Knee-slapping.
If you're having trouble following the intricacies of this latest sports labor brouhaha, here are the essentials.
The owners voted, 30-2, for the CBA extension that was ratified in 2006. The owners, for whom a contract is sacred when some player decides he's underpaid and wants to renegotiate, decided in 2008 to opt out of that same deal, forcing the deadline that looms now at the beginning of March.
The owners hired the outside attorney who steered the NHL's 2004 lockout of its players. The owners arranged to have their broadcast partners pay them their fees even if there are no games. The owners demanded that discussions on a new deal begin with roughly a billion-dollar-a-year giveback by the players.
The owners whine about the debts they've taken on to build the new stadiums they insisted they had to have, but never mention the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars invested in those same facilities.
If you're having any trouble spotting the bad guy in this, here's a clue: It's the owners.
In fairness, there probably is no graceful way to shove your so-called "partners" to the side while you command a larger place at the trough. Those who see the NFL's annual revenues of about $9 billion and figure there ought to be enough for everyone are missing the bigger picture.
Goodell and the owners believe revenues are going to expand exponentially over the next 20 years. There will be an 18-game regular season. There will be expansion. There will be games in London and Japan and Mexico. Eventually, there will be franchises on other continents. There will be another explosion in income from new technologies.
