the business of business

i fully intended an in-depth and illuminating post last week about the collective bargaining agreement. but i couldn't force myself to focus. i became that kid who swapped his ritalin for a handful of mars bars, leg fidgeting, limited attention span running over everything else in the room besides my computer and collected research.

the cba and the owners decision to opt out it for 2011 season is certainly the biggest league development in the last week, if not the offseason. yes, we'll have football as usual this season and next, then an uncapped year in 2010. after that, if no deal is in place, the owners will likely lockout the players.

as a packers fan, it's hard not to get a sick feeling at the thought of revenue sharing and the salary cap disappearing into thin air. plus, the cba will be a fulcrum on which many big issues turn: reasonable contracts for rookies, a potential 17th game, more or less guaranteed money for players, the competitive balance between the 32 teams. yes, this is big stuff.

yet it's difficult to mobilize all the requisite interest an issue of this magnitude deserves. the last cba was an eleventh hour agreement, one which made strides for the nfl player's association, typically the weakest of the major sports unions. obviously, the owners were still unhappy with giving the players 60% of the total football revenue. but nfl players play a brutal and demanding sport without fully guaranteed contracts unlike their brethren in the mlb and nba.

i might possess some natural sympathy for the player's side in the coming struggle, but there is no league without the owners. the business side of the league needs to be smooth sailing, and there are plenty of issues on that side that require attention, not least of which the ballooning contracts for rookies. paying the top players in the draft big money is directly diverting money from proven veterans and free agency. it's forcing some bad business decisions especially for the league's worst teams, the ones who are supposed to be helped not hindered by the draft.

in effect, this fight is a necessary one, but one waged on a playing field strewn with hundred dollar bills, both sides trying to carve themselves off as big of a portion of that fattened cow standing at midfield as they can. the nfl isn't hurting for popularity and team revenues are at all time highs. the league is also pushing itself into as many revenue streams and markets as it can reasonably handle.

and that's all great. i want there to be nfl football into perpetuity. but there's always a bit of revulsion on the fan's side, witnessing such a fight over money. we react to the game as something outside of the corporate capitalist reality we live and work in. we spend money hand-over-fist on game tickets, cable packages, jerseys, nfl films dvd's, consoling or celebratory shots of whiskey, etc., to gain a reprieve from those monthly budgets, home mortgages, and car payments.

i don't know if pro sports qualifies as fantasy, but there's something simple about it, something that plays to virtues we've seen obscured during the rise of industry. it's the knowledge that a game is just a game, and that's what makes it important.

i might be able to work up some interest in the coming labor fight if they treated it like a skills competition, setting up all the issues against each other. if the rookies want to keep their millions and millions, they have to beat out the veterans in tim krumrie's hand fighting drill. if the owners want to roll back the players' piece of the pie, they have to figure out some way to literally get the shirts off the players' backs. the league could broadcast it in the downtime following the draft and before training camp opens. a whole new set of mel kipers, with law backgrounds, could pop up all over the internet with scouting reports. it could be another reason to not watch baseball until the last month or two of the season.

barring a televised american gladiators approach to the negotiations, i won't be writing much on the cba, instead i'm training my focus back onto the upcoming season, real football as it were... which feels so remote yet promises to be back soon. fuhbaw will start looking at the most heated training camp battles that are on the horizon. i can't see the owners and players killing the golden goose even if the negotiations again go to the eleventh hour. if they are so foolish then my gaze at pro sports might glaze over permanently.