A Post That Shouldn't Have to Be Written

While NASCAR is getting its season off to a rollicking start, the other sport covered on a regular basis on this Web site is heading into a tailspin.
By now, unless you're living in a cave, you've heard about the problems the National Football League and its players have had trying to divide $9 billion of revenue. Words that should never enter the vocabulary of sports stories, like decertification and plaintiff and lockout and boycott, are becoming as common as upside and OTA.
Another unfortunate side effect of this battle of wills is the way fans are being asked to choose sides. Poll after poll asks the people who provide all that revenue which side should be allowed to get more of it. On behalf of sports fans everywhere, we at the People's Pigskin would like the people who put these polls together to borrow a tactic from the Richard Pryor movie "Brewster's Millions" and add another choice to these polls.
"None of the above."
Asking us to say we like one side because we don't like what the other is doing is kind of like asking us to enjoy a toadstool breakfast simply because we don't want to eat skunk. Asking us to choose between someone who signs an eight-digit contract and then talks to us about the costs of health care or someone who takes a billion dollars from the taxpayers for a stadium and then talks to us about revenue distribution is as false a choice as we can get. In the immortal words of Buffalo Springfield, nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Which side are we on? We're on the side of the fans. They provide the revenue that the players and owners are having trouble dividing. They are the ones buying the tickets, the jerseys, the concessions and the satellite TV packages. They are the ones making the Super Bowl the highest-rated show in the country year after year. They are the ones passing the bond or tax measures that finance the construction of new arenas.
And they seem to be the only ones without a seat at the bargaining table.
Roger? DeMaurice? Whether you realize it or not, you work for the fans. Because their revenue also funds those paychecks you're so cavalierly declining in an empty and futile gesture to convince us that you're right.
If you ignore them or take them for granted, you do so at your own peril. Just ask Gary Bettman.

Suspensions and Fantasy Football

Don't know if you've heard yet, but Ben Roethlisberger is in trouble with the NFL. Commissioner Roger Goodell announced Wednesday that Roethlisberger would start the 2010 football season on suspension. Most of the headlines will say the suspension is for six games, but it's actually designed to be reduced to four games if Roethlisberger complies with some easily reached terms. Put simply, if he's still suspended on week 5, something has gone horribly wrong.

For the purposes of this post, we will set aside questions about things like the morality of Roethlisberger's actions and the legality of suspending someone who wasn't even indicted. Instead, we'll consider this case from the perspective of fantasy football fans, who have to decide what to do with Roethlisberger and the rest of the Pittsburgh Steelers. After all, he did rank 9th among quaterbacks in ESPN fantasy points last season.

Unless something radical happens Thursday at the NFL draft, the Steelers probably will turn over the offense to recent re-acquisition Byron Leftwich (who ranked 42nd last year) or Charlie Batch (who got no fantasy points whatsoever). This can't be good news for Hines Ward (who ranked 16th last year among receivers) or Mike Wallace (who ranked 28th).

I'd mention the effect on Santonio Holmes, but there really isn't one. There are two reasons for that. First, Holmes is now a New York Jet. Second, as a result of a drug policy violation, Holmes has earned a suspension of his own: four games. Maybe he can run patterns for Roethlisberger while they serve their suspensions together.

And yes, most of the above can be wiped out with the right move during the NFL Draft, which starts Thursday. The People's Pigskin's draft-related poll will close late Wednesday. We'll be back with some facts about the NASCAR race in Talladega.