I’m a spoiled asshole. I freely admit it and joke about it (Twitter hashtag #whitepeopleproblems). Nothing sucks worse for me than when something I have, that I like , and that I am used to is taken away. I used to watch my sports on an HD TV, now only my PS3 is in HD, this angers me to no end. So maybe it’s my own sense of entitlement that causes me to already hate the impending NFL lockout with such fever and lack of optimism. Football fans like myself have gotten used to the NFL being a 12-month a year news story. I’ve come to define the months by what the NFL is doing. This lockout a direct threat to that. The Combine will still start this Sunday, and the draft in April will go on. But free agency is locked down, which sucks to no end, I need my yearly Dan Snyder over paying. No players can be traded either, which keeps me from experiencing great joy when a franchise sets itself back 5 years by trading for Carson Palmer. The players and owners will go in the media and talk about how they just want a fair deal, that this proposal isn’t fair, or that favors the other side too much, while totally missing the point that we as fans don’t give a crap. Do I care whether Ed Reed can walk or even function as a human being once he’s retired? No, I do not. Whether he’s healthy or dead makes no difference to me, as he becomes useless once he career expires as a Raven. It’s a harsh way to think about it, but it’s true. He’ll be replaced by a new Safety, and will literally just become a ghost of cool interceptions and poorly timed laterals. Play a 21 game season for all I care, it’s more football for me to watch. I’ll say this though, as little as I care about the players problems, I REALLY don’t give a damn about the owners. Nearly every single owner, if he sold his team today, would get somewhere between 2 (newer owners) and 100 (Al Davis) times what he paid for it. If the system is so broke, why do your teams continue increasing in value? No amount of revenue percentage from the players is going to change the fact that it’s better to stay home, watch two to eight games at once, and follow our fantasy teams online than it is to pay hundreds of $ for tix plus parking, 50$ on food/beer at the game, then sit in traffic for an hour trying to get out of the parking lot. That’s just the way fandom has changed, and it’s only going to get worse for the owners.
So this is what NFL fans are faced with, a hallow shell of an off-season highlighted by a bunch of rich guys bitching about more money than you and everyone you know will ever earn, a draft where no one will be traded, the eventual conclusion in August, and a quick free agency period where everyone will probably just sign 1-year deals with their current team. Yawn. Without an off-season to laugh at Redskins fans and pray the Ravens find a corner who isn’t a stiff, it just wont be as fun.
Tags: NFL
