President Barack Obama recently weighed in on the labor dispute between the owners and the players’ union, and he made it clear that he has no plans to get involved in the collective bargaining agreement disconnect.
"My working assumption, at a time when people are having to cut back and compromise and worry about making the mortgage and paying for their kids college education, is that the two parties should be able to work it out without the President of the United States intervening," Obama said during a press conference. "I’m a big football fan, but I also think that for an industry that’s making $9 billion a year in revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way."
Baltimore Ravens six-time Pro Bowl center Matt Birk took exception to those remarks during a radio interview on 105.7 The Fan in Baltimore.
"I don’t agree with a lot of the things the President just said right there in that clip," Birk said. "The one thing I do agree with is that I think we can find a way to work it out. This isn’t like some other situations in time in other sports where the owners are losing money, you know, and paychecks aren’t cashing and teams are folding up. Owners are making money. Players are making money. So it would just be stupid if thing didn’t get resolved at some point.
"Well, he talked about the NFL being $9 billion, which is correct, but he kind of said it a little bit sarcastic. I mean, the U.S. government brings in a couple trillion, don’t you think they’d know how to balance the budget?" And ‘millionaire players’ isn’t really correct. Most NFL players are not millionaires. They don’t make millions of dollars, but that’s okay. You know what, that kind of right there is the general feeling: Billions and millionaires and nobody really cares about their problems, ‘Work it out.’"
