Our worst fears have been realized. Finally, the National Fools League has served up a game no one can bear to watch: Roger Goodell in a three-point stance, lined up at midfield against DeMaurice Smith in a three-point stance, delivering helmet-to-helmet hits to one another that only leaves the fans who made the owners billionaires and the players millionaires concussed, the two of them heads of a league of their own, crying foul in any convenient court of law while lawlessness rules the day.
D’Brickashaw Ferguson and several of his friends, urged by their agents to attempt to collect their workout bonus, showed up at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center yesterday but are not allowed in the weight room, not allowed to ask coach Rex Ryan about his new book that is being handed out by the club’s media relations department, not allowed to do cartwheels over Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s ruling to enjoin the NFL lockout.
Same thing in Cleveland with Josh Cribbs.
The atmosphere of everyone inside the Browns facility?
“They were just as confused as we were,” Cribbs told ESPN. On and on it went, all over the NFL.
AFC: American Football Chaos.
Chris Canty shows up at the Timex Performance Center and, for some reason, he can all but ask Tom Coughlin why he can’t get on Letterman next week when Ryan can, even if he can’t ask Jerry Reese whom he might be selecting with the 19th pick of tomorrow night’s NFL Draft.
“I am going to come back as long as the door is open,” Canty said. “There was no tension here. Coaches are excited to have guys back in the building.”
NFC: National Football Chaos.
Business as usual in the National Fools League, meaning no business at all. Meaning giving the business to fans, who made the owners billionaires and the players millionaires.
Goodell and the owners asked for this fight and they sure are getting one from the NFLPA, I mean, trade association (wink, wink). An association whose sole intent is leveraging a league humiliation inside the halls of justice.
The longer it lasts the smaller both sides become in the eyes of a penny-pinched public that isn’t paying obscene prices to endure this unsightly game of public relations tackle football. The longer it lasts, and Goodell’s next move, now that he has been knocked back off the line of scrimmage, is a legal stiff-arm in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, the more America wakes up to the sorry fact that its only national pastime is Greedball.
You know the owners are running scared when Goodell feels compelled to pen an urgent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he assailed the trade association (union), for eventually endangering the well-being of a game with no NFL draft, wanton free agency, the end of parity as we have known it, a salary cap Wild West, for starters. About all the commissioner didn’t warn us about was the possibility of Charlie Sheen, Lady GaGa or Lindsay Lohan attempting to purchase an NFL franchise.
“Do the players and their lawyers have so little regard for the fans that they think this really serves their interests?” Goodell wrote.
With all due respect commissioner: This is a lockout. Not a strike. A lockout.
“What would the NFL look like without a collectively bargained compromise?” Goodell wrote. “For many years, the collectively bargained system … has worked enormously well for the NFL, for NFL players, and for NFL fans.”
It takes two to tango. We are where we are today — National Football Limbo — because trust has taken a holiday. Hostility cannot be collectively bargained, and that’s on both sides.
There will be football in 2011, because the owners and players cannot possibly be mindless enough to kill the $9.3 billion golden goose. Reason eventually will prevail, because losing the season is not an option.
In the meantime, this is a joke. A cruel joke. And the joke is on us.
“Coach Coughlin said, ‘Hey, the grass out there is ready to go,’ ” Canty said.
So stop lobbing Hail Mary insults that are falling incomplete on deaf ears and get back in a room and stop posturing and bullying and threatening, and start negotiating again. Call off the dogs charging you by the hour. Give us back the game we love, and sooner rather than later. Not this shameful, hateful game we don’t deserve.
The owners made this bed they’re tossing and turning in right now. It is time for them to make an offer the union … sorry, trade association … cannot refuse. Goodell wants the game to grow in the future. And acknowledges that it has grown plenty.
The future is now. Let them play. Let them coach. Let us watch.