I stumbled across this old profile on former Atlanta Falcons center Jeff Van Note at sportsillustrated.cnn.com today. I often check that site but only occasionally actually click on the stories they have in their “vault,” which for those who don’t check the site, is really a repository for old, interesting stories that seem to randomly pop up from time to time.

I started reading it because of Van Note. I can’t completely explain why but he’s one of my favorite players from the early 1980s when I started watching the game. And the profile was very interesting. It was written as his career wound down. He had lost his starting job at center but was sticking around for a final season or two for no other reason than he really loved the game.

If Wikipedia (and my math) is correct, Van Note is 64 now. He played in the NFL from 1969 to 1986, all of which was with the Atlanta Falcons. When he retired, only Jim Marshall of the Vikings had played in more games with one team (246).

He played mostly for teams that weren’t very good, though he was a solid contributor on the Atlanta teams in 1978, that made and won the team’s first playoff games, and in 1980, that won the NFC West and had arguably the league’s best team before falling victim to a Dallas Cowboys comeback in the the playoffs.

He made five Pro Bowls and strikes me as one of those guys who will not make the Hall of Fame but who will more than occasionally be brought up for consideration.

I was very young and just learning about the game back then but everything I remember and everything I read indicate that he was, at worst, a very solid, workmanlike player and, at best, during his prime, memorably good.

One of the things that struck me about the profile was that he broke the picket lines during a 1974 labor issue only to decide later that he made a mistake. He became a vice president to the NFL Players Association and then the union’s president from 1983 to 1984.

One of the issues of the time was rookie salaries. “We’ve got to stop paying all this money to rookies,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Ralph Wiley at the time. “Salaries are fine, but earn them. What do rookies know about winning in the NFL? Tilt the scales to the proven veteran.”

As top picks like JaMarcus Russell, Tim Couch, David Carr and Ryan Leaf continue to sign massive contracts and fizzle out after a few years, that continues to be one of the main issues in today’s labor discussions as well. Of course it wasn’t a billion dollar institution at the time Van Note played, but it’s still instructive – the league has been fighting about some issues for as long as 25 to 30 years and still hasn’t figured out how to get it right.

Van Note may never make the Hall of Fame. But it was blue collar guys like him who came unheralded from the University of Kentucky to play for just short of two full decades who helped turn this league into what it is today.

His voice was instructive in 1986 when this profile was written. And it strikes me that if you got a half-dozen or so of his contemporaries into a room in an effort to solve the labor issues of today that you might have more success than the league and the union are having with some of the out of touch owners and players of today.

There are budget deficits and education reform measures facing the Minnesota Legislature during its last two weeks before adjournment but the Minnesota Vikings and the team’s efforts to get approval for a new stadium will at least be discussed, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Low construction costs and the short-term remaining on the team’s lease have lawmakers planning to introduce some options for taking care of the team. The press conference announcing several options comes just weeks after the Minnesota Twins opened Target Field to great acclaim.

There are plenty of obstacles to overcome before a Vikings deal becomes reality. But the team is getting more attention at the Capitol this year, despite huge budget deficits now and projected into the future, than it has in four years.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has come out and said that the NFL will consider offering incentives to teams playing late-season games to discourage them from resting their starters for the playoffs, after the Indianapolis Colts were widely criticized by fans and media for pulling many starters with a 15-10 lead in the 3rd quarter of a game against the Jets in Week 16.

The Colts were 14-0 at the time, and the Jets scored 19 unanswered points to win the game, including a backup QB Curtis Painter fumble that was returned for a touchdown.

One of the options likely to be considered would be awarding teams that play their starters draft choices.

Personally, I think I’ve got a better idea–how about you get the labor negotiations solved, and make sure to preserve some of the ideas that have kept the league competitive (revenue sharing & salary cap) in place, so that the likelihood that teams will have the opportunity to rest players in 2-3 games remains on the low end?

Realistically, I would think that rewarding teams for playing their “starters” seems more likely to cause problems–I’m guessing that some teams would find some loopholes, and manage to get some backups declared as starters so they could rest their stars and get the extra picks too.

Additionally, unless the picks were earlier picks–probably 2nd or 3rd round selections–I really wonder if teams would consider it worth the extra risk.

Another alternative, raised by a friend of ours over drinks this evening, would be to reward teams not with extra picks, but possibly with moving them up in draft position–and not just for playing starters, but for actually winning–by coming up with a point system for determining draft order rather than pure record, and figuring out some way to reward teams with extra points when they win games that they don’t need to win late in the season.

(Admittedly the details we have on this idea are slim, but I’m guessing that the league has some PhDs in an office somewhere that could fine tune things).

That way, at least teams are being rewarded for performance rather than just participating–and it wouldn’t add picks to the draft–which the NFLPA should and probably would be against in the first place, since it would reduce the amount of the rookie pool available for players, possibly cost more veterans spots, and reduce the number of guys that could negotiate where they go if not drafted late.

Anyone have any other thoughts on how the league could encourage teams to compete in late season games, without making a mockery of the game?

Former Indianapolis City-County Council President Beurt SerVaas apparently wasn’t too happy that the Colts decided to rest key starters in the second half of their loss to the Jets on Sunday.  The Colts led the Jets 15-10 with about 10 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter when Colts’ coach Jim Caldwell, who had led the Colts to a 14-0 start to the season, decided to pull them.

The Jets came back to win 29-15, and Caldwell and the Colts have been taking heat ever since, including a Yahoo! Sports reporter ridiculously calling it a bigger mistake than Marty Mornhinweg taking the wind rather than the ball to start overtime.

But none of the criticism appears to be more ridiculous than that of SerVaas, who has said he will petition the council to ask for refunds for all fans upset about the loss (he hasn’t found anyone on the council to sponsor his proposal).

“They came to see a game played honestly. It was not played honestly, ” he said.

Umm, you may not like it–some fans may not like it–even some sports reporters may not like it–but it most certainly was played honestly.  While Curtis Painter is definitely not Peyton Manning–hell, I didn’t even realize he was the Colts’ backup–he is an NFL player, with an NFL contract, that goes to NFL practices every day, meaning he was out there playing honestly, doing his best to win the game (even if his best isn’t very good).

Would you ask for a refund if Manning got hurt, forcing Painter into a game?

Should Vikings fans get a refund for games earlier in the season when Tarvaris Jackson replaced Brett Favre in several lopsided wins earlier this season?  Surely some fans would have liked to see the scores run up even more.

Do baseball fans get refunds when they find out that Joe Mauer or Alex Rodriguez or Albert Pujols aren’t playing?

Do basketball fans get a refund when LeBron James comes off the court for a breather?  Maybe Pittsburgh Penguin fans should get a pro-rated refund for every minute that Sid Crosby isn’t on the ice?

Peter King even addressed it in his weekly column:

Tweet of the Week

“How would we look at a team that threw away a game to get a higher draft pick? How is that dif than the Colts game today?”
– alvaradoangel, Angel Alvarado, late in the Colts’ 29-15 loss to the Jets, ruining Indy’s chance for a perfect season.

Good question, Angel. Very good question.

No, it isn’t a very good question–there’s a big difference between tanking entire portions of a season to get a better draft pick (common in the NBA, very rare in the NFL in my opinion) and resting (and protecting from injury) several star players for the last third of a game as you prepare for a run at the Super Bowl–the much bigger objective for the Colts season.

Does it suck for the fans not to get to see Peyton Manning for the whole game?

Sure.

Would those fans trade missing him for the last part of a game and losing to the Jets for a Super Bowl victory?

I’m guessing most would–even if there’s no guarantee that resting him means winning the Super Bowl, nor that he would have gotten hurt playing the last quarter of the game (just like there’s no guarantee that they would have beaten the Jets if he had stayed in).

Just a thought, but maybe SerVaas should stick to politics–heck, unless I’ve missed an update, the city has even bigger fish to fry even with the Colts–maybe SerVaas can come up with a way for the Capital Improvement Board to actually afford to run Lucas Oil Stadium for the Colts’ 2010 season.

The Reverend Al Sharpton has a reputation for sticking his nose in places it doesn’t belong, and raising racial issues where they may or may not be warranted, just to see his name in the papers again.

The NFL is no stranger to Sharpton, who has been critical of hiring practices for coaches, assistant coaches and general managers in the past.

Now, Sharpton is targeting another level of the NFL–ownership. And he isn’t just claiming racism–he’s declaring that a potential owner is…”Anti-NFL?”

News broke last week that Rush Limbaugh was part of an ownership group that is attempting to purchase the St. Louis Rams.  There’s no word yet on what percentage of the team Limbaugh would own, or what type of role he would play in day to day business, although one would suspect his role would be minor, since he’s got to grace us all with his golden pipes for 3 hours a day.

However, a few years back, while doing a stint with the geniuses over at ESPN, Limbaugh made an accusation that had racial overtones, claiming that Donovan McNabb was overrated, due to the media (and league’s) hope that a black quarterback succeed in the NFL:

“Sorry to say this, I don’t think he’s been that good from the get-go,” Limbaugh said. “I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.”

For presumably this reason, Sharpton sent the NFL a letter asking Commissioner Roger Goodell to not even consider Limbaugh’s bid, as Sharpton claims that “Limbaugh has been “anti-NFL” in his comments about several of the league’s players, specifically naming Philadelphia Eagles quarterbacks Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick.”

So now Sharpton knows better than the commissioner, the other owners, the players and the fans of the NFL what is “Pro-NFL” and what is “Anti-NFL.”  Never mind that one owner is making claims that the salary cap and revenue sharing (generally considered “Pro-NFL” by most people I know) will be going away, and another owner (who happens to have a long history of suing the league) has made so many questionable moves in the last 2+ seasons that the NFL should strongly consider intervening on his behalf.

Not that I’m pro-Limbaugh getting an ownership stake, mind you–I just think that if they dig hard enough, they’ll find other, legitimate reasons to possibly weed him out.  And if not, well then so be it–if they want to give him a seat at the table, that’s their prerogative.

Sharpton should really go back to…whatever it is that he does outside of try to incite racial riots, and leave NFL business decisions to those who are actually in charge of the NFL.  They have plenty of experience(and potential for) screwing things up on their own, without his help.

In a Thursday column on CBSSportsline.com one of the site’s writers made an argument that Major League Baseball is better than the National Football League because the league has “stayed true to itself” and doesn’t have 20 teams that exist in a “perpetual haze of mediocrity.”

My first thought was that the column was ridiculous. Stayed true to itself? “Pace-of-life rhythms”?

Baseball has “stayed true to itself” by instituting the gimmick of using the glorified exhibition called the All-Star Game to determine home-field for the World Series?

By instituting interleague play into a game whose greatest traditions for nearly a century included the leagues only meeting in the All-Star Game and the World Series?

By continuing to water down the playoffs by splitting into three divisions and adding a Wild Card game, a move clearly made for money and television?

By insisting that its economic issues are a thing of the past despite a $60-plus million gap between the highest and second-highest payrolls in the league?

By claiming parity in a league where three of the four playoff spots in the American League have been claimed by the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles/California/Anaheim Angels for five of the last years?

And worst of all, by actually allowing a World Series to be canceled for labor reasons?

If that is staying true to itself, I’ll take the league where “the in-stadium experience has been watered down to the extent that a couch/TV combo trumps seats on the 50-yard-line.

And while he can claim 20 teams are stumbling around in a haze of mediocrity, at least those teams have a chance to improve from year to year under an economic system that at least allows results on the field to be determined by the moves made by the football front office rather than the income brought in by television revenue.

While I still think the column’s premise is laughable, there is one valuable thing for the NFL to take from such writings. The NFL is – clearly – America’s Game. But the rhetoric that continues coming from league offices, teams’ headquarters, and the NFL Players Union is troubling.

DeMaurice Smith, new head of the NFLPA, has started a strike/lockout fund.

Commissioner Roger Goodell has at least acknowledged that it’s up to the league and the union to settle their upcoming labor issues peacefully.

But some of the league’s team owners are reportedly frustrated by revenue sharing and some of the other facts of life that have made this league great.

The union has said in the past that if 2010 is an uncapped year there will never be another cap.

Can the league stay strong without a salary cap? Perhaps. But the league and the union need to take a lesson from some of the mistakes made by Major League Baseball, some of which forced them to make some of the moves I disliked in order to start bringing back fans furious about the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

Tossing out revenue sharing would present a “Yankees versus the rest of the league” situation in the NFL for teams with large markets, deep-pocketed owners and brilliant stadiums like the Giants, Jets and Cowboys. League founders like Wellington Mara sacrificed making every buck they could for the good of the competition and the long-term success of the league. I’d say it’s worked well so far.

And a work stoppage? Over the division of billions and billions of dollars? During an economic time in which people may be seeing some slow recovery, the last thing these guys should be thinking about doing is screwing the fans out of the most popular forms of entertainment available to the public.

If the higher-ups in each of these organizations ignore these facts, go on a long, bitter strike, and eliminate the salary cap and many of the sources of revenue sharing in favor of a free-for-all, deep-pockets-buys-success strategy, they deserve whatever happens to them.

Hopefully that result would be a fan revolt remindful of the slow return Major League Baseball saw in the years following its last strike.

Figure it out, guys. Don’t prove this CBSSportsline.com columnist right.

Last night, the team worth the second least in the NFL hosted the team that’s worth the most.

Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, decided it would be a good time to open his mouth regarding the upcoming labor negotiations with the players union, under the guise of encouraging the people of Minnesota to deliver a new stadium to Zygi Wilf and the Vikings.  As usual, Jones was wrong.

Jones is one of at least a few owners that apparently want to see the salary cap AND revenue sharing eliminated from the NFL.  As fans of the league, and not just fans of “America’s Team,” we can only hope that there are very few owners that agree with him.

Revenue sharing in the NFL came about as the result of NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle convincing teams that for the good of the league, teams that made more had to share with teams that made less–in large part because of the success that the rival AFL had using a similar system.

While the NFL had already surpassed Major League Baseball in popularity, the parity brought about by revenue sharing (combined with the AFL/NFL merger and the eventual implementation of a salary cap) helped the league go from merely more popular to the truly dominant professional sports league it is today.

I firmly believe that removing the salary cap would hurt the game–removing revenue sharing might destroy it.  If Jones (or you) has any interest in a little history lesson on how football became what it is today, I suggest that he (or you) pick up a copy of America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation.

It’s a book we’ve recently read, and which we’re using as a starting point to a new category of articles we’re planning on posting here on Zoneblitz.com that will look at the history of the NFL (and AFL).  The stories will range from short tidbits we find interesting or amusing to longer looks at events that have helped shape the league, and how they continue to impact it today.

So if you’re interested in the history of the NFL (and AFL), we hope you’ll subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, or just continue to come back to the site–and give us your thoughts as well.

The National Football League, despite encouraging players to connect with fans with new media tools such as Twitter, has updated it’s social media policy to largely outlaw usage of such tools by players, coaches, and media during games.  The policy includes other social media tools, such as Facebook, and extends for 90 minutes before the game, and until post game interviews are done.

The new policy also includes representatives of players–so players like Chris Cooley, who regularly blogs throughout the year, including during the season and on game days, might be in hot water if his brother (who manages his site, and regularly posts there as well) are posting on game days.

The policy change comes despite the NFL offices having readily adopted Twitter, with several people at NFL headquarters in New York regularly using the service, and commissioner Roger Goodell having tweeted during last spring’s draft.

In fact, while several teams have banned and fined players for using the service (mainly for doing so during team meetings), several other teams have encouraged the use of tools like Twitter, including the New York Jets, who carry 11 players on the roster currently confirmed to regularly Tweet.

The new policy set by the NFL is likely an effort to level the playing field to a degree–ensuring that there are no distractions for some teams, while not for others–and also likely to prevent last second information from leaking to impact game plans and/or the lines in Vegas.  Not that the NFL condones betting <cough>required injury statuses<cough>.

While some regular Tweeters, such as Chad Ochocinco (@OgoChoCinco), probably bemoan the fact that the NFL is once again becoming the No Fun League, we wonder if some players won’t be better off with the policy–and if some players will start to back away from such social tools, after the escapades of Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones, who managed to cost himself a contract in the Canadian Football League after livestreaming video of himself forgetting which league he was going to be playing in and announcing that as soon as an NFL team gave him a contract offer he would leave.  Jones had also announced the appearance on his Twitter account (@RealPacmanJones), where he has 1,800 followers.

If you’re a regular Twitter user, feel free to follow Zoneblitz at @ZoneblitzCom.

They stole the Dodgers from Brooklyn, the Lakers from Minneapolis, and the Clippers from San Diego.  They stole the Rams from Cleveland, before losing them to St. Louis, and they stole the Raiders…well, ok, Al Davis did most of the stealing in that one, before eventually taking his ball and going back to Oakland.

In fact, only two major pro sports teams have ever been formed in Los Angeles–the Angels, who moved to Anaheim (before Los Angeles “stole” them back, without even needing them to move), and of course the Los Angeles Kings–because when you think Southern California, you think hockey.

So, despite not really showing that they could support one (or two) NFL franchises in the 1990′s, ever since the Rams and Raiders packed up and left, there has been speculation about who Los Angeles would steal to put a team back in the #2 television market in the United States.

Frequently mentioned have been the New Orleans Saints, who recently re-upped their lease at the Superdome, and the Minnesota Vikings, who are looking for a new stadium, but have an iron clad lease at the Metrodome through 2011.  The Buffalo Bills, San Diego Chargers, Rams, Raiders, San Francisco 49ers, and Jacksonville Jaguars have also been mentioned.

But now, the Jaguars may quickly move to the top of that list–and a possible move may happen even sooner than anticipated, with the annoucement that all 10 of the Jaguars home games in 2009 will be blacked out.

Given that there is typically a 72-hour deadline before each game that determines whether or not the game is blacked out, I’m not sure how they can announce all 10 games are blacked out this far in advance–but apparently ticket sales are that dreadful.

And that’s with over 9,700 seats covered with tarps to reduce the overall capacity of the stadium–a move that was made back when the team was actually pretty good.  Now that they’re struggling, maybe they need to buy some bigger tarps?

RACINE, Wis. – We’re off on our journey to Canton for the Hall of Fame induction Saturday.

Before we left I had seen the news of Eli Manning signing a $97 million contract with New York that makes him an even more highly-paid quarterback than brother Peyton.

But I didn’t catch until we got off the road in Racine, Wis. that former Buffalo Bill, San Diego Charger, Jacksonville Jaguar, Dallas Cowboy defensive end Marcellus Wiley ripped him during a commentary on ESPN.

He faced the cameras and asked, as though talking directly to Eli, if the quarterback truly thought he was worth all that money?

“I don’t think so,” Wiley then replied. He then spent a few minutes discussing how Manning didn’t play well in the playoffs last year, helping cost the Giants in their playoff loss.

Wiley did leave out that Manning was playing with a less than stellar group of wide receivers, minus Plaxico Burress, in that game and he did later acknowledge that Manning had a Super Bowl ring from the year before.

I share Wiley’s concerns that Manning’s contract might be outpacing his true value to the team, though I don’t begrudge him the money. Heck, the Giants offered it – there’s no reason he has to say “Thanks, but I think that’s too much.”

I thought Wiley’s comments might have been a tad more harsh than they needed to be. But I’ll say this – I like that Wiley is willing to give a real opinion.

There are always concerns when retired athletes move into broadcasting careers that they’re going to give their athletic brethren the benefit of the doubt and be afraid to criticize.

Prior to making his Eli Manning comments, Wiley has mixed it up with some of the greats, including former Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton and Kansas City Star scribe Jason Whitlock.

Wiley could run the risk of alienating some current and former players with his outspoken-ness. But I hope he’s able to maintain his willingness to give a real opinion. In an era of political correctness and clone-like commentators, both on ESPN and in general, I think for the most part it’s a much needed breath of fresh air.