For the players sake, 18 is too many

Friday, February 04 2011

After 12 bruised and battered years in the NFL, Hines Ward isn’t likely to be playing anymore by the time league owners hope to implement their latest money grab, an expansion to an 18-game regular-season schedule. This article was written by Tara Sullivan and appeared in The Bergen Record.

That’s a good thing for Ward, who admitted Wednesday that he needs a good “two to three months” to recover from the current 16-game season. “At least that for all the bumps to go away,” the Steelers’ Pro Bowl wide receiver said during Super Bowl week.

While players fall by the injury wayside week in and week out across the league, filling teams’ injured-reserve rosters to their bulging capacities, common sense dictates that adding two more games is not a good idea. No matter what concessions are made to offset the impact of two more hard-hitting weeks – reduced preseason schedules and increased rosters chief among them – the owners cannot escape the inherent hypocrisy in their desire to fill their overflowing coffers a little bit more. They cannot use one side of their mouth to tout player safety while using the other side to add more games.

It just doesn’t compute.

“We don’t even have to talk about it; it’s a given that nobody wants to go to 18 games,” Steelers linebacker James Harrison said. “It’s not conducive to being healthy. It’s not conducive to the player safety they’re always talking about.

“I’m all for player safety, but when you say that and then you want to add two games, you’re really contradicting yourself.”

Harrison and Ward may not seem like the ideal candidates to criticize the league’s stance on player safety, considering both are recognized as being among the dirtiest players in the league. Ward is notorious for getting shots on opposing defenders when the refs aren’t looking, and Harrison is not only the league’s most ferocious hitter, but also its most heavily fined. But those credentials actually underscore their unique understanding of the toll two extra games would take.

“Let’s cut two or three more years off everybody’s career. That’s what would happen,” Ward said. “Nobody that I talked to wants to do it, not even with getting paid for the extra two games. That’s not good money. All money’s not good money. Guys don’t want to jeopardize the health issue for two more game checks.

“That’s why I get so heated, because you talk about player safety but you’re not looking at the whole big picture. You’re trying to add two more games to get more revenues, but this game is already the most popular game as it is. Leave it alone. Every year it’s a money-driven business, and year in and year out you see revenues get higher and higher. What’s wrong with it? Don’t let greed overcome the issue of player safety and health.”

Ward was echoing the thoughts of the only owner brave enough to go public with opposition to the 18-game schedule, his own boss in Steelers chairman Dan Rooney. Earlier this month, Rooney told The New York Times he’d “rather not have the money.”

“We love Mr. Rooney. He’s a straight shooter and he’s well respected throughout the whole NFL,” Ward said. “He’s just speaking what we really feel about it. Nobody wants 18 games. He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t care about that extra money. He’s worried about his players and their safety. You want to talk about players and safety, then don’t talk about adding two more games. That’s where you’re being contradictory.”

But Rooney will be far outnumbered among his ownership peers, including the bombastic Jerry Jones. Jones reasserted his interest in the expansion during a news conference Tuesday in Dallas, where the Cowboys’ owner has had to endure hosting a Super Bowl in his own stadium without the home team.

“When it comes down to it, the bottom line is it’s about money,” Harrison said. “I think the biggest thing that hurt [the owners] was when Mr. Rooney came out and said he’d rather it stay at 16 games, that we don’t need the money. Right now these guys are talking about adding two more games when it’s [already hard enough] to get a guy through the whole season healthy.”

With the game’s grandest stage only days away, the looming specter of an impending lockout hovers above like an anvil. This could be the last meaningful pro football game for a very long time, but rather than sit down and talk, the players union and owners’ negotiators waste time trading public barbs and increasing rhetoric about who’s been more willing to negotiate. On Wednesday, NFL chief negotiator Jeff Pash may have at last offered a glimmer of hope for some wiggle room on the ill-advised 18-game idea.

“An 18-game season could be a part of a new business model — it doesn’t have to be,” Pash said. “The best reason to have an 18-game season is it would be a response to fan interest. The fans have made clear they don’t want four preseason games.”

The players are making it just as clear they don’t want 18 regular-season ones. Shouldn’t that count for something?