I just think that ... wow, I'm about to say something pretty awful about the human race here ... but human beings ... well, let me start with "me" and we'll radiate from there ... *I* find that *I* am pretty easily entertained by just about anything, and when one thing goes away, something else quickly fills that void.

I mean, if you take video games, I've enjoyed thousands and there are tens of thousands I've yet to play, but very rarely does a game make so mad that I announce, "I am mad at this game and I will no longer play it!" More often than not what happens is a new game appears that takes the place of the old game. This happens a lot with iPhone games, downloaded games ... pretty much any free media.

And it happens all the time with television. When I was a kid there were shows that I would sit down every week (or every day) and watch, but now it's just like tv is there to fill the void of time in my life. Like, oh, I have nothing to do tonight from 7pm-9pm so I will just flip channels. As part of our move, Cox Cable gave us every digital cable channel for free for the next 6 months. That's 900+ channels. Guess what? I CAN FIND SOMETHING TO WATCH OUT OF 900 CHANNELS. I feel like I may have a lower bar of entertainment than most people. I will watch America's Funniest Home Videos. I will watch Monster Truck Racing. I will watch the X Games. I will watch Pop Up Video. I will watch UFC fights, even when I don't know the people fighting. I will watch pretty much anything on Discovery, Spike, the Game Show Network, and lots of other channels.

So, do I like basketball? Yes. If the season were going, I probably would have watched basketball last night. But it's not, so I watched football. And during halftime, I watched Ridiculousness (I love that show) and afterwards I watched CNN. And if there's no basketball this year it's not like 3 times a week I will just be staring at a blank television or an empty parking lot at the Ford Convention Center wishing there was basketball. I'll just be doing other stuff.

Flack wrote:I'm not actually all that bothered about it.

Boom. And this man's the biggest NBA fan I know.

I'm not actually all that bothered about it. I do like going downtown to watch the Thunder play, and I do like the sport of basketball, but when grown men are arguing over just how many millions of dollars they should get paid, it kind of makes me ... bitter? It's embarrassing, really. I mean, a slice of Pizza Hut pizza is $8 at the game. Every time I take my kid to the bathroom and we pass by a cotton candy stand or a drink vendor it costs me $5-$10. To hear these people say they're not making enough money seems ridiculous.

Yes, Flack is upset by it. You're kind of a jerk, pinback.

I'm not going to say that "NBA fans don't care." I will say, "In the circles I travel, the only two people who seem disenfranchised by it are Flack and Bill Simmons, and I only read Simmons because I can't believe how awful he is, and how is Molly Lambert still pulling a paycheck for being America's worst writer on grantland.com."

Worse for America: a season with no NBA or the average Molly Lambert column?

Worse for the Earth: collision with another Earth-sized planet, or another Molly Lambert column?

Worse for the known universe: the entire thing crunching in on itself, obliterating all hope and all evidence we ever existing, or That Happening Except The One Thing That Escapes Is A Molly Lambert Piece.

Are there people who are upset by this?

NBA players say no to deal, season could be over
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketba ... 51198288/1

Flack wrote:Can someone explain the NFL and NBA lockouts to me in simple terms? All I get so far is that people who make millions of dollars think that they should make more millions of dollars than what they are making, and because of that, I may be robbed of the opportunity next year to watch the almost NBA Champs YOUR OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER.

From what I understand the NFL Lockout doesn't appear to affect the OU SOONERS wiping up the PAC-10/BIG 10/BIG 12/69 BOYS/WHATEVER they are calling the conference next year.

The NFL players and NBA players are unionized, therefore I suspect under NLRB rules the owners have to refuse to let them in, this is a "lockout". I've seen this before in other unionized industries. Turns out I was right; Wikipedia defines a lockout as a work stoppage where the employer refuses to allow employees to work. Usually done to put pressure on a union. A lot of employers don't like lockouts because in a lockout, the employees are eligible for unemployment but are not eligible if they call a strike.

Pac 10 is college sports, which technically aren't supposed to be professional and thus the students aren't paid, although I'm sure some under-the-table arrangements are made. Students could walkout, though.

Although to be honest Flack, one quarter of the teams aren't going to be able to perform at 100% given a full training camp, complement of pre-season games and medical staff because they suck a bota bag of fucking ass.

I will never, ever get over Jerry Richardson of the Carolina Panthers sacrificing the 2010 Panthers season because he hates NFL players so much.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Flack, you are a decent man. You asked a question about how I thought the NFL lockout would resolve to. I have no idea, so I didn't answer right away. I thought they were just about done with the negotiation, but I guess they aren't. I'm sorry.

On Lex and Terry in the morning they've had some guy on there predicting when the NFL lock out will end. I guess on Monday he guessed "Wednesday" but he weaseled out of that on a technicality ("I didn't say this Wednesday!") so now he's predicting next Wednesday. We'll see.

One thing they brought up and something most people don't really think about is that most of those guys in the NFL are elite athletes (shove it, hockey fans) -- the point being, they aren't going to just run on the field after a long lock-out and be able to perform at 100%.

THE
EXACTLY!
AARDVARK

Wait, what? They had sports before television?

I kind of assumed sports were invented so we would have something to watch on TV.

Remember when it was about sportsmanship and pride? Back when the world was young? Then the boogally monster called television invaded every nook and cranny of the sports world. Invaded with it's senseless lite beer commercials and hair products for aging vain men. Suddenly they went from athletes to entertainers wearing jock straps. We all suffer.


Well....most sports

THE
WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE
THE PBA
AARDVARK

Flack, you are a decent man. You asked a question about how I thought the NFL lockout would resolve to. I have no idea, so I didn't answer right away. I thought they were just about done with the negotiation, but I guess they aren't. I'm sorry.

I turned in to the Sports Animal this morning and got caught up on the NBA lockout. I know more than I did but it still seems pretty weird. Like everything it's all about money.

Apparently all NBA player salaries come from 57% of the NBA income. The league says 57% is too high of a percentage. Owners want to fix it by putting in a hard cap on salaries. Players say that the financial problems aren't theirs and they should get paid whatever someone is willing to pay them.

Basically what I gathered is, the owners want to use this as a way to punish previously overpaid players and knock them down. The players, it turns out, do not want pay cuts, and the Union right now isn't budging so ... OU Basketball, 2011-12, here we come!

Wow, ICJ. Very interesting, and described in a way I could understand it. Thanks!

My next question is, what will be the outcome?

Oh, and please baby Jesus, don't make me watch the Bears play 18 times a season. My ticker can't take the anger.

I am actually OK with the owners getting money "off the top" to cover their expenses. $1 billion / 32 owners isn't all that much considering the salaries they all have to pay. But it's their own fault they don't do complete revenue sharing on everything.

In terms of the extra billion they wanted off the top, they had come down to $800 million extra before the lockout had even begun. So they were quite willing to negotiate that.

I don't have an opinion on what the percentages should be, but both sides should carve off money to pay for health insurance in some form for ex-players. I have seen fans post that the ex-players are owed NOTHING, and it should stay that way. But then there's a lot of fans who support the owners completely in all this, which just means there aer a lot of really dumb fans, in my opinion.

So... in terms of football, how much money is enough?



THE
BOTTOMLESS PIT
AARDVARK

You were right to come here to ask this question, Flack. We hate billionaires and millionaires equally, except for Knuckles, who has recently lost his ability to hate.

The NFL owners felt they gave the players "too good" a deal last time. Piece of shit (and owner of the Carolina Panthers) Jerry Richardson was part of the negotiating team last time, which led to football becoming the most popular sport in the history of galactic civilization. So of course, because he's a stupid piece of shit, he is leading the charge in "taking the league back" from the players.

The owners are literally just being blind, stupid, greedy, assholes.

Right now all owners, of the $9 billion in revenue, get $1 billion off the top. I would like to note that it is commonly reported that the players get 57% of all revenues. This is 57% of the $8 billion that remains. In other words, NOT FUCKING 57%. But that's how awful sports reporting is.

The owners want the players to take a lot less, and they said that the players will get MORE when the owners "grow the pie." But ... well, this is hazy. The owners argue that the pie won't be able to be grown as much if the players don't agree to some stupid reduction in the percentage of revenues. They also want $2 billion off the top, on account of how Jerry Jones (Cowboys owner) and Bob Kraft (Patriots owner) ran 4.2 40 yard dashes or something.

The owners argue that they want more money to pay for their stadia investments. In one of the most hilarious examples of human stupidity, American taxpayers pay for football stadia and then give all moneys to billionaires. So the owners' argument about that is also stupid.

Chief fuckhead and groveling NFL commissioner Roger Goodell (whom I correctly called out as being incompetent months into his job, years ago) repeatedly says that fans want "more football" like an 18 game regular season. Nobody fucking wants that. The owners don't really want it either, they just wanted to create something out of vapor they could later let go of. The players should have been demanding a 9 game season, but whatever.

I wouldn't say that the average NFL player is stupid. I would say that they are probably social awkward manchildren, on account of most of them being coddled by handlers since they were teenagers. The only 32 people in the world who manage to come off worse than the aggregate sum of football players are the NFL owners. Every single thing they have asked for has been childish, pointless and stupid. I wish I could say they had a few good points somewhere, but they don't.

I don't know anything about the NBA lockout, it's probably completely different, centered on the good free agents trying to get the rules changed to allow eight guys on the court at once so they can all play together.