Paging Commissioner Roosevelt
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 8:53AM 
I will admit that I wasn't that happy to hear the court ruling in favor of the players. My small-town team, the Packers, need the owners to do fairly well, otherwise, like the Marines and their persistent bureaucratic fears of extinction, may face too tough a financial road. The owners, who don't want to make public their finances, always use the Packers' data as proxy. As a public corporation, the Packers are required to release the info. Simply put, the Packers have progressively suffered under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and either they get more revenue or their outlook is bleak.
But I suppose any movement is good movement at this point.
The citation here is a WSJ op-ed about when Teddy Roosevelt stepped in and helped mediate a summit of sports luminaries who were considering banning football because of a death in play. Teddy naturally saw a boys2men process in football and inserted himself like it was the Russo-Japanese war all over again, inviting the game's big shots for a summit at the White House. As there, he dictated no demands. He just pushed hard for agreement.
Today, of course, everything goes to the courts, which is its own progress and frustration.
I just feel a special concern for the Packers and - by extension - the League because of my grandfather's role in keeping the Packers alive and in Green Bay.
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Yesterday I got the results of my biopsy at the dentist: what was discovered on the underside of my tongue was just scar tissue from a scraggly back tooth pushed up because there isn't enough room on my right side. The dentist and I had agreed to crown that tooth no matter the outcome of the biopsy, so I was there yesterday for that procedure when the news came in.
Crown hurt less than having a piece of my tongue sliced away!
Reader Comments (6)
Glad to hear the results were good.
Had a crown done Monday myself. Picked "Master & Commander" for my movie distraction. It worked. Also got a "benign" report on a biopsy done by the dermatologist.
Welcome to the wonderful world of aging.
Good news on the biopsy! I had gum grafts, they take the graft from the roof of your mouth. That hurt for a long time! (The graft sites themselves were fine.) The Periodontist was a neighbor, when a stitch came loose he grabbed a pair of sterile scissors and trimmed it. From then on, I would razz him about 'dentists making house calls'.
On football: The NFL's system seems to have worked for the last umpty-squat years, to keep each team in the league potentially competitive. I'm afraid a lot of the outcomes from this lawsuit could break that, which would be A Damn Shame. Both Pittsburgh and Green Bay have benefited from this; a "Buy the championship Yankees Dynasty" would be a bad result for Football.
Perhaps that scar was from biting your tongue to avoid a harsh response to a dumb question in a TV interview?
The "globalization" model fits the NFL also. The NFL understandably wants the $800M give back to fund the remaining "missing" new stadiums. The players understandably want long term health care. Both need to acknowledge the others's needs so they don't kill the goose the lays the golden eggs. There are ways to do both. They need to help each other achieve these key foundational goals. Then the rest will fall into place. This is a league designed for parity, but only 3 teams take advantage of their situation and thus gross $100-$300 million/year (Cowboys, Redskins, Patriots), over the other "parity" teams, and the Cowboys did it before they got their new stadium. These three have gone "global" in their approach to the market, while the rest are still nesting locally/tribally, such as Green Bay and Pittsburgh. The majority of owners follow local nesting whereas the players, given their short carerrs, are coming at it from a globalization framework. They need to kick it into "both/and" and ditch their "either/or" approach.
Great news about the biopsy; very heartfelt and pragmatic piece the other day about your concerns. Thanks for being human!