Take It From Marvin Miller: NFL Owners, Players in Trouble

Filed under: NFL Labor Negotiations

You've had the Evil Owners in baseball.

They spent decades using their version of legalized slavery called the reserve clause. They were so ruthless that they refused to make ticket adjustments the season after the Great Depression. They took forever to integrate the game. They triggered the Mother of All Strikes that obliterated the 1994 season along with the World Series.

Well, forget all of that.

These NFL owners are more insufferable, and so are these NFL players for allowing their bosses to sit on the verge of stiff-arming professional football fans with the threat of a lockout.

"If the (NFL players') union doesn't react better, it's going to unfold with the owners getting bolder and bolder," said Marvin Miller, 93, who knows what he's talking about. "The owners already are saying and doing what they want, and nobody is calling them to task. They are making these stupid demands. And I say 'stupid,' because even if they think they can get away with all of this, the risks that they're running of disrupting a very financially successful industry is crazy."

Miller was the legendary head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, which has been the model for labor unions everywhere since his leadership from 1966-82.

To paraphrase Miller: When it comes to greed, neither baseball owners at their worst nor any other entity since the beginning of earth topped these current NFL owners. Despite operating one of the most profitable businesses ever at $9 billion in revenue per year, NFL owners are within weeks of staging a lockout of the players.

You know, because NFL owners want more money.

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