The NFL Lockout, Simplified

Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe is on Twitter, and he's had a few things to say about the lockout. For starters, here's a quick look at the bargaining process in stick figure comic format.

Not much you can really add to this. Unless you add the following take on Roger Goodell's letter to the players (available at the link above and elsewhere.

What amazes me is the amount of vitriol aimed at Kluwe by the average fan. The lockout has constantly been cited as a battle of "millionaires vs billionaires", which is enormously short-sighted. I'm not sure that the entirety of the casual fanbase understands that this is not a strike: the owners have chosen to remove the possibility of football in 2011 if they didn't reach a deal that  gave them significantly more revenue and more control over revenue. Goodell's last deal would have had the player's share of revenue as static and unchangeable. Meaning players might see 4.5 billion of the 9-ish billion the league would make in 2011... but would receive the same pay out of the projected $25 billion dollars the league is looking to make by 2027. (Numbers here are admittedly very rough.)

So it shocks me to see people calling Kluwe "Chris Klueless." Would anyone accept a deal that reduced their pay by as much as 18% merely because their boss said they needed the money, and had done nothing to prove the claim? How about during an era of unprecedented growth in their industry? And if your boss proposed a deal that essentially shrank your paycheck to half of what it was (compared with your company's profits) in fifteen years. You'd think the average person would be against that.

I think we're conditioned to hate on professional athletes for making quite a lot of money for "playing a game." There's that sense that these people came from nothing, didn't have to work hard and are getting paid over what anyone is worth. If player salaries are reduced, it's not like owners are going to throw parades and hand out free candy to children. They're going to pocket that cash. And yet people will stand in their corner because these people have lived the supposed American Dream. They're rich businessmen. Whether or not they've actually worked for that money, the perception is that owning a team = work. Playing for a team =  not work. It's not really accurate and it has no place here. The lockout was an attempt by men with money to make more money.

You can still be against the current player salaries and realize that, even if those were lowered, you as a fan would see no benefit.