A Dearth of Hunger

"The players say they want to be treated like ordinary people. But they're not ordinary people. How can you compare a $100,000-a-year football player with an $8,000-a-year wage earner?"

When Miami Dolphins Center Jim Langer said that in July, the National Football League Players Association strike was barely a week old. In the end, Langer was right. Strike leaders had predicted that players would stay out indefinitely, that the owners would eventually cave in. Langer was one of the few veterans to cross the picket line then, but in the weeks that followed, dozens of veterans reported to training camp.

Some merely wanted a paycheck. Others were concerned about being replaced--permanently--by a rookie. For most the motive was simply the desire to play football. To save face, the Players Association last month urged everyone to return to camp for a 14-day cooling-off period that ended last Wednesday.

As the deadline passed without a single picket line reappearing, the strike died. With a straight face, Union Leader Ed Garvey declared: "We feel stronger than ever," but he fooled no one. Even Garvey admitted that the cooling-off period had not succeeded in moving management toward his position or in rallying strike support. Indeed, only several hundred of the N.F.L.'s 1,200 veterans would have left camp had a new walkout been called. The players were simply not hungry enough to sustain a strike.

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