Most politicians have opted to stay out of the NFL’s ongoing labor dispute. One fairly powerful politician has weighed in.
President Barack Obama “expects” and “hopes” that the league and the NFLPA will resolve their labor dispute, according to the Associated Press.
(And here come the “Obama should be worrying about the deficit” comments.)
In our view, it’s fair game for politicians to express concern and/or hope about the new national pastime. As Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post last week, “Congress, acting in the public interest, has to keep the NFL on track because of the great benefits given to the league by federal law and taxpayer funds and because of its impact on the nation’s economy.”
Political involvement favors the players, since a work stoppage would be initiated by the owners. Also, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith previously worked for Attorney General Eric Holder, and one of Smith’s obvious strategies has been to exert political pressure on the league, in the absence of leverage at the bargaining table.
All politics aside (and I’ve become decidedly apolitical since getting out of the practice of law), we just want this thing to be over. So we’ll take whatever works, whether it’s Obama, the Pope, Gilbert Gottfried, and/or the ghost of Terry Bradshaw.
Hell, we’d even pull up a boat and blare Dean Martin records outside the FMCS if it would help get a deal done.