"Will there be a lockout? Will the owners of 32 professional football franchises tell the workers: "Do not set foot on the premises. Go away until we can embrace one another.'' Boy, these are tough times for a multibillion-dollar industry. I don't know what to believe. Do you believe the owner of the Carolina Panthers asked Peyton Manning: "Do I need to help you read a revenue chart, son? Do I have to help break that down for you? Because I don't know if you know how to read that?'' Or do you believe the NFL: "Jerry Richardson never said anything like that.'' Back in the old days, things seemed a lot more believable. Remember? In 1982, when the players' battle cry was "no freedom, no football,'' a strike by the players limited the season to nine games. In '87, there was a longer season sprinkled with replacement players, known in the labor world as "scabs." For that one, fans saw the birth of the Chicago Spare Bears, the San Francisco Phony Niners, the Washington Scab Skins, the Seattle Sea Scabs and the New Orleans Saints Elsewhere (thanks to a TV show at the time). It was a year in which, after three weeks of using "replacement'' players, the New Orleans Saints, no longer carrying the tag Elsewhere, won nine in a row to finish 12-3. So what's going to happen in 2011? At this time on the calendar, you'll find Who Dat Nation anxiously awaiting a Who Dat draft. My question: If there's a lockout in March, what happens to the Who Dats drafted in April? If they haven't signed a contract, are they regarded as "Saints''? Can they cross an invisible picket line? Can they show up at training camp? Keep this in mind. The NFL draft has grown into a humongous prime-time TV show, much larger than the day in 1999 when Coach "Iron" Mike Ditka showed up dressed in flowing faux dreadlocks. It was a tribute to running back Ricky Williams, who happened to be the most productive ball carrier in Division I history. There sat Williams, in the company of Tom Benson, and Williams' agents, Master P, who turned a rap career into a $200 million empire, and Leland Hardy, a graduate of Penn's Wharton School of Business who spoke four languages. It made for a memorable setting for what was the NFL's only one-man draft. You think of this, and you think of how drab a lockout would make the story lines of the April draft, not that it would matter at all." Read more: http://www.nola.com/saints/index.ssf/2011/02/many_questions_to_tackle_regar.html
