Hawk Richardson

How'd that logic work out for baseball, hockey, and the NBA?

 

How did it work for the NFL? See law1ng2b2 posts.

I'd say it worked pretty good for the NBA players. NHL not so much.

Baseball almost killled itself and had to cheat to get people to pay attention again.

Gonna be a lot of pain on both sides. But I stand by that statement:

No one pays to see an owner play. Period. They don't play.

 

Perhaps you forget that all 3 of those sports had to almost kill themselves to survive. Think of it as chemo. The NFL had a brush with that as well in the 80's.

There will be a lot of pain, but there are some issues that simply must get fixed. The draft is screwed up so bad because of the salaries and that must change. The free agency piece needs to be tweaked. The revenue sharing needs to be looked at again. And there needs to be something done about depending on public financing of stadiums, because I don't see that continuing for much longer. The 18 game schedule needs to die though.

I'm not saying that Jerry has to be an asshole about things, but these issues need to get dealt with.

And as much as you hate to want to admit it, people will cheer just as loud for the new players are they do for Ray Lewis, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, et. al. And eventually, the best college players will still sign up for the draft, so the talent down period really won't last that long.

 

[Pi] Well, maybe as much as those other guys, but they'll never cheer for anyone like Tom again [Pi]

 

Maybe so, I suspect though that if you put a bunch of replacement players in the game and drop ticket prices you could find a happy place where you make money. People will watch their NFL team even if it is not full of the regular players. I know back in the 80s I watched the replacement games. Imagine if they go out and get some guys who are gone now but have a lot of fan interest. Imagine the panthers lining up with Goings, Hoover, Moose etc. I would probably watch that.

 

The issue that needs to get dealt with - first and foremost to me - is the rookie salary scale.

I tend to agree with that last paragraph.....but not as much as, say, Thelt will. I watch a LOT of football. And I wonder if people really will tune in to watch the equivalent of a Big 10 game on a Sunday. I watch that shit religiously at noon on Saturday because I'm a junkie. But I wonder about everyone else.

Plus, I agree the players will probably fold like a lawn chair. See law1ng2b2 and lease payments again.

None of what we have said changes the part about Richardson being a douchebag though.

 

Four letters.

U S F L

Chamberlain was a really nice guy. Churchill could be a giant douche.

Sometimes you need a douche.

 

Last I checked, the USFL was out of business. XFL too.

And you can be a douche - but you gotta open your books. Otherwise I'm gonna suspect you're a lying douche.

 

The USFL may be out of business, but go back and look at how much it changed the league. And they made bad decisions that lead to their downfall, but there is an awfully good argument that can be made that many of the drivers of the NFL's growth in popularity were created in the USFL.

And they have opened their books, haven't they? Oh, and nobody goes to see DeMaurice Smith play either.

 

If I asked my employer to "open up his books", he would laugh me out of his office.

Players are employees of their franchise, represented by a union. They are not "partners", or "shareholders".

I don't have a dog in this fight. It's a mess that's been brewing for 24-36 months now, and why many of you are suddenly all freaked out about it is laughable. They'll strike some deal, likely in the June-August timeframe. It's February 15, and very early, so let's just let it play out.

But to ask JR, or any of the other 31 owners to open up their books to anyone, is simply hazardous (exception being the publicly owned Packers).