The End Is Nigh
By Big Matt
It appears Lockout 2K11 is finally drawing to a close. Its been quite a journey. So many memories. Like the time Clark Hunt showed up to that meeting. Or when he and Art Rooney went to that other meeting. Or when he said “process” all those times.
Eventually most of us will forget this offseason. Even bitter, owner-hating nerds like your boy Big Matt will move on come week one. We’ll have no choice. It’ll be impossible to think about those slugs in their owner’s boxes when there is actual football being played. I mean sure, the cameras will show them multiple times every game, and the announcers will lavish praise. But we’ll be obsessed with the next play, or the previous play, or possible future plays. Clark Hunt? Who the hell is that?
Are there any lessons to be learned from the past six months? Maybe not. This ended much as everyone thought it would, with a new agreement in place and no games lost. But at the very least, the owners’ cards are on the table now. We know who these guys are, we know what they care about. Hopefully a few more eyes will roll next time one of them is deified by one of their apologists in the announce booth (or Beast Nation). Even a small victory like that is a worth a lot to me. A hell of a lot.
more after le jump:
This latest tactic by the owners was a final reminder of who and what they really are. In case you hadn’t heard, they unanimously approved a new CBA Friday…..that they wrote. And then Goodell called a press conference to announce it. #facepalm.
By all accounts the deal is about done, and it seems to be something both sides can agree on. I’m no lawyer, to pour over the minutiae and say who got the better of it. I’m hopelessly biased against the owners in any case. But, I mean, shouldn’t it be a given that you’re going to unanimously approve a plan you wrote? I would guess all the disagreement pretty much gets weeded out during authorship, right? Was a “we did it!” press conference before the players had even seen the proposal really necessary?
Of course not. Friday’s press conference was yet another PR ploy from a group of billionaires who clearly have no shame. In case anyone has forgotten, they did this exact same thing when the lockout first started. “The players left a very good deal on the table today.” Remember that? Five months later, all that bitterness, and they didn’t even change tactics. They fell back on what they always fall back on: shameless PR tricks. Pathetic.
There was no reason for that press conference. The owners could’ve approved their own proposal, given it to the players, and waited for them to vote. Instead they patted themselves on the back in front of the world and tried to push the players into a corner. Thank The Holy Spirit that didn’t set the negotiations back further. It very well could have.
Luckily, it didn’t. And now, according to our fearless leader, its time for everyone to “get on the same page.” For whatever reason, that quote was reported as an actual story across the interwebs. Here are a few more choice cuts from the same interview:
“Ideally we would all like to open training camp next week. In order for us to do that we are going to need the players to move along on a fairly high timed schedule.”- Hey, the owners have done all they can. If these players would just be a little more high-timed, everything would be hunky-dorey. Except, wait……can’t you get fined for being high-timed?
“It’s a great day for the National Football League and most importantly for our fans.”- Just to be clear, he’s talking about the day the owners approved their own proposal. The players hadn’t even seen it yet. But yeah, great day for everyone. The fans most importantly. These owners really care about us. Just the other day Jerry Jones helped me up after I’d skinned my knee.
“It’s been a very long process. It’s been a tedious process….”- You dance with the girl that brought ya. And in this case, that girl is the word “process.”
“We are very eager to get back to football.”- So, so eager. Now that they’ve got that extra 1.5% coming their way, of course. Hey, these guys have families to feed. And dodo eggs don’t come cheap these days.
“We felt it was important for the owners to approve the deal today, which would set the table for the players to come along and approve it as well.”- Hunt later added, “we also felt it was important to announce our approval with a full-scale media blitz. For the fans. God, I love those f*#king fans.”
You can’t buy charisma like that, folks (no word yet on whether you can inherit it). The man is a quote machine. But it doesn’t stop there. Our boy was busy this week. Check him out at his homepage (my one complaint is that Josh Looney is too hard-hitting):
“For the Kansas City Chiefs and the fans of the Chiefs, this is a deal that will allow us to compete,” Hunt explained late Thursday night. “Whether you are in a small, big or medium sized market does not matter. This deal will allow everyone to compete.”
It’s been so hard for these small-market clubs to compete. The deck was stacked against them! That’s why we’ve had those low payrolls. It makes perfect sense. The Hunt family is just trying to compete. It’s not like they’ve been pocketing boatloads of cash, right? Oops.
As it turns out, after the 2009 season the Chiefs had the 6th highest operating revenue in the league. I believe their payroll was 31st that year? Seems to me like Clark Hunt has been competing just fine. As long as he spends less than almost everyone else, he’ll make more than almost everyone else. Kansas City might be a “small market”, but that doesn’t stop Hunt from collecting a big-market share of the television revenue and making huge profits. The only thing small market about the Chiefs is the amount of money our owner is willing to spend on them. But yeah, he just wants to compete. That’s all he’s ever asked for. That, and millions of dollars of our tax money. And $27 for parking. And $25 from the firemen participating in a pre-game 9/11 ceremony. And for parking attendants to get the hell off his property once their shift is over*. But mainly just to compete.
*These last two gaffes were eventually rectified due to the public outrage they created, leading Joel Thorman at Arrowheadpride to say the Chiefs had “righted a couple wrongs.” Yeah, that’s what they did. Like knights in shining armor. I’d give $100 for footage of the meeting where they decided to charge those firemen.
Move on, Addicts, but never forget. And now, finally, lets talk football….