Friday, July 22nd, 2011...2:18 pm
Wretched Lantern
GRID IRON…one of the quick ways to evaluate the NFL contract talks is to use traditional benchmarks of revenue distribution. In “Net Worth”, the brilliant study of the NHL labour wars, it was noted that the athlete cut of income in professional sport almost always gravitates to 57%. That’s the number that seems fair. When it explodes to the 60’s, owners invariably feel squeezed and get cranky, when it dips to the 40’s, players get ripped off.
The current offer on the table by the NFL owners offers 47% of revenues to the players. It’s a big time cash grab and one that would immediately boost the value of franchises, on top of promising extraordinary cash flow through the run of the ten year deal. It’s a crooked offer, one that needlessly exploits the finest athletes in the world.
The implausibility of owners crafting an agreement by themselves, “ratifying it”, and then expecting the players to approve, made yesterday one of the most puzzling days in the history of NFL labour negotiations. The owners want the 800 million generated by preseason and hungrily attempted to cow players into acquiescence. It didn’t work, and the players should stick to their guns until a far more realistic division of the spoils is offered…
GREEN LANTERN…utterly disappointed by this dog of a film. The dialogue hits the George Lucas level of woodenness and triviality. The enemy, Paracrap, looks like a hunk of dust that a good green vacuum cleaner should have cleaned up. Pithy statements about humanity (”we are young, but can learn”, this said to midgets living on narrow grey columns) are grating, particularly when aliens cast those knowing looks at the end of the film that say, “We have misjudged you, you have surprised us with your courage, human”. Oh, blow it out your ass. This film is horrific, a zero out of ten load of baby poo that should have never seen the light of day. And Ryan Reynolds? Nice abs, can’t act…
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