The NFL is never going to lose a full season, or any significant number of games, to a lockout or strike again. The money is just too good. Owning an NFL franchise is worth an easy $25M a year in cash accumulation and at least that much again in the long-term value of the asset and there's ZERO chance the business will fail during the year and ZERO chance you'll have to invest much of your other assets in maintaining it. There's no fallow period in which the business needs a lot of help from you to get over the hump. For some owners the team is worth much more than that in cash and value increases and for some owners it's priceless in terms of exposure, fame, notoriety (Al Davis) and just as a great hobby alongside all the money. The only way the NFL gets seriously hurt right now is if a systemic scandal gets out of control (concussions seem to have been handled well) or if the owners let the business shut down for any significant period of time. It's possible they'd be crazy enough collectively to do that but extremely unlikely. It's possible that a militant player union head would force the situation upon them but extremely unlikely. Baseball was America's sport right up until 1994 and they've been second fiddle to football since then and maybe even third to basketball at times. Hubris did them in. The idea that you can take away your product from the people that support it and lose nothing of consequence in the process. I'm still bitter about the 1994 lost World Series and that's the point that I went from a rabid baseball fan to a barely interested casual one.
So in 2011, the last time the owners in the same financial circumstances as today, locked out the players you're saying they learned their lesson well enough to not repeat? I'm not so sure I give them that much credit.
