Mark Madden: NFL players have no leverage to make training camp demands

We have no sports. But we still can have refreshing sports notes! Some are lengthy, others brief. All were conceived and written while wearing a mask.

• According to ProFootballTalk.com, the NFL Players’ Association wants the following during training camp: no preseason games. No mandatory hotel stays. No 11-on-11 field activities. No meetings in the team facilities. All meetings to be held virtually. The number of players in the facility at any given time is limited to 20 during camp’s first three weeks.

The NFL’s response should be: none of the above.

The players agreed to a new CBA just after the pandemic hit. They can’t strike. The players have zero leverage unless they prove the NFL provides an unsafe workplace.

How can a football team prepare absent practicing 11-on-11? That demand is absurd. Do the players think covid will be transmitted during practice? If you quarantine rigidly and test properly, the virus never gets on the field. (That’s a big “if.”)

With top-flight soccer back in Europe, the fact big-time American sports can’t get started indicts the incompetence of those leagues’ administrations and reveals many of the athletes don’t want to play.

• I agree with NFL players about preseason games. They are 100% superfluous. Starters play maybe three quarters total in a typical preseason. Stars might play less.

NFL owners like preseason games because season-ticket holders are forced to pay regular-season prices for two extra home games each year. It’s free money because the players don’t get paid for those games.

NFL coaches like preseason games because it reinforces their self-importance by way of leaving no stone unturned. They see undrafted free-agent bums play a few snaps before cutting them, which was inevitable anyway. The coaches and GMs know 99% of their roster and starting lineup before camp starts.

Not having preseason games slows down the process of rookies cutting their teeth. That’s the only bad thing. But the Steelers hate to use rookies much anyway. They didn’t have a first-round pick this year.

There’s no point to preseason games and never has been. There’s no point to OTAs and mini-camp, either. Those are just exercises in controlling the players.

One preseason contest per team might assist in testing protocol for regular-season games in this pandemic-riddled season.

• MLB set itself up to fail. It got tangled up in an absurd labor negotiation that featured bad optics and achieved no amicable resolution, and is now testing its health and safety protocol on the fly as the season quickly approaches. Washington and Houston waited 72 hours to get covid tests back, canceling workouts in the interim.

Many of MLB’s players don’t want to play. The protocol failing so evidently and so early ultimately might convince many not to.

MLB needed a longer training camp. Not to make sure players are game-ready but to have more leeway to iron out the protocol. Now MLB is painted into a corner.

• The most interesting Pirate is second-year outfielder Bryan Reynolds. He hits for average and drives the ball to the alleys but has subpar home-run power by today’s standard (16 last year). Players like that aren’t stars or even all that useful.

Can Reynolds develop launch angle like Milwaukee’s Christian Yelich did? In 2014, Yelich had nine home runs in 582 at-bats. Last season, he had 44 homers in 489 at-bats. Reynolds had 16 in 546. That must improve. That’s how MLB is.

• March Madness and Wimbledon were canceled, with more to follow. Plenty of sporting events were postponed, including the Tokyo Olympics.

But the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest went off Saturday as scheduled. Some things are bigger than a global pandemic.

Why do the media pay so much attention? Why does ESPN televise it? It’s unhealthy and disgusting, with no skill required beyond gluttony.

They’re not really eating hot dogs, anyway. When you take the wiener off the bun and dip the bun in water, it’s not a hot dog anymore. The wiener should be left on the bun and at least one condiment applied. Eat ‘em like they sell ‘em.

• Kris Letang of the Penguins had a stroke in 2014 and has a hole in his heart. The NHL’s “Return to Play” protocol says players who “are determined to be at a substantial risk of developing a serious illness as a result of exposure to (covid) shall be deemed to be unfit to play and shall not be permitted to participate.”

Letang said he has weighed the risk with doctors and will play. But what doctor applies the NHL’s protocol? It doesn’t sound like a player can overrule that doctor. If Letang can’t play, the Penguins’ chance at a Stanley Cup shrinks considerably.

• Ex-Penguin Ryan Whitney (now of the NHL Network) tweeted a list of the NHL’s most exciting players: Sidney Crosby of the Penguins, Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, Boston’s David Pastrnak, the New York Rangers’ Artemi Panarin and Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon. Not a bad quintet, though I might have included the Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin, Chicago’s Patrick Kane or Toronto’s Auston Matthews.

The problem with hockey (and every sport) is that it’s been strategized to a level of efficiency that is deadly dull.

Good is too often confused with exciting. Gordie Howe is one of hockey’s best ever. But he mostly elbowed people in the face and scored from in tight. He was six-time NHL MVP. But how often did Howe bring fans out of their seats?