The strike to end all strikes, it wasn’t. No picketing. No violence. Not one raw chicken leg flung.
But what the National Football League walkout and lockout of 1982 lacked in classic labor drama, it more than made up in ill will and in-fighting.
For 57 days, as an NFL season wasted away, management and players stuck their tongues out at each other. The NFL Players Assn. demanded, among other things, that its members receive 55% of the league’s gross revenues. The owners told the players to take a hike. So they did, and didn’t return until seven regular-season games had been lost, to say nothing of $275 million in revenues and wages. The owners also were forced to return $50 million to the networks.
