NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

[fordfixer]

NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
[url="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11137/1147112-66.stm"]http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11137/1147112-66.stm[/url]

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will speak with Steelers season ticket holders Thursday, in what the league calls an interactive fan forum. All season ticket holders received notice in an email Monday of the live conference call with Goodell and of the specifics of how to join it. Goodell, who has done about 20 of these this spring, will take questions from the fans.

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[Discipline of Steel]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Only season ticket holders... everything he does reeks of the stink of money.

[DukieBoy]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Is Goodell gonna "talk to", or "listen to".

Time for him to shut up and listen up.

[plainnasty]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

I hope someone calls him out for being a hyporcrite.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Ed Bouchette said if he were a season ticket holder he would like to ask Goodell what the purpose of locking the players out was to see what he says...

[Scarletfire1970]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Why? Why the hell would he think we'd want to talk to him? For what?

[feltdizz]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Ed Bouchette said if he were a season ticket holder he would like to ask Goodell what the purpose of locking the players out was to see what he says...

It's so the owners can do whats best for all 32 teams.

[Oviedo]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Ed Bouchette said if he were a season ticket holder he would like to ask Goodell what the purpose of locking the players out was to see what he says...

It's so the owners can do whats best for all 32 teams.

For the long term benefit of the game

[feltdizz]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Ed Bouchette said if he were a season ticket holder he would like to ask Goodell what the purpose of locking the players out was to see what he says...

It's so the owners can do whats best for all 32 teams.

For the long term benefit of the game

You should work for Goodell

[Oviedo]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Ed Bouchette said if he were a season ticket holder he would like to ask Goodell what the purpose of locking the players out was to see what he says...

It's so the owners can do whats best for all 32 teams.

For the long term benefit of the game

You should work for Goodell

I've already figured you are really D. Smith

How's that decertify and take it the courts strategy working for you?????

[feltdizz]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Ed Bouchette said if he were a season ticket holder he would like to ask Goodell what the purpose of locking the players out was to see what he says...

It's so the owners can do whats best for all 32 teams.

For the long term benefit of the game

You should work for Goodell

I've already figured you are really D. Smith

How's that decertify and take it the courts strategy working for you?????

it could be better but we will get it worked out.

[Oviedo]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Only by talking face to face and getting the courts out of it.

[Djfan]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

I would ask him what his football background is besides the electric game his older brother had as a kid. This guy has an agenda for the NFL that doesn't fit the average fan that I know.

[MadSteel]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Goodell: No 'drop-dead date' for NFL season
Thursday, May 19, 2011
By Ed Bouchette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There is no "drop-dead date" drawn up by league officials that would cancel the entire NFL season in the event that the current lockout extends into the regular season, commissioner Roger Goodell told Steelers season ticket holders this afternoon.

In his 17th such conference call held this spring with individual club's season ticket holders, Goodell said the league and the teams are preparing to conduct a full 2011 football season but also are prepared if the lockout lasts into September or beyond.

"First, our objective is to have a full season, we scheduled a full season, we are planning for a full season and that's our intent," Goodell said. "If we're not capable of doing that we will play as many games as possible and want to finish with the Super Bowl."

The question is, how many games must be canceled before it would be determined that resuming the season would be unreasonable? Goodell said while "obviously we want a credible season ... There is no drop-dead date."

A 1982 strike by the players after the first two regular-season games, canceled eight games. The league played a nine-game season and then conducted what it called a "tournament" in each conference rather than playoffs. A 1987 strike canceled one regular-season game and the league played three weeks worth of "replacement" games with substitute players and some veterans who crossed the picket lines.

Goodell repeated points that he has made on similar conference calls and in the media since the beginning of March, that the only way to resolve the two sides' issues is through bargaining and not litigation and the courts, the need for a rookie salary scale and that the owners made a much better offer to the players on March 11 on their final day of mediation in Washington, D.C.

There have been several days over the past month of mediated talks in St. Louis, most recently two days worth that ended on Tuesday. New talks are not scheduled until June 7 in St. Louis but Goodell said he hoped there could be "conversation" between the two sides before that.

He also said that the owners "are seeking a system that puts balance back into the collective bargaining agreement," saying that the pendulum swung too far in the players' favor in a 2006 CBA that the owners approved 30-2.



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[hawaiiansteel]

Re: NFL commissioner to speak with Steelers fans

Collier: Stink bugs, NFL grow on nerves

Thursday, May 19, 2011
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


As expected, we in the sports media are beginning to hear that our coverage of the NFL lockout is either being purposely ignored or, at best, accepted as a chronic irritant, like stink bugs.

A pity.

But, at least, the stink bugs are not getting bigger. As we lurch closer and closer to when football is traditionally staged, by which I mean in training camps soon after the Ben Roethlisberger nuptials, media fixation on a jeopardized NFL season will morph proportionately from the common stink bug into the colossal blood-lusting tarantulas you well remember from Eight Legged Freaks.

Commissioner Roger Goodell already is prepping for his role as the David Arquette character from that underappreciated 2002 flick, holding a live, interactive conference call today with Steelers fans, presumably about how in the world that barrel of toxic waste got into the reservoir right near the home of Joshua, the exotic spider farmer.

For Goodell, that actually should be easy to explain compared to how the owners and players cannot agree on some equitable way to share nine billion dollars.

But wait until things get really interesting, or at least half-way interesting.

Should we slog into August without a new collective bargaining agreement, the hyperventilating from television football analysts alone will be altering weather patterns coast to coast, and you can be sure that at ESPN and at the NFL Network, graphics departments are already into meetings on some kind of pulsing doomsday clock to accompany that 24/7 emergency.

Talk about bonus coverage.

Until then, however, I think most of us are 100 percent asymptomatic on the whole NFL withdrawal thing.

This being May 19.

Would I like to see Cameron Heyward working out on the South Side right now? Would I like to see him joining his fellow Steelers draft picks to learn the complex systems and begin to understand the responsibilities inherent in Mike Tomlin's the-standard-is-the-standard ethos?

Nah, I can wait.

Am I wondering about the undrafted players, anxious to find an NFL franchise willing to take a chance on maybe a Mark Herzlich, the Boston College linebacker with suspected 3-4 capability, an Ian Williams, the Notre Dame defensive lineman with suspect pass-rushing skills, or a Terrence Toliver, the LSU wideout whose size (6 feet 4) and speed could indicate he is the next Limas Sweed?

Not really.

This being May 19.

Certainly, people with a better handle on this than I are taking a more urgent view, perhaps none more lucid than the one Ralph Cindrich expressed this week to our own Ed Bouchette.

The highly respected Pittsburgh sports attorney and longtime analyst of NFL politics said he thinks substantial damage to the game has already been done, particularly as it relates to the annual contributions from draft picks and free agents who reliably energize the game. Those contributions can no longer be assumed. Cindrich further said that a potential uptick in injuries, should the season begin, wouldn't surprise anyone.

That could be true, but I am wondering if those injuries might be offset by the dramatic downtick -- downtick to zero -- of injuries that should never happen, namely the ridiculous spectacle of people tearing up their Achilles and shredding their knees in May and June.

But Ralph's most ominous comments, I think, went right to the quality of the game.

"What a lot of people are missing out on is the game suffers," Cindrich said. "If you ask coaches, how will the game be now compared to last year, they'll say there will be no comparison. There's no way you can get all your players together in such a short time."

Wow. Remind me not to ask coaches.

If you ask coaches, the seven-day week should be replaced by the eight-day week, and the 53-man roster replaced by the 153-man roster, and the chances that a rookie free agent could master an NFL playbook without having done graduate work at MIT are just not terribly good.

I'm not saying Ralph is wrong; I'm just saying that, if the quality of play is indeed affected, that doesn't necessarily mean the game's entertainment value is impacted, except perhaps for the better.

A lot of people who work in football don't like to hear it, but the NFL is in the entertainment business. The prospect of seeing some football games contested between teams that aren't as over-prepared as they usually are, who maybe don't know exactly what every last player on every team is going to do on third-and-5 on the plus side of the field from the spread formation against a dime defense prone to the zone blitz, between teams that might be forced to make a play instinctively instead of the way the game has been two-step and three-step and five-stop-drop-practiced to death like a segment on "Dancing With the Stars," well, it almost sounds refreshing.

But that's just me; I've got stink bugs to flush.

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