BY EVAN SPORER
EDITORIAL. PHOTOS BY AP NEWS
According to the Chinese calendar, 2010 was the year of the tiger. Boy did someone mess that up. Anyway, without dwelling too much on the past year of sports, here are 10 major storylines as we hop into 2011, or, the year of the rabbit.
1. NBA and NFL Labor Agreements
Before any 2011 NFL or NBA storylines can be addressed, what first needs to be tabled are the statuses of collective futures of those leagues.
As of now, there is no labor agreement in place between the player’s association and the owners of both leagues.
What could that mean potentially? A lockout… or lockouts.
Right now, neither the NFL nor NBA are even remotely close to signing a labor agreement, with both sides very far apart. I don’t think that average sports fan has really processed what this could mean, or the huge effect this could potentially have.
These are billion dollar corporations that employ mass amounts of people. So forget about the athletes. They’ll survive without their salaries for a year. But think about all the unemployment that would accompany a lockout. Those who work for the league would be left jobless, and that could be catastrophic.
Also, imagine those months in-between the baseball season without football or basketball.
Major factors in getting these deals done? For the NFL, if the owners want to move to an 18-game schedule, the league will have to remain un-capped as players’ will expect some higher numbers on their paychecks.
The NBA wants to cut contract length, and decrease both salary length and guaranteed money. The players… not too happy. There has to be a middle ground, right?
As of now, things are not looking good for David Stern or Roger Goodell.
