Nothing more than a brief update. Teams are starting to send home team employees without pay, even the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as Sander pointed out earlier this week. This has to be a blow for those employees as they have no control over the situation and a once steady job has turned into unemployment, at least for now.
Teams are also starting to talk about canceling training camp, or at least holding them in different locations. Most teams have agreements with a college or complex for certain dates an the longer this lockout goes on, the more likely moving camp becomes.
Goodell continues to bang the 18 game season drum, nwo saying it's what season ticket holders want. He's wrong. What we want is not to pay full price for two preseason games. We'd rather pay for meaningful games only. Cut two preseason games and keep a 16 game schedule. The commissioner has lost touch with the fans on this one. It's been pretty overwhelming (over 70% against 18 game season) but he continues to say that's what we want. I hope the league's negotiating tactics aren't in the same vein, otherwise any logical argument seems to fall on deaf ears.
My personal conspiracy theory, at least for now is that there will be an 18 game season this year, 2 preseason games and 16 regular season games or 3 and 15. The commissioner will then use this as a springboard into his 18 game season.
June 8th is the next big date. It's when the court rules on the lockout motion. If they rule the lockout is legal and can continue (long shot in my less than qualified legal opinion), then we have to hope for negotiations to quicken. If they rule it cannot continue, the league may shut down operations, technically going out of business. My only thought is this, if they go out of business, do players still have to honor their contracts? What's stopping someone from going to the UFL and getting paid (UFL pays way less, but $1MM with them is better than $0 with a now defunct NFL team).
Injury risk is huge right now. Guys going to workouts are assuming all the risk. Someone blows out a knee, I doubt they are covered. Not a good system.
There's your update. Lets hope it's one of the last ones.