the longest work stoppage in NFL history, and it is the result of a labor battle initiated by the owners. Those are facts. It should seem obvious whose cause you, Mr. NFL Fan, ought to get behind.

So it baffles and angers me that there appears to be actual people out there who are squarely in the owners' corner when it comes to this labor war. I went to this post at PFT the other day, where Florio outlines a rumor about the league going out of business if they lose their appeal, and the number of pro-owner comments were just … ****ing … I don't even know. They must be plants. They have to be plants. That's the only explanation. How else do you explain comments like these? (Click to enlarge.)

It's like a group of people went directly to their computers after walking out of a screening of Atlas Shrugged. You can find reeruned commenters at virtually any Internet forum (why, just scroll down!), but the idea that there are people out there who would like to see the owners succeed in PREVENTING THE PLAYING OF ACTUAL NFL GAMES to spite NFL players strikes me as … what's the word? Oh, right. ****ING INSANE. Please God, let these people be planted there by Jerry Richardson. Don't tell me there are people out there this breathtakingly hardheaded.

Do you know how many NFL teams are owned by people who inherited their respective franchises? Eleven. ELEVEN. Over one third of all NFL teams belong to people who did nothing to deserve them except shoot out of the right uterus or **** the right spouse. Two more NFL teams are owned by scions of American industrial giants (the Lions and Jets). And somehow this makes them business geniuses who deserve to lock out their employees and rob the country of its favorite sport? Really? The same shrewd people who apparently screwed themselves into such an allegedly shitty labor deal not but a few years ago? Is there ANY situation in which a billionaire can be ****ing wrong, then? Or is their wealth simply an overriding character trait that trumps all flaws?

There's a distinctly political turn to much of these lockout arguments among fans. I guess if you think the players are right (and I do), that makes you a dirty liberal and there can't possibly be a decent case to be made. All unions are bad, which means the NFL players are ungrateful and lazy and deserve to be booted out on their ass because the owners are the beginning and end of why the NFL is successful.

No success is ever entirely self-made. Billionaires don't just crawl out of a ****ing swamp and then work 23-hour days until they're filthy rich and deserving of every penny. There are a million factors that go into the making of a successful person, and hard work is merely one of them. There's an element of luck. There's certainly an element of breeding. There's an element of good timing, of catching the wave at the precise right moment. All of those things factor in, not to mention the millions upon millions of tax dollars used to subsidize the stadiums many of these fine gentlemen happen to now own. But these pro-owner people seem to believe that NFL owners are ****ing magical money unicorns that came out of a glowing cistern on a mountaintop, and they have carte blanche to strongarm people accordingly.

I hope they're planted by the league. I really do, though some polls suggest otherwise. Because if you are a real, living, breathing person and you're actually rooting for the league to continue to, you know, not playing, then you can go ****ing die. If you have a beef with the union breaking up and suing the NFL, then you're too stupid to understand that suing the league was essentially ALL the players could do, because for years now the owners have been hellbent on losing games in the 2011 season specifically to squeeze more money out of the players, as much as humanly possible. Many owners didn't bother to show up for the initial negotiating sessions in March. They want their lockout, and they're going to exhaust every shitty, awful option they can to make it happen. And they sure as shit don't care about your concerns in the process. You're the fan. You're just a ****ing sheep.

Meanwhile, the players, who used legal recourse to return to the field, are the bad guys? Why? Because you think they may try and get rid of the draft, even though that will NEVER happen? (And it should be noted here that getting rid of the draft and making all incoming rookies free agents is far more in the spirit of unbridled capitalism, though that apparently only matters if the beneficiaries of said system are white billionaire one who sucks the peniss.) Are you that ****ing dumb? The idea that players are just dumb assholes who should be grateful that their noble employer sees fit to pay them ANYTHING is a bizarre and downright feudal stance to take. These strike me as the thoughts of someone with a massive political blind spot, where your politics so utterly consume you that you can't be bothered with the reality staring you in the face. This doesn't need to be a political argument, and yet there are people out there desperate to make it precisely that.

I love football. Football is pretty much what I live for, and it seems to me that only the players are interested in making football a reality this fall. So if you're somehow on the side of management in this NFL dispute, please know that you are wrong and that you are stupid and that I ****ing hate you.

I've never necessarily said that I'm on the owners' side. However, I do think that the players' actions have been the ones that have made this whole ordeal the giant mess it is. Maybe that was their only choice I guess. But it started as "let's sit down and talk about this" and has devolved into "we're not a union (but ignore the fact that we are acting collectively), and that makes you illegal, so we're going to sue you (collectively...but we're not a union)."

Any time you get the courts involved, the process becomes messy. And the players are the ones that have gotten the courts involved. I find that part to be irritating.

Oh, and all the BS about owners not being entitled to money is dumb in the context of the entire situation. There are tons of college players who worked far harder and are far smarter than many players currently in the NFL.

Some people are born into a family that has wealth; others are born with physical gifts that allow them to get paid incredibly well for playing a game. Hard work is only part of the puzzle for either being successful.

No need to read the OP, this says it all.

The players started the lockout by decertifying...which is a sham to begin with..and are the ones that walked away from the bargaining table. Not the owners.

LMAO OK...

Not really.

Damn, wish I had a crowd applause gif for this post.

btw ... the author of the article is a complete moron.

He is basing his decision completely on the emotion of "i like football players and hate billionaire owners". He is the same kind of stupid tard who will be sitting around in 20 years going "How could the idiot football owners let the NFL get this screwed up" after siding against the owners about the very start of the screw-up process.

I bet he sided against the baseball owners back when that shit got all ****ed up too.

Being the owner of a business, I can see where they are coming from.


Being a former employee of a business, I can see where they are coming from.




With that said, any employee that thinks he is entitled to a set % of the businesses income can politely go **** HIMSELF. It is none of their business to know how much the company is bringing in. Get paid, STFU, or get another job. I don't give a ****.

So you think the NFL was screwed up under the previous CBA?

I suppose the players are the ones who opted out of the CBA right?

How will the NFL get screwed up? Call me stupid, but I think opting out of CBAs, locking players out TWICE is screwing up the NFL than anything the players have done.

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.

Thats a fact we root and pay and the players and owners look at us as the foils that afford their life style~

Jealous much? Get over it. You weren't born from the right uterus so work for what you want. Doesn't mean you have to begrudge people who were. I'm going to work my ass off to leave what I can to my child. You don't think that's fair?

I'm sorry but can I get a link? All I ever read is that while the palyers suit could pave the way for no salary cap, the players at large want a cap so there is a salary floor. This makes way more sense to me than your "fighting to the death" theory.

****ING WRONG. Get your shit straight, son.

WTF are you talking about? I have heard plenty of dumb mother ****ers in my life that have said shit that was far more stupid than anything I have heard or read an NFL player saying. WTF?

FYP

Thank god there isn't anyone that feels the other way around about this issue right Laz?

I'd probably side with the owners if they came straight and came at me clean but seriously this ****ing lying they have been promoting is quite sad. I don't like being talked down to and treated like a moron. I'm sure Laz is used to that but I'm not.

Haters will always hate. Neither the owners nor the players give a crap about any of us. Both sides need to and will come together to hammer out a deal.

In almost every business the product is the owner/employee.


I sale, install, and refinish hardwood floor. They purchase my product because they are purchasing me. They could go to Home Depot and get similar shit for cheaper, but I sell them myself and my employees while the actual product is almost an afterthought.


We have a fairly rare skillset, but not nearly as rare as a 260 lb LB that can run a 4.5 40. I can't just go out and hire anyone off the street to fill an opening, just like an NFL player. If I don't find one, I will be patient until someone with the skills fits the bill.

The NFL will be the same way. If the current players do not want to work for millions, the NFL will shut down until they buckle and accept the new terms, or wait for a new crop of the same skill level players coming out of college that are fine with working for lower pay.
It will take time (5-10 years), but the level of play will come back.

It won't get that far. Owners will shut it down and watch the players slowly implode.

I heard Nick Wright actually completely lay out what I'm talking about the other night. I was shocked I thought I was the only one. If the owners had come out and said the following:

You know the economy has changed, things are a little bit tougher right now. Our financial statements are fine. We are making money right now, but with the advent of HD TV and so many more people staying home we need to do something.

We need a portion of the revenue to reinvest in the game, to upgrade the stadiums to give the fans a reason to come there instead of staying home. With the economy and municipalities becoming increasingly unable to subsist themselves, we can no longer count on them to help us, so we have to turn to the players to help us invest in the long term of the game.

Now if they had just come clean and been truthful

A) the players may have looked at projections and said OK

B) I would understand where they are coming from and agree that maybe its time the players agree to a stadium upgrade slush fund.

But this crap Goodell is spreading round about player safety, fans demanding extra games blah blah blah is a sham and they expect everyone to just go "Duuup OK then"

Don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining.

Hardly. The product here is football. NFL players are among the worlds best athletes.

Fans come to watch the players.

No one gives a shit what the owners are doing on Sundays.

I misread the question.


Sorry, my business is 80% me, 15% product, and 5% employee.

Yep thats the way a small business should be :thumb:

You flatter me so.



I need the pickup after BCD figured out I was talking out of my ass. :)

Opting out of contract as part of said contract is not starting a lockout. It just meams the, NFL, at the contractually appointed time want to redo the contract.

qft

How the **** do you not see your logic problem here?

The amount of disinformation flying around about it is definitely dizzying. I think there's a large chunk of people who think "well this just must be like the baseball strike in 1994." Which obviously isn't true.

Okay, I have not taken either side as I don't have all the information necessary to make a decision on this, but this author is an idiot. He should say my opinion is x, and I believe that because....not my position is x, and if you don't agree you are a moron. One thing I have learned about this lockout is it appears to me, both sides have some fault, and it would end a lot faster if both sides would own up to that.

Ummm...no, that's not how things work around here. You pick a side and be willing to fight to the death over it.

LMAO So true. Unfortunately, this is also my father-in-law in real life discussions.

Some of the editorial stuff out of Deadspin over the last few months has kind of irked me. It's almost like they're becoming the type of self-important smug entity they used to blast ESPN for being.

This whole thing can simply be solved by players and owners negotiating. Both sides sit down and give a little tell they meet in the middle. Untill then nothing is going to be solved by blaming either side. It's on the players and owners, both are at fault. I don't give a shit who is right or wrong, just come to a conclusion that gives fans a game worth going too and so we can support our favorite teams.

It's about the money for the players and owners, but it's for the integrity of the game that is at risk, at the FANS expense.

Isn't this the whole thing behind unions though? A fair share of the profits to the employees?? Like GM, Ford, and so on.

LMAOLMAOLMAO

It's the foundation of a union. Give us X-amount or we will cripple your company by walking out. I don't know if they specifically tie their demands to profits, though.


They were great for setting the foundation for workers' rights back in the old days, but now their quest is not as noble.

Good grief.

At the point of opting out of the contract, the owners want to change the conditions of the agreement. There is nothing wrong or dishonest about this. The players then decided to leave the table and failed to agree with the owners of the business. Forcing the owners to lock them out. The players decided to stop working by not accepting that the business needed to lower salary and take measures to ensure the stability of THEIR business.

All you have to do to understand why people side with the owners is ask yourself a series of questions.

1. Who has the long term health of the league as a priority, players or owners?

2. Is keeping the NFL affordable to fans an important aspect of the long term health of the league?

3. Who makes decisions that control affordability, players or owners?

And the players don't give a shit if you can afford to watch the NFL in 10 years because on average, their career will be over.

if you said anything other than "nobody" for #2 and #3, you are incredibly naive.

The owners were not forced to lockout the players.

The players did not decide to stop working.

The problem is, business owners aren't in it for a fair share. They're in it to make a lot of money, and make their share holders a lot of money. And if unions start cutting into that slice of the pie by demanding a fair share, share holders take their money elsewhere, or businesses move their operations to places where employees are less expensive.

Putting it bluntly, business owners don't take pay cuts to better compensate their employees. If the employee is getting more, it's from cost cutting in other areas, or passing the cost off on customers.

So you think NFL owners want to price their product out of range of their customers? Not very sound business.

They are already.


Besides, most of their money is made outside the stadium a.k.a. TV.

This isn't just about tickets to the game.

The price of sunday ticket has doubled in less than 5 years. Please don't tell me you are naive enough to believe there isn't a ceiling on what networks will pay to give you free football on TV. The groundwork has been laid for PPV and Sunday Ticket is just feeling out the price point.

Business owners keep their margins. I'd rather they do it by cutting employee pay than passing costs on to the customers.

The owners are motivated by profit, not affordability. If they could find 100 fans each willing to pay 1 million dollars per ticket, they would do that in a heartbeat even though it would mean their stadiums are as empty and silent as a mausoleum.

Ticket prices are based on maximizing revenue, raising price just to the breaking point but not quite beyond (for many people, not all). The owners don't give a rat's ass about keeping tickets affordable, nor should they.

That doesn't mean the in-stadium money isn't just as important. If it wasn't, they would be holding cities hostage for new digs.

That's where I think people might get lost on this. They're trying to apply real world mom and pop store ideas to a business that's printing money. We've yet to truly see where the limit is on this... and you can certainly argue the owners are going to push the limit until they find out.

You are wrong on the first part. And for part two of your post had the owners not backed out of an extremely successful CBA, there would be no reason to negotiate. I side with the op that pro owner fans (current lockout specifically) are misinformed or are just too ****ing stupid to understand.

What exactly made the previous CBA "extremely successful?"

Of course they are motivated by profit. That's the point of owning a business.

The difference is, an owner wants to profit off his football team for the rest of his life. A player knows he has a limited number of years to collect his paycheck from football.

Do you think any player gives a shit if they run the league out of business in the long run?

Answer the 3 questions I posed in my first post.

Oh, and apparently I'm too ****ing stupid too understand what's going on. Please help me! I'm intellectually deficient.

personally, I'm open to the possibility of sympathizing with, and siding with the owners. I don't get caught up in this "the players struck so we should blame them/ the owners locked out so we should blame them" idiocy. Who cares who started the conflict through whatever legal mechanism, both sides must be happy with the deal at all times, or there will be a strike/lockout.

What I care about is figuring out who is right, no matter who started it.

The NFL owners adamantly refuse to open their books, even though NHL/NBA/MLB owners open their books to their player unions. So, by default the owners lose the PR battle in my mind. Don't wanna open your books? Too bad, you are asking the players to allow you to do things that are normally illegal and all of your peers open their books to their players. Still wanna act stupidly with your lack of transparency? Fine, f*** 'em, the owners deserve all the blame until they come to the table with every piece of information the players want.

I don't care either way. Just get the dog and pony show back on the field dammit.

don't be dumb. The owners do not give a rat's ass about affordability, UNLESS affordability is the point where supply and demand cross on the theoretical chart. If ticket prices are affordable, I give the owners NO credit WHATSOEVER because they were FORCED into making the game affordable by solid unforgiving economics.

Jerry Jones was confident enough to build a billion dollar stadium. Oh ya... Its the most successful league in sports. Competitive balance that baseball fans dream of. Sorry i feel the players are entitled to all the money they can get. They are the reason butts are in the seats. They are the product that people pay 1000s of $$$ to see live, not Jerry Jones (but dont tell him.) Its not rocket science. I really expected you to be smarter then this.

Ahh...so all that success occurred between 2006-2010?

And would you say that Jerry Jones is an "average" NFL owner?

Unless it's your livelihood. If the loss of an NFL season effects you enough to upset your daily exsistence. You're just a little bitch no matter what side you're on

The owners care about long term success of the league. Affordability factors into that.

Your problem is you're talking about "giving credit" like this is an issue of choosing which side is good vs bad.

They are both trying to maximize their profits at the expense of fans. It's not about which side has more noble intent.

I side with the owners because I believe they have more reason to keep the NFL in my price range for the rest of my life. It's not because I believe they have any altruistic motives.

Players get a percentage of revenue, and are generally represented by a union that is looking to keep things going for current and future players. Owners get a percentage of revenue. Both sides have basically the same interest in keeping the game affordable enough to max out revenues in both the long and the short term.

If players were looking for anything other than fast riches, they would have allowed a rookie pay scale a long time ago.

I don't believe for 1 second that players have the same interest in the long term health of the league. They only need it to last as long as their careers.

I may be wrong here but they simply extended the previous CBA in 06.

No jj is not, but i blame all the other owners for not telling him to stfu and stfd. Its owners like him that are struggling. The ones that pissed and moaned about new stadiums, are now saying operating expenses are too high. I thought new stadiums increased revenue? If they show the books and prove they are hurting (not by their own doing.... Dan Snyder) I might change my opinion about the situation.

I think the old school owners definitely are more interested in the long term health of the league. I'm not sure guys like Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder care as long as they're making money. That's what started this thing in the first place... the big market owners goaded the small market owners into a CBA they didn't like 5 minutes after they signed it. They couldn't work it out so instead they're just going to try and settle it by getting a bigger cut of the TV money.