Roughly three weeks ago, fans all over the country were questioning if the NFL Lockout would end, leaving millions to wonder how they were going spend their Sunday afternoons without their beloved football to enjoy with friends, family, and a whole lot of beer.
This past Thursday, The National Football League (NFL) gave their fans a reason to rejoice, kicking off their season with a thrilling opener with two of the game’s best teams. In an exhilarating game that went back and forth from the very start, the defending Super Bowl Champion Green Pay Packers secured their first victory of the season with a goal line stance against the Super Bowl XLIV Champion New Orleans Saints, 42-34. While Saints fans may have left the game upset that their precious team from New Orleans may have let one slip away, fans all over the nation exulted knowing that football was back.
Some 1,000 miles away from Green Bay, Wisconsin, as football fans began their celebrations of a new season in tact, players, owners, and executives of the National Basketball Association (NBA) met in New York City to discuss labor negotiations. While the NBA’s owners have locked out their players since July 1st, little progress has been made, making the chances of the NBA season beginning on time rather doubtful.
Though lockouts are often times rather confusing, the owners’ lockout on their players mostly comes down to financial disagreements. As the old collective bargaining agreement expired, owners of NBA franchises had complained that they have lost, in total, roughly $400 million this past year alone. However, the players have countered that, declaring that the league is only setting records with ticket sales and revenue, and that only few small market teams, if any, are losing money.
In the old collective bargaining agreement, the owners claim that the salary’s old structure allowed for too many large contracts to be signed, resulting in absurd amounts of money being given to players who may be un-deserving of the contract given. Because of the way the collective bargaining agreement is structured, owners are often times locked into these players even after the player is a useful asset to their team, losing millions of dollars per year. In the process of disagreeing, both the league owners and Players’ Association have sued and counter-sued, respectively, claiming unjust practices on various issues throughout the process.
Though progress seems to have been made, the NBA season beginning on time (or at all) still seems in doubt, unlike the NFL season, which had to happen. Recently, my friend Max and I had discussed the possible losses that both the NFL and the NBA would lose if their seasons had not begun. With some research, I found that NFL games are the most lucrative and expensive rights of any American sport. Considering that the games are only on two to three days a week, television networks bid billions upon billions of dollars in order to have certain NFL games broadcast on their television networks. In an astounding difference, the NFL’s television market value is a whopping $20.4 Billion compared to the NBA’s deal worth roughly $3 Billion. In essence, there was simply too much money to lose if there were no NFL season. The pressure to have a season begin on time rode on the NFL’s team owners and its players, knowing that any financial disagreements regarding a few million dollars were better to settle on right away than the billions of dollars that would have been lost otherwise.
Whereas progress seems to have been made, the search for an NBA season still keeps me searching ESPN.com daily in the hopes that the lockout will end. Money aside, I love the game too much to see this season wear away because of financial disagreements that I still cannot understand. I mean, what’s a $99 million salary versus $100 million one? To me, it doesn’t make any sense. And although I was enlightened to see that the NFL season began with a bang (and that I am able to watch my beloved Giants this coming Sunday), I still cannot imagine these coming winter months without my NBA on TNT Thursday nights to keep me going to bed a contented man.
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