If you like, you can take a side in the ongoing battle between Brown and the Eagles. You can decide that management is a bunch of no-good penny-pinching Stalinists who'd sooner lock their players in a grimy Siberian gulag than pay them. Or you can decide the player is a money-hungry troublemaker who has no right to complain and who should keep his mouth shut for once.
The choice is yours. But understand that you'd be picking between a millionaire and a billionaire, and neither of them thinks or worries about you even a little bit. A contract dustup between a player and a team is the sports equivalent of a gang war. That makes the rest of us innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.
Brown is the 33d highest-paid corner in the league. That's not good. It might not even be fair. But he picked a fight when he sucker-punched the organization by openly complaining about his contract and demanding a trade. There was a better way to handle his situation.
The Eagles are just as culpable. Yes, these labor disagreements pop up all over the league, but the Birds front office has proved particularly inept at public and player relations over the years. Whether it's Lito Sheppard or Terrell Owens or Donovan McNabb or Jeremiah Trotter or Brian Dawkins or whomever, the Eagles seem to have just two strategies for handling insurrection and financial disagreements. They either stay quiet or do their best to stomp the malcontent into submission. In Brown's case, they appear to be going with the second option.
Now there's this terrible blood feud that doesn't look like it's going to end well. I suppose there's a chance both sides will calm down, make up and reach an equitable agreement. But I'm not counting on it, and you shouldn't, either.
