How many Wisconsin Public Employees and High School Football Teams are fans of The Green Bay Packers?

The Badger State's Governor Walker and the Republican majorities in the Wisconsin House and Senate place NO collective bargaining limits on the NFL !

By Elliot Hughes
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 4:46 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, March 2, 2011 2:04:28 a.m.

For the NFL, (click here) the country’s most popular and most lucrative sport, there’s only one thing certain right now.
There will be a draft on the days of April 28-30, collective bargaining agreement or no collective bargaining agreement.
The deadline for the NFL and its players to come to an agreement is just hours away (Thursday at 11:59 p.m.), and while the cynicism surrounding that actually happening rages on, there’s still no reason to panic just yet....

They might want to ask themselves the LAST TIME they could afford a ticket to a game and if they'll be able to in the future?

Wisconsin's J.J. Watt moving up draft boards  (click here)

PUBLISHED Monday, Feb 28, 2011 at 12:07 pm EST

There are plenty of fine defensive line prospects from the Big Ten working out the NFL Scouting Combine on Monday, including Purdue's Ryan Kerrigan and Iowa's Adrian Clayborn.
The one perhaps making the biggest impact, however, is Wisconsin's J.J. Watt. After watching Watt (6-5, 290) run the 40-yard dash in 4.78 seconds, NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock called him the "prototype" for a five-technique defensive end.

Longer season?  Massive wage cuts?  Will that bring back the 'affordable' ticket?  Do theNFL players and the Wisconsin public employees actually have anything in common? 

February 28, 2011

Wisconsin: Packers Back the Protesters

Posted by Dave Zirin

After a thirty-year erosion of power, influence, and numerical strength, a period of reckoning has arrived for organized labor, and the terms of the debate couldn’t be starker. It’s not wages or benefits that are being negotiated in the twenty-first century. It’s whether labor unions—and the basic protections they bring—will exist at all.

This can be seen dramatically in the two most high-profile labor disputes in the country, disputes that on their face couldn’t seem more different. There are the public-sector workers of Wisconsin—the teachers, ambulance drivers, and child-care workers—trying to fend off Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to legislate them out of existence. Then there are the N.F.L. players, facing an imminent lockout if they don’t accept massive wage cuts and a longer season.
It seems almost comical to compare the two: after all, in Wisconsin, public-sector workers are attempting to defend decent-paying jobs that they can keep for decades and then retire with a sense of security. In the N.F.L., the Players Association is attempting to defend lucrative careers that last on average three and a half years, have a hundred per cent injury rate, and will statistically result in death twenty years earlier than the typical American male....

The 'players' in the public employee sector are being asked to GIVE UP THEIR COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS, the players in the NFL are being asked to take wage cuts and provide for a longer season? 

Is that the same?

No.

Would Walker expect the NFL players to give up their collective bargaining rights?  Heck no.  Then what heck is this?

It is easy for the Players Union to figure out if they will benefit by having more fans able to attend a game by accepting lower wages and extending their season.  That is a no brainer.  But, would they ever expect their sacrifice, if they need to deliver that, for their fans be met with a lower standard of income and therefore 'standard of living' resulting in poor attendence anyway?

We may see the Players come out with a compromise that will bring salaries down.  They may even extend the playing season.  But, what realistically are they expecting in return?  I would expect they will expect greater exposure for their fans and therefore make up any of their lost incomes with the sale of 'sport souveniers' and fan enrollment along with fan enjoyment.

Is that going to occur if they make these sacrifices?  Will their fans actually be able to buy tickets to their extended home games with lower ticket prices?  Will the fans actually have lower ticket prices after their Players accept these agreements or will their fans be no better off and this will only deliver higher revenues to the owners and investors?

It is understandable how the Players back the Protesters.  In many, many ways they have a lot in common.  But, if the protesters lose their fight and the players lose their fight, does that bring them any closer together?

NO !!!

Unions and their contracts are important and translates into huge dynamics.

THINK ABOUT IT !