Debaclation Nation

Welcome to the new Debaclation Nation, a fancy title for this Web site’s new poll center.

Each week, I’ll post an interesting (or boring) Debaclation Nation poll so you can vote and argue over it. I’ll keep the Debaclation Nation polls archived, so you can go back and keep arguing or see who was right.

So much for the new CBA being signed on Thursday. Who has been the bigger jerk in the past 24-48 hours, the players or the owners?

July 22

No CBA: Who has been the bigger jerk in the past 24-48 hours, the players or the owners?

We all thought football was saved. When the NFL owners finished up their 2-hour lunch and voted 31-0 (Al Davis abstaining, of course, because it was daytime so he couldn’t go outside since he melts in the sun), we all thought the CBA was a done deal.

Well, at least the people on Twitter thought so. From what I read in my timeline, all of us football fans were happy – until, that is, the NFL players alerted the media that they would not be voting on the CBA on Thursday night, and according to George Wilson, perhaps not on Friday night either.

The NFL players haven’t had enough time to look at the document. That’s fair. However, players like New Orleans’ Heath Evans, Jacksonville’s Mike Sims-Walker and Buffalo’s George Wilson expressed their frustration via Twitter and the actual media, citing that the NFL owners have deceived them by putting stuff into the CBA that was never agreed upon.

So, are the NFL owners sly douche bags who put pressure on the NFL players as a PR move? Perhaps. But something isn’t right. Evans and Wilson complained about new stuff being in the CBA, yet they say they haven’t even seen it. Evans admitted as much on NFL Network. Wilson, meanwhile, was asked repeatedly by Paul Burmeister why he couldn’t, in his own words, take the new agreement to his teammates. Wilson ducked Burmeister’s question each time. I watched the interview with my dad as we were eating dinner. The third time Wilson avoided the question, my dad bellowed, “F*** you, a**hole, you’re not answering because you’re a f***ing liar!”

Here’s my take on all of this nonsense – the owners did in fact use Thursday’s stunt as a PR move, but it wouldn’t make sense for them to change the agreement of the CBA. I just believe that the NFL players feel disrespected that the owners did it this way, and they may unfortunately delay voting on this CBA out of pure stubbornness.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Some NFL players often don’t take to kindly to being disrespected because they believe respect should be served to them on a silver platter. However, we can only hope that they see the bigger picture – that they make money playing football, and they’re going to lose their fan base – and as a consequence, their money – each day they delay signing this CBA.

As I tweeted (@walterfootball), “NFL players want more money. NFL players want fewer practices. I’d be happy just to play football for a living. #wewantfootball.”

TRcasTitans31 quickly replied to me, “Owners want more money and slipped unapproved things into the CBA, I’d be happy just to be a billionaire. Works both ways.” Not quite. The owners own the teams. They can do whatever they want. It’s their business. NFL players, meanwhile, don’t have to play football. They’re free to sell insurance, drive trucks or flip hamburgers. No one’s forcing them to play football, despite what Adrian Peterson may think.

But the NFL players won’t sell insurance, drive trucks or flip hambugers because they have a far better job than 99.9 percent of the people in America. But for some reason, they just don’t seem to realize that.

That’s my take. I think the NFL players are the bigger jerks, but don’t let me sway you either way. Vote on whom you think is the bigger jerk, and discuss it in the comment board below the poll.

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