Good 'Ol Fashioned American Greed Might Kill This Goose Too

Is the NFL untouchable? I mean will the owner's lockout piss off enough fans to really make a dent in their mega profits? Commissioner Roger Goodell says it's starting to look that way.

Owners and players are bickering over how to divvy up $9 billion dollars in revenue. Do you know what a billion dollars looks like? If you placed one billion single dollar bills one on top of the other, they would reach as high as the Empire State Building. So imagine nine of those Empire State Buildings stacked one on top of the other. No way Godzilla's going to reach Faye Wray that way.

So now that they're ten weeks into this mess, the commish, who's a highly paid mouthpiece for the owners, has blinked following his bosses spring meetings. He says that tv ratings for the draft were down by roughly 4 million. Traffic at the league's NFL.com website is down and so are ticket sales.

I remember the 1987 players strike. It was the year after the Giants won their first Super Bowl. The season was shortened from 16 games to 15 and weeks 4-6 were played with replacement players. 85% of veteran players refused to cross the picket lines. So instead of watching a cocaine-crazed Lawrence Taylor behead Cowboys quarterback Danny White like the good Lord intended, I was forced to watch stiffs like running back Robert DiRico spin his wheels and drive Big Blue into the cellar of the NFC East. Sure, DiRico must have got laid plenty after his four week stint in the show, but he and other replacement scabs like him certainly helped weaken the real players leverage in their fight to get a better deal. It also made my fall miserable. A new season of “Matlock” just didn't cut it.

Flop sweat is beginning to dot Goodell's forehead. “We've made it clear that (revenue loss) is current and will continue to accelerate and impact on the ability of ownership to make an offer (the players) find attractive.” So in other words, the owners shut the joint down and cry that because the joint's shut there won't be enough money to pay the guys who make them all that money. Sure commish, blame the hostages for being bound and gagged and having a gun put to their heads.

But what effect will this insatiable greed have on fans? The NFL's a money machine and most people have a very short term memory when it comes to sports (Michael Vick) and politics (Bush/Cheney). Baseball's 1994 strike was a killer. Attendance dropped 20% the following season and tv ratings declined sharply as well. It took the McGwire/Sosa steroid induced home run derby to bring fans back but despite that many never did.

Will fans be ok with a shortened NFL season? Twelve games? Ten maybe? How will they feel when their favorite players go on the IR because they didn't have an adequate training camp? Will they pay thousands of dollars per ticket to see Joe Shmoe throw six yard passes to Fred Shmertz?

Goodell says “We're approaching 2011 as we would any other season.” It looks like fans may be starting to approach it differently.