The American Spectator

Now it’s time to talk about something REALLY important: The nation’s ONLY well-run professional team sports league is on the verge of imploding due to the greed of a new breed of owners symobolized by the Redskins’ Daniel Snyder, and of course due to the continuing greed of players who aren’t satisfied with getting paid millions and want to be paid gazillions instead. What people need to understand is that sports leagues are NOT intended to be pure free enterprise; they are artificial constructs that in order to provide for fair competitition are SUPPOSED to assure to the greatest extent possible that every team starts with no competitive advantage or disadvantage in comparison with all the other teams. That’s what the NFL has understood so well for so long, and what Major League Baseball fails to understand. Now the NFL’s nouveau riche owners are out to destroy that competitive balance (at the START of things, mind you, not at the end: the whole point is to give the more skilled teams the just rewards of their ON-field excellence) in order to turn their own gazillions into mega-multi-gazillions. Right now, everybody is getting filthy rich, so why should the new guys destroy the league that works so well for them just for the sake of trying to get even filthier rich? The obvious solution is for the Snyders of the world to agree with the smaller market teams like the Packers and Saints to a greater system of revenue-sharing — and for the owners and players to split the difference between the players’ demand for 60 percent of gross revenues and the owners refusal to go above 56.2 percent. Just call it 58.1 percent, shake hands, and get on with the game!!!!