My Official Green Bay Packers blog

As I was reading through the various articles about Gene Upshaw’s passing a stat popped up that made me choke on my gum:  Upshaw helped shepherd the collective bargaining agreement that saw the union players take home 59.5% of NFL revenues.  Baconpowder?  In 2006 the NFL’s receipts totalled over $6 billion dollars.  59.5% of that is just over $3.5 billion.  Dollars.

If football were construction, I’d call the players on the field the labor.  Their work makes the product, the product in this case being the action of the game.  In construction, a profitable company likely spends 25% or less of all their revenues on labor.  A poorly run company might be closer to 33%.  Get up to two-thirds, and the carpenters are pulling up in Hummers, masons in Benzes.  Who am I kidding - the carpenters are still pulling up in beater pickups, only difference is the bed would be filled with empty Labatt’s instead of Milwaukee’s Best.  And one more thing?  They’d all be on unemployment because the contractor would never get any work, having to charge so much just to pay the ridiculous wages for his help.

As I understand it, the expiration date of the current collective bargaining agreement is coming soon.  Nobody wants to relive 1987 again, but seriously?  Nearly two-thirds of all NFL revenue goes to the manual labor?  That’s gotta change.  I’m not gonna be the guy that says Jerry Jones needs to be able to afford more plastic surgery on his sagging face, but this arrangement is as unbalanced as Pamela Anderson’s, uh, marriages.

By the way - did you know that Milwaukee’s Best had Milwaukee’s Best Girls, too?  I think I could tap that.

Technorati Tags: NFL, Players Association, Billyuns and Billyuns

Gene Upshaw, Executive Director of the NFL Player’s Association and aspiring breaker of Joe DeLamielleure’s neck, died yesterday from pancreatic cancer.  He had only been diagnosed with the disease on Sunday evening.  That’s like two and a half freaking days.

I was never much of a fan of Upshaw as a union honk, mainly because in the radio interviews I heard him do, reason never seemed to enter the playing field when discussing expectations of players.  He fought hard against anything that would make the players more accountable for their actions.  And what the world needs now, is accountability, sweet accountability.  It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

But the guy was a beast on the field.  A warrior.  The kind of guy you hated playing against you, but loved when he was playing for you.  That’s how I’ll choose to remember him.

It’s also being reported that Joe DeLamielleure, the former NFL lineman who tried to get Upshaw to open up the union checkbook for former players who couldn’t use their arms or legs anymore because of the beatings they took on the field, has canceled the renewal of the Gene Upshaw rider on his life insurance policy.  The rider would allow DeLamielleure’s policy to pay off double if his neck was actually broken by Upshaw.  But you might want to double check the facts on that one.

In all seriousness, what’s with all the pancreatic cancer these days?  It seems to be popping up everywhere, and it’s so damn deadly.   If Patrick Swayze lives for another year, it’ll be the first person I’ve heard of living that long with this disease.

Catch you on the flip side, Gene.

Technorati Tags: Gene Upshaw, NFL, Players Association, Pancreatic Cancer, DeLamielleure by a neck

Eesh. It’s preseason, so I know I shouldn’t get too worked up about the final score of a game, but ladies and gentlemen, after my dog spends 34 passionate minutes licking his own ass? His breath smells way better than this game did.

Because Brett Favre doesn’t play DB or LB, I’m pretty sure the 34 points San Francisco put up on the Packers had nothing to do with Favre being traded.

Looking back at the 2007 preseason, there was a lopsided game like this, but it was in our favor, spanking a team we would face in the playoffs later in the year and beat with the same stick we used the first time. Maybe preseason means nothing, maybe there are echoes of truth in these exhibition games. As is my style, I’m not going to provide an in-depth analysis of the game - there are people who are paid sphincterloads of money to do only that, and I’m a guy with a job and a mortgage who nets about $.03 with every post I make. So here’s three cents’ worth of quick hitters:

• With Will “China” Blackmon and Jordy Nelson available to return kicks, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have the best return game in the NFC North or the NFC for that matter. Nelson’s big return last night showed he does not have Usain Bolt speed, but he does that thing that made Mel Gray from the Lions one of the best return men of the last quarter century - as soon as he catches the ball, he runs. No “my shoes are stuck in mud but maybe I can deek everyone by shaking my shoulders” hesitations. Just catch and go. So the return game should be good with the double threat. That is as long as nobody tells Blackmon to break a leg.
• Aaron Rodgers looked like an unsure rookie; he didn’t spot the first down marker on a scramble, seemed indecisive in the pocket, resulting in four visits with the dirt at Candlestick Park.
• Brett Favre looked like a seasoned vet against the Redskins. Okay, it’s not a Packers highlight, but you’ve gotta expect some keystrokes to go to Brett.
• I’m hoping that this season there are few camera shots that show the stitched last names of Green Bay DBs flitting down the field, futilely trying to chase down a wideout that they later swore pulled a Rosie Ruiz, because they never saw him until he was almost in the endzone.

Next up: In Denver on Friday.

Technorati Tags: Green Bay Packers, preseason 2008, Favreless in Frisco