NFL Wants To Take Hard-Earned Money From All Those Players Who Shoot Themselves In Bars Or Something

NFL executive vice president Jeff Pash has some serious problems with the current collective bargaining agreement, foremost being that all those football players shooting themselves in bars get to keep their signing bonuses. Outrage!

Pash appeared on Mike and Mike this morning to do a little management dick twirling. Here's what he said:

"That's a code for saying it's a pretty one-sided deal," Pash said, answering [NFLPA boss DeMaurice] Smith's comments that the players were happy with the last CBA.

"We'll continue on with a system where if a player shoots himself in a bar and goes to jail he gets to keep his signing bonuses. We'll continue on where there isn't testing for growth hormone. We'll continue on with a system where there's four preseason games that if the fans have been clear about anything, they don't want those games," Pash said, detailing why the owners weren't satisfied with the past deal.

What he's saying, I believe, is that under an ideal CBA, signing bonuses would be contingent on players not shooting themselves in bars. A player who shoots himself in a bar would have to forfeit his signing bonus, merely on account of his having shot himself in a bar. There would probably be a clause in the CBA reading something like, "ARTICLE XXXVIII: SIGNING BONUSES FOR PLAYERS SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN BARS," with a subsection for players who shoot themselves in bars but do not go to jail. Needless to say, this is all very eye-opening. I was not aware that players shooting themselves in bars represented so great a scourge that it undermined the current agreement and threatened the league's economic viability. And I am very glad that, on the eve of a hotly contentious labor showdown, an NFL suit can resist the urge to demonize the other side and instead talk frankly about the real issues facing the league — violent greedhead thugs roaming the country's bars, shooting themselves, and keeping the money they made many years prior for signing with their team. One hopes that the players will come to their senses, and a deal can be struck, and everyone can go out and celebrate and somehow not shoot himself.

Pash 'optimistic' about new deal [ESPN]