The Line Crumbles

Last week the owners won the toss and elected to kick the heart out of the players. Twenty-four futile days into their strike, the National Football League's itchy regulars surrendered en masse, only to be apprised at the door that they had just missed the weekly deadline for returning. If they wished to work the rest of the week at training-camp wages ($500 to $750), they were welcome to hang around their old practice fields, as long as they stayed out from under foot while the replacements prepared for a third league game. Whether this amounted to piling on, running up the score or unnecessary roughness was not immediately clear.

% A lot of things were hazy, like who was hired and who was fired, and what the ripple or tidal effect will be for the rest of this season and years to come. The Hall of Fame offensive lineman Gene Upshaw, who may not be offensive enough for a labor leader, denied the Players Association was mortally wounded. "They definitely took a hunk of flesh out of us," he said, "but we're not busted. We're still here." Announcing that the union had filed an antitrust suit against the owners' "blatant display of monopoly powers," Upshaw said, "We've tried bargaining, we've been on strike. Now we'll let the courts decide." They intend to challenge the basic N.F.L. contract, the reserve system, even the college draft.

In the court of public opinion, the players lost horribly. Scoffing at the idea of free agency for $230,000 athletes, somehow the fans found it easier to relate to Detroit Owner William Clay Ford or Washington's Jack Kent Cooke (worth $900 million apiece). Stadium crowds seemed to be bouncing back, suggesting the customers might be warming to new heroes, but more than anything else, the strikers missed their paychecks. They had to wait an extra week to be reunited.