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(Note: This blog entry for NFL Fans is for Super Bowl Week
and every other week of the year)
After turning on NFL Super Bowl television coverage on February 3, 2011, the first thing I heard was discussion about the current dispute between the filthy rich NFL owners and the filthy rich NFL players, and conjecture about whether a strike will zap the next NFL season.
Enough is Enough.
The Time has come.
The Time is now.
This is it: a union for NFL fans; for the working stiffs, and others, who have supported this game for decades.
FIRST DEMAND: A 30 TO 40 PERCENT REDUCTION IN NFL OWNERS INCOMES FROM THIS "SPORT" AND A 30 TO 40 PERCENT REDUCTION IN PLAYERS SALARIES.
That money will go directly to lowering exorbitant ticket costs; and, while we're at it, let's work on reducing these ANNOYING ads -- all but the fans must give up something for a change. If you think the lessening of ads is impossible, look at U.S. TV coverage of English Premier League Soccer. You've got ads before the game, and at halftime and after the game. Otherwise, fan-friendly NON-AD INTERRUPTIONS.
What these players make in comparison to NFL players of other eras is OBSCENE.
While working as a sportswriter in the 1980s at a major South Florida daily, I did a feature on a man who was a lineman for the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL in the 1940s. This big bear of a man, who happened to be my next door neighbor in a very country-like section of unincorporated Broward County, rushed to a closet during my interview and came back with a tattered piece of paper.
What was this cherished souvenir? His contract for a game played with the Los Angeles Rams. What did this man who took fists to the face and dirt in the eyes many times make for a game? Seventy five bucks....Seventy five measly dollars. Compare that to what some of these guys get for a game now. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Inflation does not figure into it...what they make is obscene, especially when many Americans are struggling to keep their homes and many more are out of work -- and the employment picture will not be improving substantially anytime soon.
While watching a rebroadcast of the NFL Network's Top 100 NFL Players show, I was amazed to see the bio of one of these men, Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Chuck Bednarik, Number 35 on the list, selected by the network ahead of such greats as Joe Namath and Roger Staubach.
According to the NFL Network, Bednarik supplemented his measly NFL income by working as a cement salesman to help feed his family. This wasn't in the off-season -- this was when he was taking his lumps and bruises IN THE REGULAR SEASON. AFTER A TOUGH PRACTICE, HE WOULD GO SELL CEMENT.
About the time I did the feature on my former NFL player neighbor, I did the first story, or one of the first for sure, on an up and coming player at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale.
His name: Michael Irvin.
This was Irvin's senior year and I had just seen him play his first game for the school (he had transferred from Piper High School in Broward, and upset coaches at his former school had made the state enforce the sit-out-a-year rule).
We sat on the concrete steps of a stairway outdoors at St. Thomas Aquinas High and talked for more than an hour. When I saw how glib he was, and thought about his raw talent, I told him:
"You're going somewhere."
I guess I was right on that call.
Michael Irvin is one of the rare ones who excels in high school and in college and in the NFL.
He has plenty of friends from Piper and St. Thomas Aquinas who are former high school football stars working at parks and rec jobs and other kinds of non-glamorous work.
What do you say, Michael?
Do you think NFL owners and players should drop down the greed levels, give up some of that greed money, and get ticket prices lowered so people such as your old friends and many others could afford to catch some pro football games each season?
Well, even if Michael Irvin doesn't feel that way, we can get things going by starting a UNION FOR FANS.
You start by boycotting games, if necessary.
An idea for all true football fans: If there is not a players' strike next season, then let's bring on a fans' strike. Do not buy single-game tickets. Do not buy season tickets. Do not watch televised pro football, and let the advertisers know same.
Am I being tongue-in-cheek with all this?
No comment.
Oh, yeah. For those such as Dallas Cowboys fans in this disastrous Cowboys season, there has always been the call: "There's always next year."
Well, if these greedy owners and greedy players don't get it together, there may well not be a next year, NFL fans.
Ok, look at this photo I took in Germany of a good case of beer. Pretend to take a long drink and it may help you forget about the greedy NFL owners and the greedy NFL players.
Note One: To read author Heidelberg's Sports Illustrated article about author Ernest Hemingway's Key West years, including why Heidelberg's friend Kermit Forbes, aka Geech, came to take a punch at Nobel Laureate Hemingway while Hemingway was refereeing a Key West outdoor prizefight in the 1930s, "google":
paul heidelberg ernest hemingway
That will take you to www.si.com/vault and Heidelberg's Sportsman of the Year issue article.
Note Two: Info on the aforementioned beers. You can enjoy them vicariously -- 20 half-liters of great-tasting Lowenbrau Oktoberfestbier. I have never seen a 20-bottle case like this stateside; you might have to charter a jet to fly to Germany to get some. If you are an NFL owner or player, that would be no problem, right? You've got more than enough money.
Photograph:
"Good Beer"
aka
"Gut Bier"
and this article
(c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
