Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Twitter and the NFL Lockout

Some athletes today just don't get it. I understand that its a miniscule population, but the ones who make fools of themselves give all professional athletes a bad rap. For example, today on his twitter account, Reggie bush had this to say:


This is the same guy who tweeted, "It's been fun New Orleans" after the Saints traded up to draft RB Mark Ingram. Clearly Bush doesn't understand how to responsibly use Twitter. Another NFL star took a lot of heat for one of his comments about the lockout. Adrian Peterson said this in an interview in reference to the NFL:
"It's modern day slavery you know"
While many players publicly disagreed with Peterson, Pittsburgh Steelers RB Rashard Mendenhall came to his defense and tweeted:

 "Anyone with knowledge of the slave trade and the NFL could say that these two parallel each other"
On a side note, many of you might remember that Mendenhall is the same guy who authored these brilliant tweets after Osama Bin Laded was killed:



Although those tweets are ridiculous, that's not the point of this post. NFL players need to understand how the general public views the lockout. I think I stand for just about everybody when I say: if you don't say anything stupid to remind us that you get paid millions of dollars to play a sport, date supermodels, and own multiple houses that I would get lost in that you show off on Cribs, then we will worship you and view you as the lesser of two evils in this lockout. We agree with you. We don't want players to get hurt. We want the NFL to take care of you long after a ten year career takes a toll on your body, because we've seen what has happened to guys like Steve Duerson and William "The Refrigerator" Perry. Further more, we don't even want a longer regular season. Not one person I've talked to thinks switching from sixteen to eighteen games is a good idea. That shows us that the owners don't have your best interest at heart and only care about making more money In this situation, we see the owners as the "bad guys". We see billionaire owners watching the games in their luxury boxes with their suits on, while they make millions of dollars off of their football franchise, and we can't relate to them. If athletes don't ignorantly compare making millions of dollars to slavery when they can walk away from the game whenever they want, we will take their side. Have player salaries gotten a little ridiculous and need to be changed? Absolutely, but when owners say they are losing money but won't show us their financial documents, we are inclined to take the players' side in this battle. At the end of the day, the owners, players, and fans want to see football, end of story. If players stop saying absurd things on Twitter, then myself and most NFL fans are willing to look past rookies signing contracts guaranteeing them $50 million dollars before they ever play a professional game. So athletes, please stop using Twitter to hurt your own cause, and take a pay cut. I'm sure you can still support your family making three million dollars a year instead of five. Let us take your side in this lockout so we can hopefully have NFL football back this fall.




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