Regular readers of this Not A Blog will know what a fanatic fan of the NFL I am.

I cannot possibly express how disgusted and pissed off I am by the failure of the NFL owners and players to reach an agreement, which has now led to a lockout and may possibly imperil the 2011 season. There are no good guys in this scenario. It is millionaires versus billionaires, and it’s all about greed, greed, greed.

Don’t believe what Gordon Gekko told you. Greed is not good. Greed sucks.

When the pie is as big and rich and gooey as the NFL’s, the inability of the principals to come to any agreement about how to slice it up is just obscene.

Locking out the players? Owners, shame on you.

Decertifying as a union so you can sue? Players, shame on you.

The last bit is ESPECIALLY offensive in the light of what is happening in places like Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio, where real working class people are fighting desperately to keep their unions in the face of a concerted effort by the Radical Right to strip them of their right to collective bargaining. The teachers in those states are battling for their pensions, their health care, and salaries in the mid five figures, while NFL players decertify to make certain their seven figure salaries don’t get trimmed down to six.

Here’s a proposal for you: the legislatures in every state with an NFL franchise should pass a new tax. For every game missed due to a strike or lockout, the franchise owners should be required to take all the money they would have paid the players, and pay it instead into a pool to fund teacher salaries, benefits, and pensions.

Oh, to be the king. Oh, to have some dragons.

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