FanPost

For the first time, supporting the players

First of all, I found the whole lock-out just an inconvenience and nothing more. It never bothered me like so many other fans. It was always obvious to me football was always going to come back. I am not saying we never were going to miss any games. I am saying even if we missed a whole season, football was going to come back. Oddly, the thought of missing a season didnt bother me for some reason.

Even right after superbowl, we could see there was a lot of PR positioning going on and not much more. I always had a sense it is going to take atleast till right before the start of the season for this thing to get done and not earlier. So I didnt really connect to this issue and write posts about it. Except for voting in polls asking which side you are on. I was always on the owners side.

It just didnt make sense for me to be on the players side of the deal. Rookie or vet, I always felt they are making way too much money. I dont mind increasing the minimum wages but the top end athletes earn way too much. And I get this perception that a lot of them are immature and constantly in trouble with the law. It didnt make sense to me to give more money to this immature, sometimes criminal, bunch.

And in the spirit of capitalism, I supported the owners. Lot of the owners became billionaires before they owned their respective teams. Probably most of them earned their billions by working hard and ofcourse smart and not illegally. The common man will be common man. Always jealous of a richer person than himself. Hence the bias against the owners.

So I can completely understand why owners want to pay less to players, most of whom I dont trust to hold onto their money. What is being labelled as owner's greed, the additional money definitely goes into other ventures like stadium building and development. A lot of us who own 401k or stocks, want to invest in companies who have high net profit margins. We know the company will use the money to reinvest and grow further and thus increasing our 401ks and profits. Why then do we hold owners to a different standard?

But all this argrument is for owners who are genuine in their beliefs. After what the owners pulled last evening, I dont know how to trust them. When we read the reports last week, we learned that negotiations will go on till tuesday and the players need to vote on wednesday. Even then I thought, how can players, who are not lawyers, understand the whole book of CBA in one day and vote for it.

And now not only that, the owners changed the "fine prints" in the deal and approved it without letting the players know. And on top of that, they have issued a semi-deadline to the players to approve the CBA before they understand those fine prints. Now, why do I feel when the players understand those fine prints, it would not be little nuggets of chocolates sprinkled across the CBA waiting for the players to relish?

The owners are strong arming less powerful people and that is something I cant relate to. So for the first time, I am supporting the players.

Just another great fan opinion shared on the pages of BuffaloRumblings.com.