A perfectly hateful column from Bob Kravitz on the eve of the Super Bowl

Wow, thanks, Cran. *blush*

The beauty of the Payton-as-scab column is you still have plenty of time to write it. After all, this labor dispute isn't going to be settled anytime soon, and Payton's status as scab and Super Bowl coach isn't going to change.

 

Replacement players made a little over three grand a game. Not exactly lucrative.

 

Also, that Deadspin column on the Kravitz column is utter b.s. Not one cogent point about why they have a problem with it. Just a chance to snipe at a mainstream columnist, so they take it. The sports snark Web site version of political talk radio. Just make fun of the other side - no need for a real argument - because you know the audience is already on your side.

 

To me, a guy that played in the league several years and started is a picket-line crosser, not a scab. You can certainly argue that's the worse crime of the two (as the players in Bob's column illustrate) but a "scab" to me is reserved for players like Payton, who only got into the league because of the strike and weren't heard from since.

 

guybehind, understood, and agreed.

It didn't seem to hurt his reputation the way it hurt somebody like Danny White, whose quick crossing and playing with the replacements destroyed his standing in the locker room as a would-be face/leader of that team. Some of that also went back to the 1982 strike, when White questioned the motives of the union.

 

yup. guy who were on the team but then eventually crossed were wrong-minded, to me, but not "scabs." i was there once myself, as many of you know, 'though i ultimately made the most educated decision an uncrossed, so to speak. but sean was among those i considered pure "scabs."

but that was 23 years ago, when he was a desperate, young 27-year-old. he's done his time, so to speak. bringing it up now is little more than a cheapshot, in my eyes.

i fully understand the emotions stirred up here, though. carry on.

 

Zorn wasn't on the opening day roster and was active during the replacement games only, for sake of clarification.

The three QBs that were on the opening day roster: DeBerg, Testaverde and ... Mike Shula.

Parenthetically, Erik Kramer was a Falcons scab who went on to have a decent career and retire in 1999.

 

That entire story is simply irrelevant, it might be enough for the fans in Indiana to start remembering the Saints as that scab they kept picking at(the one they never thought would scar them) other than that, this is just nonsense.

 

Ed Garvey's handling of the '82 negotiations was the downfall of the early NFLPA. He wanted to establish pay levels by position and quickly lost the skill position guys, especially the quarterbacks. I remember quoting Zorn at the time calling the union proposal "socialism to the Nth degree." Poorest reading of the membership I've seen in professional sports. It unraveled from there.

 

As a Saints fan, I love me some Sean Payton, and I think Kravitz probably overdid it with the snarly attitude. But this is a legitimate topic for a Super Bowl column, which would have been better if he'd stayed strictly with his opinion and not watered it down with trying to get quotes from former players. You've got a coach for one of the teams in the SB who took a turn as a replacement player (i.e. a scab), with the looming prospect of a labor dispute on the near horizon.

The fact is, the 1987 strike, which was settled by the use of scab labor, broke the players' union and performed the remarkable feat of turning Gene Upshaw (one of the toughest players ever) into a company lapdog. The fact that it's taken 22 years for the union to finally stand up for itself tells you everything you need to know about the outcome of the '87 strike.

 

I'm sensing a bit of a generational gap in the reaction to the column. It seems like really young people, raised almost entirely in a post-Reagan, post-industrial U.S.A., can't even fathom the principles behind a union-management tussle. I think, at last count, organized labor represented just 7 percent of American private sector workers (which excludes teachers). To a lot of the young people, Kravitz' column reads like needless sniping about an absolute non-issue. To a lot of the older people, perhaps 30 and older, and especially 40 and above, it probably connects a little better.