Simple Plans

I've repeatedly stated my opposition to most labor unions because they are simply a legalized version of mob activity.

However, I occasionally find a labor issue where I side with the union. One such case is in the NFL labor dispute.

Now I understand the owners desire for more money. It's the reason anyone engages in any business. But the idea of adding 2 more games to the schedule is insane and the union has a right to fight back against it. The players bodies simply can't take any more abuse. Players brains are literally being blown out on the field. The science is pretty sound on the issue but if anyone needed any anecdotal evidence, a retired NFL'er recently donated his brain to science so they could study repetitive trauma injuries. Then he shot himself in the heart, Creepy. Really creepy.

The answer is so simple though. The owners want more weeks and the players want more health. Fine. Add another week or two to the season but make them bye weeks. This is good for he players since they could rest some of those injuries and space out those head shots over the year. The owners wouldn't get any money in the stadium in this case but they could easily make a ton of money on the TV deals. They could conceivably fill two more weeks of the highest rated shows on the tube. Two more weeks of beer commercials, NFL Network, etc. Seems to me that providing that much more programming for the networks would be worth quite a bit. Maybe not the billion that the owners are after but it would still be substantial. The bonus for the owners is that the players wouldn't be entitled to any of the new money. They haven't performed any extra work and they're getting some of the health concessions they've been looking for. Unless one side or the other is a lying hypocrite, then everybody wins.

Of course that's not the only issue to be negotiated but it seems that the owners would be easier to deal with on the other issue of they knew they had a fresh cash infusion waiting for them to pay off those stadium costs.