Lockout would be calamitous

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Just the mention of an NFL work stoppage in 2011 was enough for Peyton Manning(notes) to break out that hangdog facial expression of his. It's the look usually reserved for bad interceptions.

It wasn't his personal situation he wanted to discuss. Manning has enough money. He's lived the dream.

For the general fan though, life without football?

"It would not be a pretty situation," the Indianapolis Colts quarterback said.

Not pretty is an understatement; a national sporting disaster is more like it.

When an inevitable work stoppage costs, say, the NBA part of its regular season, only the most hardcore fans really care. Everyone else waits for the billionaires and millionaires to hash it out and as long as the crowning of a champion isn't affected (as has occurred in baseball and hockey), life goes on. We're jaded to this stuff.

The NFL is different. To miss a single game – as the increased saber-rattling from the owners and the NFL Players Association suggests could occur in 2011 – would be calamitous.

NFL Sundays are sacred, dates millions of fans plan around whether it's to attend a home game, gather with friends in front of a TV or take a pilgrimage to visit a road venue. With just 16 games, every one is precious. The day-long, see-old-friends-at-the-tailgate, gather-with-family-after-church culture makes the sport unique.

You kill just one, you kill a lot.

"Just knowing the way our fans react to our team every single Sunday and how excited they are," said Manning, whose Colts face the New Orleans Saints in Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday. "Planning trips around Sundays, saying 'We're going to go to the Colts-Broncos game on Dec. 10th.' And all of a sudden something changed that? It would be tough."

The owners appear hell-bent on doing this. The league says a lockout in March of 2011 is a last resort. Actions speak louder than words though. The NFL negotiated a $5 billion television deal that pays it whether there are any games played in 2011 or not. The league employs Bob Batterman, the lawyer who worked for NHL owners when they killed the entire 2004-05 hockey season. That dispute wound up being as much about ego as economics.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 14," NFLPA president DeMaurice Smith said Thursday of the likelihood of a lockout. "It's that serious."

The union isn't making nice either. Smith tried to score sympathy points Thursday by defining the NFL as a "non-profit" (which enjoys tax-free status) although the argument holds no water since individual teams pay plenty of taxes.

He also declared that since 2010 will be an "uncapped" year in terms of player salaries, it would be "virtually impossible" to re-establish a salary cap in 2011. It may just be posturing, but no one wants to hear it. The NFL has boomed over the last couple decades because of the salary cap, revenue sharing and the lack of guaranteed contracts.

It's a triumvirate for business triumph and if either side tries to screw with any part of it, they risk irreparable harm.

"I feel like we have a pretty good thing going right now in the NFL," Manning said.

An NFL work stoppage would be the mother of all sports labor fights. The league is far more popular than any other in America. Due to the shortness of the season, any missed time would cause considerable pain. It's not even worth thinking about what losing an entire season (playoffs and Super Bowl included) would mean.

The last NFL work stoppage came in 1987. That was bad, even though there technically were games because the owners brought in replacement players. This would be exponentially worse. The league wasn't nearly the national obsession it is today and if the owners lock out the players, there isn't going to be any football at all.

Labor disputes are complicated and the general public isn't sympathetic to labor unions whose members make millions, let alone tens of millions, of dollars. Manning doesn't work the second shift at a Ford stamping plant hoping to keep his healthcare.

However, this has to fall on the owners. It's too easy to say the players are overpaid, that the money should somehow go to teachers or firefighters. That isn't how capitalism or entertainment works. Deal with it. Even if the owners got every concession they could dream up, they wouldn't drop the price of a ticket, a Coke or the team jersey your kid wants.

Smith addresses the labor situation during a news conference Thursday.
(Doug Benc/Getty)

The players compete in a violent game that often leaves them with disabling injuries. The average player has a short career. There are no Stephon Marbury-style deals, guys making $20 million to sit on the bench. They choose this life and it's a good one. No one is crying for the players, but for the most part they earn their pay.

The owners are claiming they are getting squeezed by decreased revenue and rising costs, noting the Green Bay Packers made only $20 million in profit in 2008. If they can't make this work, it's on them however. They already enjoy the best collective bargaining agreement in sports. Taxpayers across the country have built them a fleet of modern, money-generating stadiums. As a way of thanks, they are now threatening to not use them.

Television viewership is off the charts. While the recession is hammering other leagues at the box office, the NFL's attendance was off just 1.1 percent this past season – for the most part, the only games that didn't sell out featured chronically losing teams. There's nothing significantly wrong with the business of football.

"We have the best game in the world," said Jeff Saturday(notes), the Colts player rep who worried about killing "the golden goose."

If the players can't believe this might happen, the fans will have less compassion. And all sides will be blamed. People want to watch football on Sunday and asking them to choose sides in a fight over such fabulous fortunes just exasperates their frustrations. This is an entertainment diversion, just go play.

It's the lesson that can't be slammed into the head of every suit involved in this pending debacle. The fans have been loyal customers. They've made everyone rich. They deserve some respect.

Darkened Sundays may just be a game of profit-sheet chicken to these guys – just another labor dispute to win for their hired-gun lawyers. To the rest of America, it's quite a bit more than that.