Do NFL owners really deserve an extra billion dollars? - Part 2
This is the second part of a series of articles discussing whether or not owners of NFL teams deserve the extra one billion dollars that they are asking for, saying that they are unable to cover the costs of owning and maintaining a professional
football team with the one billion dollars that they are already receiving from the league.
They get through the entire week hoping that they can survive until Sunday, when they know that the friendly game of football is waiting to entertain them. The love of the game is the only thing that keeps them going, sometimes literally. What about the
NFL writers? We have done nothing wrong to cause a lockout for 2011, but have everything to lose if there is one.
Things are already bad enough for the economy, but do you know what’s going to happen if there is a lockout? The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) says that each city that has an NFL team will lose about $160 million plus 3,000 jobs. With 32 NFL teams, that’s
a blow of more than $5 billion and 96,000 jobs. So the owners are risking this for what, a backup yacht for their backup yachts?
Do you think that any owners from the NFL are going to be roaming the streets in 10 years because they could not work due to brain damage and other injuries suffered during their NFL playing days? Well no, these guys are financially secured for probably
three or four lifetimes, but this is not the case with former players. They have no way to support themselves after their NFL career, usually due to the injuries sustained during that time. Have any owners killed themselves lately? Not that I can think of,
but former players have committed suicide due to conditions brought on from injuries during their playing days, with two in the past year.
The players in the NFL have done nothing wrong. They work for what they get and get what they worked for. The worst part is that the average career of a player is only three years, whereas the Rooney family has owned the Pittsburgh Steelers team for 78 years
and the Bidwells have maintained ownership of the Arizona Cardinals for 79 years. Out of the 32 NFL teams, nine of them changed ownership by inheritance. Lucky for those nine, there is nothing better than daddy handing down a billion-dollar football team.
However, NFL players do not inherit anything except maybe some lucky socks or a chinstrap. On top of that, with all of these reports and studies that show just how dangerous football can be, both physically and mentally. Would you still swap your office
desk job as a pencil-pusher for a helmet and pads? After all, this isn’t baseball or golf. Safety is priority number none in football, but it’s not the players that are asking for more money. It’s the owners that want an extra billion dollars on top of the
billion that they are already getting.
The remaining article about whether or not NFL team owners deserve more money is continued in the next part of this article. Check it out!
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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