It is beyond my comprehension why anyone would worry about the possibility of an NFL lockout or cancelled season. In this day and age when a multi billion dollar industry is able to thrive while the people who follow it struggle to pay their mortgages or to put food on the table, if it wants to close up shop, let them. It's clear the NFL does not care about their customers -- the fans.
Both players and owners are making record money during the worst economic crisis since the great depression. During the Depression, if you played in the NFL you also worked another job during the year because you were never going to get rich as a player. Owners ran bare minimum operations and the game's popularity paled to the popularity of professional baseball and college football. Today, the NFL is the king of American sports and it wants to shut down so it can continue to thrive. This doesn't make any sense.
During the Great Depression, the cost of game tickets, hot dogs, beer and parking were so cheap they were affordable to just about anyone. They remained that way for another forty or more years. Today, however, two game tickets on the forty yard line cost more than a pair of season tickets cost my dad to Raider games in the 1970s. In those days, you could bring in all the food and drinks you could consume rather than having to pay eight bucks for a beer, five for a hot dog and the equivalent of college tuition for season tickets.
The National Football League does not care about the game's future as much as they do their cut of the pie. Long snappers make a million dollars a year just to snap a ball to a punter or the holder on field goals. Owners use their teams as cash cows to line their wallets with more money than even they dreamed and still both the players and owners want more. It's why tax payers have to agree to finance new stadiums every twenty years or risk losing their team to another city. Roger Goodell will never be happy until television viewers have to pay to watch any game on the tube. The league is like those two shady "boyz from the hood" sketch on In Living Color. All they want is "Mo money, mo money, mo money."
The league showed its true colors at the most recent Super Bowl when they over sold tickets and left hundreds of fans to watch the "Big Game" (The NFL owns the rights to the words Super Bowl and actually makes you pay to use them) on large screens set up outside the new Cowboys stadium in the cold. Then, they had the nerve to try and low ball the victims into quick settlements to avoid an embarrassing lawsuit for the fraud they pulled.
The NFL can count me as one of its former fans. I do not intend to return to the game anytime soon, not when both the owners and players insist on a larger piece of the pie that can only come by costing fans more of their money. Players can hold out all they want; I don't care. Owners can restructure the game any way they choose; it doesn't matter to me. Roger Goodell can spin any issue any way he wants; it won't make a difference to me.
The NFL is now just as irrelevant to me as Major League Baseball and the NBA, two other leagues I have quit following. When every decision that is made results in a more expensive game for the average fan to watch it becomes obvious the game is not about the fans.
So go ahead guys, take each other to court, lock up facilities, and cancel entire seasons. I am now among those who are no longer a follower of the No Fan League. I can enjoy a lazy Sunday afternoon or Monday night watching Modern Family, The Office, or a good movie I have on Tivo knowing that the only thing that matters is my enjoyment.
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