Et Tu, NFL?

Ever since Major League Baseball's 1994 season was cut short due a labor dispute, it has had to work hard to regain a following, and many in the media now say that American football, in the NFL, is now America's Game.

Now it looks like the NFL may follow baseball's shortsighted path, with the owners set to possibly lock out players next year for some or all of the season. In today's paper, I read that ESPN personality and former quarterback Ron Jaworski is guessing that between two and seven weeks of next season will be wiped out.

That seems like very poor timing. When the minimum salary is still several hundred thousand dollars, and when the owners are exceedingly wealthy men, to think of the stadiums sitting empty and desolate on weekend after weekend, when there are fans who need their circus to escape thoughts of their own economic worries, well, that just seems wrong.

I'm all for the rights of labor unions to negotiate for equitable pay and good working conditions. And yes, the owners have the right to close their businesses, in theory, if you want to look at football from a business standpoint, which you have to do. And yes, it is an expensive business for the owners who do have to pay high salaries, and yes, the players deserve to be paid very well for sacrificing their health and their bodies, gladiators except for not being slaves.

But let's just say that the NFL is not hurting in terms of revenue, and if I wasn't sympathetic to the Muni unions who wanted to strike when the drivers make almost three times what I make in a year, I would be hard-pressed to sympathize with people who make at least 30 times what I make in a year.

It is a fascinating thing in a troubled economy to watch all these people with so much money scrapping to make even more. It's why the Republicans got so much support, although how they managed to convince middle-class and lower-class Americans to vote against their own best interest is remarkable.

If I can't afford to go to games now, I'm certainly not going to be able to with the inevitable price increases that will be seen, regardless of how the labor negotiations go. And even if I could afford it, I don't think I would want to anyway. As long as there is baseball and soccer, I'll be just fine, and any such lockout will simply cement football's place as my third favorite sport.

Am I missing anything? Is there any rational justification for the owners to lock out the players? Or rather, any rational justification that does not involve treating the game as a business only and the fans as customers to be served poorly?