A Union Victory

Now you may have a personal problem with Players Unions because your small market loser Owners are too cheap to field a competitive team.

That’s a problem with your Owners, not your players.

The fact is that a professional sports franchise is not a profit making business, it’s a Billionaire Bauble like the Planes and Yachts and Office Towers and the collection of Faberge Eggs, a pure expression of conspicuous consumption to prove that your penis is bigger.

But, like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Owners want to pretend there’s some kind of “budget problem”; not so they can actually make money, they don’t need the money, but so they can demean and oppress their serfs.  Nothing says penis power like slaves.

On the other hand you have the players who make sums that seem princely until you consider the shortness of their careers and the lifetime physical damage they suffer.

I think a professional sports player is entitled to every dime they can extort based solely on the fact that they provide original entertainment in a way that our so-called “creative class” no longer can.  When was the last time you watched TV or a movie where you couldn’t predict the end in 5 minutes?  Even predictability has become a cliche, as even Philip J. Fry (not the most perspicacious critic) puts it-

It was just a matter of knowing the secret of all television: at the end of the episode, everything is back to normal.

Which is why I’m gratified to read news like this-

Federal Judge Favors NFL Union Over Owners In TV Dispute

DAVE CAMPBELL, Huffington Post

03/ 2/11 03:16 AM

Writing that the NFL enhanced “long-term interests at the expense of its present obligations,” U.S. District Judge David Doty overturned a special master’s ruling and backed the NFL Players Associaton’s claim that the league illegally secured a potential $4 billion revenue stream for 2011 to wield against the union as lockout protection.

…

In his ruling, the judge also revealed previously confidential details of NFL TV contracts and said that the league “consistently characterized gaining control over labor as a short-term objective and maximizing revenue as a long-term objective … advancing its negotiating position at the expense of using best efforts to maximize total revenues for the joint benefit of the NFL and the Players.”

Doty said at least three networks expressed “some degree of resistance to the lockout payments” and that the NFL “characterized network opposition to lockout provisions to be a deal breaker.” He also wrote that DirecTV would have considered paying more in 2009 and 2010 to make the lockout provision disappear.

His decision revealed that DirecTV, in fact, would pay up to 9 percent more to the NFL if no games are played in 2011 than if they go on as scheduled. Of the total amount payable if there is a canceled season, 42 percent of DirecTV’s fee is nonrefundable.