The Game I Loved

For anyone who knows me, or read anything I’ve ever written, my passion and love for the great game of football is quite obvious.   For a long time, well before DIRECTV and the Sunday Ticket, before Fantasy Football or Sirius Radio, I realized the game of football was not only America’s real past time but also its passion.   As a kid I used to wait patiently for the summer to move along until I would hear the magic words on TV of “Football training camps opened today.”  Hearing those words was the start of the most wonderful time of the year (complete apology to the holiday song) as you could start to track how your team was doing, who would make the roster and what time the games would be on.    As the years passed, football has grown in popularity.  It is the perfect sport for the busy modern fan because everyone can commit to watching at least their favorite team once a week and then continue with the normal issues in life without interfering with the rest of the week.    Probably my error, but I also got the feeling that the owners and players understood the importance of the game to the fans, and would do whatever it took to keep it uninterrupted (at least that’s what Pete Rozelle, Paul Tagliabue and Gene Upshaw made it seem like).

Well let’s just say my feelings for NFL football are starting to change each day this nonsense continues.  I would be somewhat empathic if it showed the NFL was in financial troubles, but very few if any business do as well as the NFL year in and year out.   This leads me to understand that this is just a simple case of greed by both parties of not wanting to share the billions of dollars of profit they make from the fans.    Another discouraging aspect of this I’ve noticed lately is some of the national media’s attitude towards their radio listeners calling in on various shows of “so what you’re mad, the NFL doesn’t really care and they know you’ll be back so quit complaining.”  I’d like to remind those in the media that it’s the fans that spend the money out of their own pockets at the stadium, for the Sunday ticket, and all the merchandise. Every fan has the right to be ticked off at this greedy group of people, so please stop apologizing for the NFL.

There are certainly no angels in this as both sides deserve blame.  My gut feeling is that the biggest portion goes to the new acting chief of the player’s union who seemed determined from Day 1 to make this lockout happen.  What where the players thinking when they hired him?   Hopefully the players are learning from their error and fix that problem when his contract comes due.    He certainly has shown the world that when it comes to leading NFL players, he’s no Gene Upshaw.

Someone mentioned to me the other day they would love for us fans to get organized and on the same page to truly make our power felt. It can be done, but it would take a lot of unity and a lot of organizing. But if we as fans did, we could really serve these guys a wake-up call.  Boy, wouldn’t that be something!  If it started I certainly would want to be part of it. 

I can certainly see how people get turned off to professional sports and stick with college. At least a majority of the kids playing college ball play for the love of the game, and you know you can count on them each week and each season.  As everyone has read and heard, I’m sure there will be an agreement sooner or later but let’s be honest, the 2011 season will be a joke because all you’ll hear from teams and the media is that you can’t fairly grade this player or coach because of the lockout.   Everyone in the NFL will get a Mulligan for 2011.  So call me in the summer of 2012, and if I haven’t replaced NFL football in my life, I might care about it again or maybe not.   

Email or post me your thoughts.