The NFL is a $9 billion dollar industry. They are locking out the refs over $3 million. To put that math in perspective, here’s a hypothetical equivalent: Let’s say you make $50,000 a year. And let’s say you hire a local teen (let’s call him Greg) to cut your grass for $14 a week for 17 weeks. And Greg does a solid job. He has a weedeater, he cares about the work he does, and you’re quite pleased with the result. But the next year he says he wants a raise. A raise to $15 a pop instead of $14. You are outraged. How could he? Who does he think he is? And so you tell him that until he returns his price to $14 a cut (or $17 a year extra out of your $50,000), you’ll find someone new.
And so you do. You hire Timmy, the kid down the street who doesn’t really know anything about grasscutting but has played some car video games and likes grass. So you hire Timmy, because hey, screw Greg. And Timmy comes over, and he almost immediately runs the grasscutter into the side of the house. He doesn’t have a weedeater, and he gets tired and takes a lot of breaks. He gets halfway finished and decides he’ll come back tomorrow. And so you come home from your job, and you see a grasscutter in the side of the house, and a job half done, and weeds sticking up everywhere, and you think to yourself, “Well at least he didn’t burn the house down.”
Your yard is a joke. You had a nice, well-manicured lawn, and now your house looks like a backdrop on Honey Boo-Boo. Your neighbors are embarrassed and mad because you’re driving down home values. People are screaming at you to stop this madness, just pay Greg the extra $17 a year. You can certainly afford it. But you need to teach Greg a lesson. Being called a disgrace and a fraud and joke doesn’t really bother you. You only listen to one thing. And that’s money. And right now you’re thinking about using that $17 you saved to buy yourself a burger and a beer.
You are Roger Goodell. $50,000 is $9 billion. $17 is $3 million. And everyone in the country thinks that you’re a slimey, money-grubbing, soulless, braindead moron. That burger better be delicious.
Isn’t it more like if you decide that you’re going to cut Greg’s pay to $13 a cut?
There’s only one flaw in your analogy: Greg would be named Gregorio (or Jorge, Jose, Juan, or… well, you get the idea). He would do the work others charge $14 a week for only $7.00. He would do a solid job, care about his work, and keep the homeowner quite pleased, not only because the lawn is immaculate, but because the homeowner knows he’s paying cheap wages under the table for hard labor that would cost him twice as much with Greg or even Timmy. The moral of the story: the NFL should hire Mexican refs!
Or think of it this way, if we don’t negotiate aggressively with this union will the next union expect the same, we’ve become easy, this is a business and we are expected to do our best towards the bottomline. Besides, our exposure in every media imaginable was balistic, did we sell less, hell no…all those complainers just keep on coming and spending….