"Tagliabue's impassioned plea gives owners pause"....

[Robeson]

Excerpt from article:

These are 24 of the most critical hours in the league's history.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=clayton_john&id=2358857

[Ravenseye]

1. Sigh

In the NHL labor negotiations I took the side of the owners, because they seemed to get it. They moved closer to the NFL model, seeing the success that competitive balance has wrought. Now the NFL wants to become MLB.

What owners of sports teams fail to comprehend is that they don't really 'own' an individual business. They look at the money they don't want to share and get greedy, not realizing that they alone didn't earn that money.

Look at the Patriots, or the Redskins. They make much higher local revenues than say, the Kansas City Chiefs, because of their larger population, bigger ratings, higher cost of advertising, luxury boxes. Everything costs more, so they end up making hundreds of millions more a year. That's what they dont' want to share, and they want to get rid of the salary cap to do it. They want to become the Yankee's and Red Sox's of the NFL. Sadly it just doesn't work.

The large revenue teams get their money by having people to play. The same thing happens in Baseball and it's killing the sport, as a competitive game. In most of the country Baseball has become something you might go to on a nice day. It's an outing. An event. Somethign fun to do to get out of the house on a Sunday afternoon or a Thursday evening after work. The illusions of competition in most of the country have been dashed. They see the reality, the owners see the reality, and it's a sad thing.

If the NFL goes the way of MLB it will disgust me. You don't own a team, you own a part of the league. Greedy owners who can't see the truth will be the end of balanced competitve sports. It makes me sad.