I hate that my relationship with NFL Football is in jeopardy

I’ve been in love for 33 years now. When I met her it was love at first sight. I remember it like it was yesterday. Picture this… Late fall…January ’78…. I see it for the very first time. It took my breath away; a beautiful blue star resting so effortlessly on a grey solid backdrop. The landscape was green, the markers white, the frame was rectangular elegance. I felt anxiety and peace all at once. I was mesmerized.

My love grew. What was once seasonal love became year round. Some may call it an obsession but it feels more like passion to me. In spring we draft plans, and in summer we camp. We have date night every week in the fall. In winter we plan super celebration:
Everything in its respective place, until its not.

The NFL has experienced labor pains. Most notably in’82 and ’87 so why am I feeling so out of sorts right now. How is this different? I guess because in those years it was clear who needed to apologize. The players needed free agency, and the owners needed a salary cap. I understood both, and both have made the game a much better product.

The labor strife in 2011 is much more murky. The owners opted out of a contract that paid the players 60% of revenue. The owners are asking for more of the pie, and he players are hell bent on never giving back a crumb. Stalemate.

In my opinion the real problem is a philosophical one. The owners know they don’t have a product without the players so in peacetime they allow the players to THINK that they are PARTNERS. The players have got so embolden by this that they actually THINK they are PARTNERS. Until this philosophical difference gets settled my love will always be at risk.

Let’s be clear. Owners and Players are not partners and will never be partners. If a fan goes into Texas Stadium and hurts him/herself then he/she will sue the Dallas Cowboys, the NFL, and Jerry Jones for damages. Tony Romo, and DeMarcus Ware will not be listed in the suit. They are not partners. They are employees. Also if players and owners were partner’s players would have a legal obligation to see the books. The fact that they have to ask to see the books answers the question emphatically. THEY ARE NOT PARTNERS!

I would never share the books with an employee. Why should NFL owners? I know the player rationale is this isn’t an ordinary job. They risk life and limb every time they strap it on, but they also get paid inordinate sums of money to do so. And in deference to Adrian Peterson, Rashard Mendenhall, and any other player that feels like the NFL is transporting them back to pre Jim Crow Slavery Time, players have options. They aren’t chattel.

In my lifetime the players have gone from making 35% of the revenue to 60%. Where does it stop? The number has to stop at some point doesn’t it? The owners liked it at 55%. The players like it at 60%. Let’s make it 57.5% and move on. Keep in mind this should only be Football Revenue not total revenue. Players should get 57.5% of the TV Deal, Gate, and Merchandise only. The owners paid hundreds of millions for the clubs. They should be able to sell naming rights, sponsorships, and create joint ventures without having to share that with their employee.

I wish the owners and players had signed a pre-nup. Their acrimony has put me in a precarious situation. My love is in jeopardy. The combine didn’t feel right. Free agency hasn’t started. The draft has been cheapened, and I know not what tomorrow brings. The thought of no NFL in the fall disappoints me greatly. Normally I’d just start dating someone else, and move on. On to the next one, but this is different, this is the NFL. I’ve dated the others, and they pale in comparison. Please don’t take my love away!
I HEART THE NFL!

I hate that society wants all of us in a Box

Society is a joke. It’s only purpose it to drain everyone of his or her eternal soul. Society seeks to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator. Individuality and original thought are for the most part frowned upon. Any new idea or thought is considered evil and must be vanquished, ridiculed, mocked, until it is so marginalized that people will laugh at it. If someone just suggests doing something a little bit differently, if they mention the road less traveled as a viable option they will immediately be dismissed. I’m not talking about technological advances or things of that nature. We will always be on the cutting edge of those type of things, because creating new creature comforts will always be high on mans priority list. I’m just talking about original thought.

What I’m referring to are the monuments of human thinking. These ideas that are so built up. They are so large and ominous that people dare not oppose them, these pristine chapels that can’t be touched or disputed. You know the notion that says marriage is best for everyone, or that honesty is the best policy, don’t hide things from your girlfriend, or can't win them all.

These fecocteh ideas are so unoriginal. Relationships have been around forever. And in all of this time, virtually no headway has been made on the relationship front. Relationships are no better today than they were yesterday, the day before, and even the day before that. In fact relationships are deteriorating. Relationships in the form of marriages are suffering the biggest hit. More than 50% of marriages end in divorce. Why?

In many cases we follow the same dead end roads our predecessors have traveled. We keep doing bad stuff, and doing worse stuff, and doing even worse stuff to each other. The very definition of futility is performing the same task over and over again reaching the same outcome, but always leaving some slim hope that the next time you perform the task the outcome will be different. In order to progress we must break the circle of futility and explore new and uncharted territory, documenting our progress to expedite the travel of those that are destined to follow.

Why can’t we be different? What is stopping us? All due respect, but the answer is laziness. People are so lazy; we don’t want to do the work. We ask advice of people way too much. Why? God gave us a brain at birth, but we don’t trust it. We trust everyone else’s brain, but not our own. We know our experiences, our sensibilities, our emotion, and yet we trust relative strangers to make decision for us.

We value everyone’s opinion. We seek answers in books, we search the net, we watch TV, we read magazines, and we seek therapy, all to get comfortable with our own thoughts. It’s as if we need a co-signor on everyone. We don’t trust ourselves to make a decision, so we take straw polls. We check to see which way the wind is blowing before we make a decision about anything. We ask our best friend, who is as much in the dark as we are, for their opinion. Why do we do this? We’re not comfortable with our own thoughts.


We avoid thinking for ourselves. We stores content from all the places I mentioned above and just regurgitate it when the situation warrants. We are incapable of having an original idea because we suffocate our thoughts before they become ideas. As soon as they start to creep outside of the box, we kill them. At some point, in order for us to grow, we have to create a boundary between society and ourselves. I’m not suggesting that we all create a land of make believe in our minds. That would be ridiculous. What I am suggesting however, is that we create a buffer; a small mechanism that keeps thoughts and opinions from becoming ours until we have contemplated them long enough to formulate an opinion.

Anytime I see a lot of people going in the same directions I get nervous. My natural instinct at that point is to go in the other directions as quickly possible. Going with the crowd requires no thought. All you have to do is just line up right behind the person that is in front of you. Doesn’t require anything more than that. We learned how to line up behind people in pre-K. So performing a task that 4 years olds have mastered doesn't make us special.

Extraordinary people look at situations and see how they can be made better. They march to the beat of a different drummer. Ever wonder who the drummer is? It’s you. Everyone has their own personal rhythm, and when you allow some other person to create rhythm in your head you are doing yourself and the world a huge disservice. You’re taking what you were born with and handing it over to someone else. I don’t think we were given a brain to just memorize what other people think. Our brain is uniquely ours we cheat ourselves when we don’t use it.

Have you ever noticed that our most precious natural resources are under-ground? For some reason God chose to put really valuable things in a place that we had to work to get to. Interesting huh? Why do you think He did that? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put things we really need in a place that would be easily accessible? Gold and oil are our most precious resources and we have to dig deep in the earth to find them. It’s that age- old proverb; if we have to work for something we’ll appreciate, and value it more. In this regard we can learn a great lesson from nature. The precious things are under the surface, and surely not in that stupid box.