BY JOSH COHEN
Disputes between National Football League (NFL) players and the owners have been going on for the past few months. Multiple issues have split the two parties, which may cause a NFL lockout for the 2011 season, meaning no games will be played. The two sides are having a hard time finding middle ground, but it will be necessary in order to have a 2011 season. The only way to prevent this lockout is for both sides to compromise and give in a bit, but the players have been way too demanding. If the players just stop acting selfish, a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) could be reached and allow for a 2011 football season.
A central issue in this dispute is the number of games that should in the NFL regular season. The owners argue that 18 regular season games would be beneficial for the league as a whole, because it would allow for more tickets to be sold and more advertising opportunities. The players disagree and they want to keep it at 16. Their argument is that the extra two games would wear down the players bodies and lead to more injuries. This view may be correct in some cases, but in all honesty, these players get paid millions of dollars per year and should suck it up and deal with playing two more games in the regular season. Even with these two extra games being played, the NFL is making new rules to help stop unnecessary injuries from occurring, and that should be enough to protect the players.
Another key issue is the argument over which side will get the better end when it comes to money. The owners want more money in order to expand the league and make it better, while the players want more money for more selfish reasons. These already overpaid players feel they deserve higher pay than they already receive. The owners plan to use profits to improve the stadiums in which the players play in. This proves that if more money goes to the owners, it will help out everybody, including the fans and the players.
The NFL owners also want to lower the starting salaries for NFL rookies. This makes sense because rookies should be forced to prove themselves for a few seasons prior to receiving a large contract. Also, the owners want free agents to receive lower pay as well, in order to make players more willing to stay in the city that drafted them and allow for less willingness to leave a smaller market for a large one, like New York or Los Angeles.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has stated that in the new CBA, he would like for there to be an expansion of HGH drug testing. He feels that some NFL players may take steroids and that mandatory testing for these performance-enhancing drugs would improve the league. If this makes it into the new CBA, some of the players may seem weaker, but the integrity of the game would be stronger if all players were on a level playing field.
If the owners and players of the NFL can’t come to terms on all of their issues, an NFL lockout will take place, greatly affecting the local economies in NFL cities. Besides the loss of ticket and advertising revenue, restaurants and bars that make money on Sundays during games will be affected along with the people that have jobs inside the football stadiums themselves, like the food venders, ticket sellers, and janitors.
It is clear that both sides have been very stubborn and hard-headed throughout the process of hammering out a deal, but the players need to accept the two extra games per season and do what they are best at: playing football. If they can’t and the owners can’t find a way to agree with them, a NFL 2011 season lockout is a certainty and everybody loses.
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