For football fans everywhere, this weekend brings both a very exciting and very foreboding Super Bowl. You have 2 of the oldest, storied franchises in the NFL in the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. And then around the corner comes the possibility of…a strike?!
It’s hard for fans to relate what’s going on. How could players who make millions, reporting to owners who make billions, in the most successful sports league in history, possibly go out on lockout?
It shows how there are times in life when we can’t sit down and talk to each other; instead, we talk past each other. Now, I’m not going to assign blame anywhere, but the players and the owners have been very confrontational about salaries, the length of the season and all the rest.
This is a great teaching moment — if you have kids who can’t understand how there could be no season next year — to let them know how important it is for people to sit down and talk face to face.
So often our problems with each other seem insurmountable. And when opposite sides get together and sit down, at first there might be a lot of yelling if it’s been very contentious. But after they work through the raw emotions, then they see where they might have common ground.
This is something that I hope happens in Washington too. I read The Financial Times of London everyday and I can tell you we’re not inspiring a lot of confidence in the rest of world with the inability of the Democrats and Republicans to sit down and honestly assess that we are a financial train wreck and that our position in the world is, in fact, in danger.
Here’s my hope: That there is a next NFL season and that the players and owners can sit down and figure out how to divvy up an embarrassment of riches. Because we have the opposite as a nation: We have an embarrassment of overpromising what we can’t afford and kicking the can down the road. We’ve got to get it together on our nation’s financial obligations!
As far as who I’m rooting for in the Super bowl? The Packers!
