Hue Jackson Needs To Sell You Some Raider Tickets

There's this lockout thing, see? And with no football, the football teams that usually make money off of football, they can't make money. So that's bad for people who work for the teams, and not just the players: the coaches and execs and secretaries and janitors too. So a lot of teams are cutting salaries while their revenue streams are cut off.

But not the Raiders. The Raiders are a family. And as a family, every family members needs to chip in when times get tough. So Oakland is forcing every team employee to sell season tickets to keep their paychecks. They've got to move ticket plans worth 10 percent of their salaries in order to avoid pay cuts or furloughs, which might be tough for someone like head coach Hue Jackson, who's making upwards of a million dollars.

Here's the part where we resist the urge to bash this as a cockamamie minor league scheme, just because it's the Raiders and we're so used to their cockamamie minor league bullshit. But employees seem happy about this!

"It was like Christmas," Raiders defensive coordinator Chuck Bresnahan recalled this week of the reaction at the meeting. "And with a big sigh of relief."

Another assistant coach reportedly closed a deal for 10 season tickets on the first day.

We're forced to admit that, yes, giving employees the option is much better than just slashing salaries, as so many other teams have done or plan to do. And whatever the added bump in plans sold due to the makeshift sales staff, that's good for the franchise in the longer term.

But we're also forced to point out that owners like Al Davis aren't among those having to cold-call clients to put food on the table, and the whole thing could be a moot point if they just agreed to play football again.

Raiders allow employees to sell season tickets in lieu of furloughs [USA Today]