CBA Dispute: The NFL Owners Hold The Upper Hand

NFLPA President Kevin Mawae

The New York Daily News today ran a column discussing how the owners in the NFL hold all the chips, as it were, in the ongoing CBA debacle that could result in no football next season. 


The article, by Gary Myers, makes this simple point that few have discussed: The players cannot band together. He points to examples of Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie attacking NFLPA leadership via Twitter, the mass crucifixion of Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, and more to show that the fraternity of players simply can't hold together in their battle against the owners. 







Coupled with that, yesterday ProFootballTalk ran a piece about Kevin Mawae, former NFL center and current NFLPA President, who said "“I think what really happened is in 2006 we got such a great deal. I mean, the players got a good deal and the owners felt they got it handed to them and it’s kind of a revenge factor, ‘Let’s get back what we felt like we lost,’ and things like that.”


To quote PFT: 

We’re not irritated only with the union on this.  We’re irritated with the league, too.  The owners created this mess by doing a bad deal in 2006, primarily since they weren’t inclined to deal with rules of the “last capped year,” which would have required multiple teams to suffer the short-term consequences of past mismanagement of the salary cap.

That's right, folks. The reason we might not have football on Sundays next year, the reason players and owners could lose millions of dollars, and the reason the NFL might go the way of the NHL is that this is nothing more than a schoolyard throwdown between two rival gangs. Perhaps it's time for the parents to get involved - and by parents, I mean the people who make the NFL's success, both owner and player, a reality: YOU, the FANS.