By Aaron Perlut

America loves its football.

Sometimes, however, business gets in the way of play and if in two weeks a new collective bargaining agreement is not reached between the National Football League’s owners and the NFL Players Association, professional football could take a hiatus next fall.

There's been plenty of back and forth banter since the owners made an initial proposal about a year ago. Owners want a greater share of revenue, two more regular season games added to the schedule, the players have made reasonable concessions, but the owners walked out of negotiations and still won't back off of their initial demands. And recently, even Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson purportedly dissed two of the league's marquee stars.

These are the typical dramatics of labor negotiations. But last Thursday the NFL and NFLPA agreed to mediate through The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, so we'll probably see this mess tidy up in short order.

Within the backdrop of every labor dispute, of course, there is a hard-fought communications campaign. Several PR agencies and consulting firms have culled lucrative labor communications practices to support the battles between corporate America and the likes of the Teamsters, Steelworkers Union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the list goes on.

I should know. I worked in one of these agency practices as well as in the energy sector for about a decade, engaging in several chess matches with very capable organized labor unions.

But like any other reputation management campaign, it all boils down to controlling the message, positioning your argument as the most sensible, and winning the battle of reason in front of the target audiences.

In the case of the NFL, the league won the PR battle almost before it even started. From the outset, they've controlled the message, wisely kept unpopular owners like Daniel Snyder, Jerry Jones and Al Davis out of the fray; and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell – as popular figure head as there is in college or professional sports – has seemingly been the "reasonable man" who has framed the entire discussion.

Ironically, however, the league has been far from reasonable. It demanded significant rollbacks on the percentages players take from the overall pie, and while the players union was willing to meet somewhere in the middle, the owners seem to want all or nothing, their agreement to let the FMCS mediate notwithstanding.

But why has the NFL-loving public not heard much about what's really going on? Why aren't they clamoring for the league to moderate its stance to ensure the game goes on? Why do most still think the league is in the right regardless of its stubborn position?

Several reasons:

Fan Apathy: Americans see both the league's owners and players as wealthy and spoiled and would rather not see the sausage made. They just want their football.

Message: I read and watch a tremendous amount of sports media and have heard very little about the substance of the players’ position, which again, has been conciliatory and reasoned in my opinion.

Leveraging Assets: The NFLPA has not effectively delivered that message because they have not harnessed their most effective assets: Star players. Mid-level players are willing to talk, some nonsensically. See the Antonio Cromartie case for Exhibit A.

But fans tend to have love affairs with star players. And with fans so consumed with what players have to say in our continuum of 24-hour news and via social tools such as Twitter or personal blogs (The Redskins’ Chris Cooley’s blog comes to mind), they should be incorporating a broad and reasoned messaging strategy coordinating a consistent and persistent voice for the court of public opinion. Send the likes of Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Reggie Wayne, and Michael Turner out on a nationwide media tour, cue up every player with a list of Tweets -- all saying the same thing in surround sound.

Messengers: NFLPA Executive Director Demaurice Smith is an unquestionably bright guy. However, NFL fans don't care what he has to say. He's just a lawyer to the masses. Sure, by being the head on the media messaging horse -- much like Donald Fehr did when he was perceived to have helped wreck baseball in the early 1990s -- Smith will shoulder the brunt of the criticism should a strike occur.

However, if star players, instead of Smith, were delivering the reasoned position of the union, they would have been in control of the conversation months ago.

A longtime ESPN producer who wished to remain anonymous agreed.

"None of them (players) ever really stand up for the group publicly," he said. "How on earth would fans ever take the sides of owners or the league if star players were eloquently stating their position? Brady could lead SportsCenter if he spoke. Smith gets buried. I don’t get it."

Another veteran ESPNer blames the apathy of star players who can rely on endorsement income were a lockout to occur.

"The union isn’t very strong because Demaurice Smith is reppin’ guys who are in the middle," he said. "The top 100 guys – the Brady’s, Aaron Rodgers, those guys – they have so much money from endorsements and don’t care that much. It falls to guys like Antonio Cromartie."  

The matter of who wins the court of public opinion is now essentially moot with the FMCS on board. The league will get theirs, as will the players, and the American football-loving public will all settle in on Sundays next fall as if nothing happened.

I just can't help but wonder if the NFLPA could have won this battle early on had it done a more effective job of implementing a more strategic program, harnessing its full array of assets, and controlling the argument of reason.

It really doesn’t matter, according to the second ESPN source, because the players simply don’t have the tools to communicate the message.

"Smith just needs one of these top guys to stand with him at a press conference and make a reasonable argument. But they won’t do it."

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Aaron Perlut is managing partner of St. Louis-based public relations and digital word-of-mouth agency Elasticity.

Kevin Foley (2/22):
Good observations, Aaron. It's a game of chicken right now but whether they know it or not, the players have the trump cards because it is they, not the owners who put on the show. It took years for the NFL to recover after the ugly 1987 players' strike and bogus replacement games put on by owners. Goddell can't and won't allow it to happen again.

Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (2/22):
As a rabid football fan, I frankly do not believe most give one hoot about all of this since they also keep hearing the astronomical salaries kids who quit college get to play professiional football...and then the additional multimillions paid to players who often just sit on the bench waiting for someone to get hurt. Given the current economy and unemployment, it is unseemly to make this debate so large. Again, as a fan, I know darned well there is a season ahead, and all this will be a memory except in the checkbooks of the parties involved.

Bill Huey, Strategic Communications, Atlanta (3/18):
DeMaurice Smith comes across as a capable and articulate spokesman for the NFLPA, but he is following the wrong strategy and using a message that leads into a box canyon, i.e., “we are business partners.” To which the owners might reply, “If we are business partners why do you have an agent who is always pushing for more money? If you want to be 50/50 partners, then let everybody take a 15 percent pay cut and we’ll talk about it. In other words, first we’ll make the pie bigger, then we’ll divide it equally.” And Jerry Jones’ fellow owners should take him aside and say, “Jerry, don’t talk to the media about negotiations. We know you mean well, but just don’t talk to them.” Because Jones has “greedy billionaire owner” written in indelible ink all over his face.