Five or six times over the past few months, I’ve sat down and tried to pen my thoughts on the latest news about the NFL lockout. Every time I’ve failed. It’s not that I wouldn’t be upset if there is no 2011 season or that I don’t pay attention to the news. I would be pretty bored and certainly upset if there was no professional football to watch this fall. But unlike everything else I write about on this site, I simply cannot get passionate about the NFL lockout.
I’ve never had much interest in the business side of sports. The NFL at this point isn’t true sport as much as it is a for-profit business. There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with that, but all I really care to read and talk about is what happens on the football field, not in a board room or courthouse.
Like a lot of fans, I feel left out by the whole lockout process this summer. A bunch of stiffs in suits are arguing over amounts of money that 95% of NFL fans will never even sniff of having in their own bank accounts. You have the filthy rich owners arguing with the filthy rich players over money (I know it isn’t quite as simple as that, but that is the foundation of the whole lockout). Meanwhile, the average fan who is responsible for building the NFL’s brand and for lining the pockets of both sides faces the prospect of a long, cold fall and winter without football.
It doesn’t seem very fair. When the Steelers win a game or sign a free agent or do anything football related, I the fan at least feel like maybe I played a little role in that success. I’m emotionally invested in the football franchise and spend a few hours every week living and dying with what happens with the Steelers.
I don’t get that seem feeling with injunctions and motions and whatever hell else is going on with the lockout. I feel deserted and don’t really care to invest much time in a legal battle that will end with both parties making even more money in the end whenever they finally decide enough is enough.
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