Via Deadspin, an ad from the NFL Players Association that CBS refused to run:
I’ve never quite understood why it’s the players and not the owners who always get the worst of public opinion in labor disputes, but maybe that’s just my pro-labor bias showing. In any event, if tomorrow’s Super Bowl is the last game for awhile, please remember that this is a lockout, initiated by the owners, and not a strike. The players want to play, but they also don’t want the regular season extended to 18 games, and so we have a dispute. I must confess, I hadn’t really given much thought to the 18-game season issue. At a knee-jerk level, it’s easy to think “hey, more games are better”, but once you get past that you begin to see the problems. If you’d like to have it all explained to you by someone who knows it cold and makes a lot of sense, give a listen to this podcast of Sean Pendergast’s radio show on 1560 The Game with Texans Chick Stephanie Stradley. They get into the labor stuff after talking about the Texans’ defense and draft possibilities, but it’s all good. (You can also read this post for most of the same points if you prefer.) Anyway, here’s my marker to say I’m with the players. Let them play.
I think the general public just says “millionaires v. billionaires and they both suck.” What the public doesn’t understand is that the average length of an NFL career is less than four years, and that most players don’t make even $1 million a year. The public also doesn’t understand the downstream health issues retired NFL players have, despite the highly publicized case of Mike Webster. Many of the non-concussed ex-players have horrific knee and joint problems; I think Joe Montana claims to have had nearly 20 surgeries.