Dave Zirin on NFL Players’ “Remarkable” Labor Victory and How the Bank Bailout Slam-Dunked the NBA

Dave Zirin:

I want to read a quote by a player named Troy Polamalu. This is what he said, and it just gives you an idea about how radicalizing this was. Troy Polamalu, All-Pro for the Pittsburgh Steelers, he said, “I think what the players are fighting for is something bigger. The fact is it’s people fighting against big business. The big business argument is ‘I got the money and I got the power, and therefore I can tell you what to do.’ That’s life everywhere. I think this is a time when the football players are standing up and saying, ‘No, no, no, the people have the power.’” I mean, this is a guy who is best known for doing Head & Shoulders commercials, and now he sounds like Big Bill Haywood. I mean, it says something that most people, when they know about what they know about labor, will hear that Troy Polamalu quote much more than they’ll know about some of the struggles that very few media organizations, like Democracy Now!, actually cover.