Mike Brown.... was.... right? Well, if you're thinking this article is about football, you're wrong. If you're thinking that what follows is about the business of football, well then you've hit the nail on the head.
The Cincinnati Enquirer's Joe Reedy recently wrote about Carolina Panther's owner Jerry Richardson's thoughts on the situation they're in and how it could have possibly been avoided if more owners had voted against opting out of the collective bargaining agreement in 2008 like Mike Brown and Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson did.
"When I speak for myself, I was for labor peace at any price and I always have been," Richardson said during a break at the annual league meetings last week in New Orleans. "In hindsight Mike was right and I wasn't. He wants to get it right and do the right thing."
Reedy wrote that Brown had two main reasons for voting the way he did. One was that he felt the deal was too one-sided and that it gave the players too much of the revenue and the other was that the deal seemed to be rushed. Now the NFL is in a lockout and one of the main reasons is because players want a bigger cut of the revenue that owners are unwilling to give up.
"We weren't fully informed on what was part of the deal," Brown said, "and that bothered me."
Reedy said that Brown knows that the only way the two sides can get past the work stoppage is by working together but that can't happen until the two sides can meet after the hearing in Minnesota that the players filed against the owners after they decertified the union.
"We can't exist without each other," Brown said. "Instead of joining hands and jumping off the cliff why don't we join hands sit down and see what works for both of us."