40 days to go to reach a new labor agreement.

MITCH BLATT

With 40 days to go until the NFL labor contract expires in March, the NFL players and the Players Association have started to heat up their publicity campaign this week. The NFL actually registered the domain NFL Lockout.com in 2009 but they didn’t post a prevent the lockout petition until November 1, 2010. They promoted it on Twitter on January 18 this week with a #LetUsPlay hashtag campaign. NFL players made their way to Capitol Hill on January 19 for a little bit of conditional lobbying.

Issues of contention? Roger Goodell has been pushing the idiotic idea of an 18 game season, and the NFL owners say there has been less revenue because of the recession. The Players Association claims that they have not had access to the NFL financials and cannot verify the revenue loss. Their website also says that the NFL TV contracts have already been negotiated, so the owners don’t have any TV revenue loss if there is no season.

The owners themselves, of course, aren’t going to be presenting their side of the argument so publicly, because the fans are naturally predispositioned to support the players more. Nonetheless, with America’s most popular sport and billions of dollars on the line, it is in both sides’ best long-term interests to get a deal done, as I’m sure both sides are aware. If a deal isn’t reached, the Players Association and the owners will all come out looking bad.

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