The NFL Lockout: An Op-Ed Piece

The NFL lockout has dragged on for over one hundred days now and I've got some thoughts on it. I tried to get the New York Times to publish this in their op-ed section but they won't return my faxes. I'm not even sure if you can return faxes. I'm not even sure if this is a fax machine or a printer, actually. 

The NFL owners and players need to agree to some sort of .. agreement, and finally end this lockout. I'm really tired of posting articles with pictures looking at stadiums through chain-link fences and big old deadbolts that are supposed to be a melodramatic representation of the situation we're in. In all reality, I should be posting pictures of players A) on the beach somewhere taking a vacation, B) relaxing in a hammock at home with their family, or C) in jail. Because I think that's where the majority of players are at the moment, and I'm pretty sure they're not sad about it. Except maybe the people that are in jail. They're too busy either finding the biggest guy in there and kicking his ass or becoming someone's bitch.

Players aren't lined up at their stadiums picketing in a reverse strike fashion, holding signs that say "Let Us Play!" and starting chants with "1, 2, 3, 4" ..." we want somethingthat rhymes with four", 5, 6, 7, 8 .. something that rhymes with "who do we appreciate." That would be stupid. Because there's probably no one in those stadiums and I'm not even sure that any teams actually practice in their stadiums. The only symbolic gesture that players are making whilst being locked out is getting together, putting on some Wranglers, and running a beautiful seam route toward the mud puddle and jumping as high as they can and landing directly on their kneecaps. (Also known as player organized practices)

(The players that are in jail might be doing the same thing in there, or something VERY VERY similar to what happened in that movie The Longest Yard, I hope).

Here's my point, if there is any point to this completely pointless article: people are sick of hearing about this stupid lockout. Sports fans don't want to hear about the legal issues and economic conditions and these 'true-up' deelyboppers and 'expense credit' do-hickies and 'laissez-faire economics' Nord-Pas-de-Calais à propos art nouveau chef d'œuvre plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose merde. The more these legal analysts talk the more it sounds like James Lipton trailing off in unintelligible French on Inside the Actors Studio to me.

Law school students love this shit. They can write papers about it, probably. Everyone else hates it. Because it's really, really boring. It makes an already boring NFL offseason that much more boring by robbing us of the free agency and OTA morsels of information and corresponding rosterbation we all do when no one is looking. THAT'S ALL WE GOT NFL!! How can you rob us of that?!?!? We've sunk so low that we're watching the fucking Arena League and reading up on the CFL.

Now that I've said my piece on that, something that I'm sure you've read a hundred times, I'll list off a few more things that need to happen. Because the NFL has absconded with several months' worth of normal offseason entertainment like free agency and such, they need to make up for it with League mandated trick plays during the first week.

Namely, one team MUST run a Statue of Liberty play. No one will expect it and the crowd will go wild. The Statue of Liberty play is literally the first play that any true American Human learns when they first find out what football is. Yet, no one actually uses it! It boggles my mind. You'd think teams would at least try it ONCE! If they could have the quarterback rear back to throw the ball and bring a sneaky other guy around to grab the ball at the zenith of his windup, that guy would run into glory and infamy forever and all time and the coordinator that called it would be eternally known as the raddest coach ever. 

Two, one team MUST run a triple flea flicker. I'm not sure what this is, so it wouldn't be to the detriment of said team because no one will know how to defend it and it will blow your freaking mind when they pull it off.

Third, one team MUST bring their band out on the field during the last play of the game and some oblivious guy in the band must get completely trucked as a player is running into the endzone. Before that can happen, one NFL team will be required to assemble a band. The Seahawks have Blue Thunder so that would probably work quite well.

Finally, and this is a deal-breaker for me if they don't do it, --fucking JET FLY-BYS at every quarter (or more)--. I'd prefer sonic booms but I'll take anything, really, that gets people all jacked up on the smell of patriotism, aviation fuel and alcohol. I'll be back even if this stuff doesn't happen of course, but I don't think it's too much to ask.