Of course, the communication scholar in me wants to look beyond the situation and what has caused it and identify how the situation is being framed and portrayed by the owners, the NFL and the players association. The rhetoric coming from the owners is, at best, accusatory toward the players. The blame game being spun by the owners should be no surprise if you’ve read the previous two posts of this blog. What is surprising in this situation is the reaction from the NFL who, for the first time during the bargaining period, are showing signs of heartlessness and ignorance toward the ultimate victim here, the fans.
Let’s join the blame game and see what punches the owners are throwing at the players. Steelers President Art Rooney II began the fight when he not so subtly threw a direct right hook at the players association. He explained, “the Players Association walked away from [negotiations] on Friday. The NFL Owners put a very fair offer on the table…I remain optimistic that eventually cooler heads will prevail and we will be back at the bargaining table in the near future.”6 Rooney is really saying, the Player’s Association is solely to blame for the collapse of negotiations. And why are they to blame? Because they became too emotional and hotheaded to think clearly and intelligently. Rooney is implying the PA representatives must be emotionally unstable or psychologically impaired to reject the owner’s proposal. The fact that the offer may have been unfair or incomplete is not an option because Rooney’s confident that once the PA reps calm down, they will see the error in their ways, the little light bulb of bargaining will click on and they will acknowledge the superior intelligence and offer of the always objective, always calm and collected and thus, always right, owners. The only reason Rooney’s insulting assertion could be true is because Rooney and his colleagues have failed to provide adequate health care and insurance to players such as the average NFL offensive lineman, who loses 15 years of life because of the 200+ concussions he doesn’t know he gets during his career. Yes, it’s possible the PA could get emotional since they are representing not only the current players but retired players as well. With two former players having committed suicide this past year and countless retired players showing similar symptoms to former Patriots linebacker Teddy Johnson, who has ringing in his ears and suffers from depression years after his career is over, the PA has every right to be emotional when it comes to asking for better health care. It’s hard to imagine Rooney remaining “cool headed” if it was his brain getting smashed every day.
Rooney’s statement is eerily similar to the rhetoric the NFL is using. A statement released by the NFL stated, “the only place it [an agreement] can be reached is at the bargaining table.”7 The NFL is blatantly siding with the owners. There is no attempt to remain impartial. The NFL marketing scheme is to try to sell the owners side to the public. I find this tactic to be the most surprising strategy of any participant in the negotiations. Last I checked, the league makes money from fans supporting and emotionally connecting to the players. Robert Kraft jerseys are not a high selling commodity on Amazon. Tom Brady’s, the lead plaintiff on the suit against the league, is. Attempting to alienate the players from the fans seems like a risky marketing decision. Fans won’t buy tickets to see player’s they dislike. The Dallas Cowboys show that even if fans know an owner is a greedy billionaire, they will pay to see players play the game. The smartest marketing decision would thus seem to be to avoid siding with either the owners or the players, but if one must pick a side, perhaps lean towards the players.
Since taking over from Tagliabue, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has denied and refuted attacks that he is nothing more than a puppet for the owners. He has enacted harsher punishments on players for criminal activity and threatened teams who have repeat offenders on their roster. He has fined teams for cheating, i.e. Spygate in order to show he is just as intolerant of team misconduct as player misconduct. In an email to fans registered as NFL.com members though, Goodell’s true colors were shown. Goodell wrote, “the players’ union walked away from mediation and collective bargaining and has initiated litigation against the clubs…” He then lists the issues in the owner’s proposal and all the “concessions” the NFL was making, such as not reducing compensation for veterans, implementing year-round health and safety rules, retaining the current 16-game season for at least 2 years, and establishing a new legacy fund for retired players ($82 million contributed by the owners over the next 2 years. He concludes by telling the fans, “it’s a deal where everyone would prosper.”8 Goodell’s email landed a solid blow on the reputation of the PA. Goodell and the NFL’s credibility is now 100% behind the owners, making the players look like nothing more than whiny boys failing miserably at a man’s job.
But take note on what the NFL and Goodell aren’t saying. Nowhere in the NFL’s, and especially not in Goodell’s statement, is it explained why the player’s walked away from the table. The player’s main contention throughout negotiations was the sharing of revenue as previously explained in the first portions of this blog segment. Where is that concession in Goodell’s email? Nowhere. Goodell’s email may be the most deceptive piece of rhetoric emerging from the entire bargaining process. He wants fans to think the owners are considerate and sacrificing immensely. But really, how much are they actually sacrificing by promising to not lower veteran wages and to establish health and safety rules? Both of those should have already happened and the fact that the owners think they are considerate for just now realizing it, shows more about the owners callousness than the players stubbornness. And, oh yeah, the owners decided to leave the schedule at 16 games and not 18. How kind of them to not force players to work more while simultaneously taking a pay cut. Gee, that’s sweet. And a legacy fund for retired players? Again, why are health-care benefits for retirees a concession and not an automatic? This is seriously an issue for debate and negotiation? And wait, the owners are going to put $82 million in this fund. I thought they were broke. That’s why the players had to give up a portion of the revenue, right? If they’re so poor, where is the $82 million coming from? I sense another instance of fuzzy numbers coming into play and some well worded PR statements being released to the public. After this email, Goodell has lost at least one supporter and I wish him luck convincing anyone else he’s not a marionette of the owners.
The player’s response has been directed toward the courts. The PA has made very few public statements in regards to the accusations by the owners and the NFL, except for one heated defensive speech by DeMaurice Smith the day negotiations broke down. Smith angrily explained that statements being made by the other side were false. Other than this one statement, not much more has come out from the player’s camp except to reiterate their focus is on the splitting of revenue and it’s now in the hands of the courts.
Regardless of what anyone is saying, the true victims in the situation are the fans. The owners and Goodell want the fans to think they are cared about. New York Giants President and CEO, John Mara wrote a letter to Giants fans, to relay a message, which I believe was intended to be comforting, “we certainly understand and appreciate your unhappiness and frustration…We know people frankly don’t care how owners and players manage their business.”9 Well, Mr. Mara, as much as it means to me to know you appreciate my unhappiness and frustration I would appreciate you caring enough to do something to make me happy and un-frustrated more. And you’re right, I really don’t care how you go about your business, I have more important things to worry about but your ineptitude to do your job successfully has me caring now. I hope someday soon you can figure out how to survive on slightly less than a billion dollars instead of slightly more than a billion dollars so that I can have one enjoyment, one day of the week, 16 weeks a year at a bar because I can’t afford DirectTV to see my team play out of market.
And to you Roger Goodell, you can say that first and foremost it is the fans passion for the game that drives you and you will not lose sight of that as you continue to work for a deal that works for everyone but I no longer believe you. As a matter of fact, I question if you ever had a deal that works for everyone – including me and other fans – in your vision. As an ESPN writer whose name I have lost somewhere in the erased reference page I once had, summarized, “fans have gained something very important…[the knowledge] that those who own the teams, the commissioner who runs the league and, to a far lesser extent, the players who run the routes, sack the quarterbacks and score the touchdowns have so little perspective that they believe their inability to divide $9 billion is, in the real world, important. We all know better.”
So, while The Replacements will never be discussed in terms of Oscar qualifications or lined up as one of the more prolifically written scripts, some important lessons can be learned from it in regards to the current NFL work stoppage. Yes, in the film the players were on strike and refusing to play and today, the owners are locking the players out, refusing to let them play but the principle moral of the story holds true either way. The NFL cannot succeed without miles and miles of heart.
To see another really awesome article in regards to the lockout click here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/110304
8. mass email from the NFL. Received by the author as a member of NFL.com.
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