How will the cancellation of games due to the NFL lockout affect your perception about the NFL?

The NFL attendance numbers may drop in some cities (Carolina, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Arizona) where the teams have not been ingrained little kids brains since they are born but in cities with proud traditions/franchises the fans will be in the parking lots to tailgate 4 hours before kickoff and lining the gates when the games resume. The average attendance has grown for 5 consecutive years and close to 67,000 people show for a typical game. The NFL has done a great job establishing an American tradition that Sunday's are for football. This will not change because a few games may or may not be lost to a lock out.

The "average joe" will continue to complain about how much money the owners and players get but they will still be in the stores shelling out money to purchase players jersey's and team apparel for the next game or bar they go to.

Fans will continue to follow individual players even closer with the explosion of fantasy football on nearly every sports website, twitter, and "Hard Knocks". I expect fans will be updating their fantasy roster, following players twitter accounts and watching the games as soon as they are back playing on Sundays with little consequence to the current lockout.

Unlike the NBA, the NFL is a very successful business. It's a 9 billion dollar industry and the fans truly embrace the game. Even cities benefit dramatically from the NFL. Take Chicago for example, when the Bears are on Sunday Night Football in mid-December, it's freezing, but the bars are packed, the stadium is full, and the town is losing their minds to the thought of Jay Cutler leading the Bears to a 4 quarter comeback (but we all know he'll throw that interception as time expires). It's cold outside, but the revenue is coming in from all areas in the dead of winter. It gives the city hope, the fans hope, and even casual fans make an appearance.

I don't think the NFL will take a dramatic hit to their reputation like the NHL did, but the NFL might lose a few causal fans. I think the NFL is too powerful and followed by so many that a boycott will never happen if the NFL returns 4 weeks into the regular season. Like Darren Heiter said from the roundtable, "Come Sunday, I'll be in front of the TV watching football." It's a wildly successful business and our country thrives off of it. I think the only thing affected by the lockout will be the missed revenue in bars and the misery that its fans go through until the NFLPA and the Owners can negotiate and compromise on how to make it work.

First, I feel most betrayed especially by the players. I, along with all of the other fans, support them, watch them, care about what happens to them and spend our hard earned money on expensive tickets to watch them play. When these players who 1) have many kid's dream job, 2) make millions of dollars on the job, and 3) are treated like royalty everywhere they go decide that they aren’t making enough money and deprive the fans of a season, it feels like betrayal more than anything. From this betrayal follows anger, frustration, and disillusionment. It clearly accentuates the difference in motivation between the fans and the NFL. The fans watch for the love of the game and the NFL only cares about money which is pathetic if you ask me considering the fact that football tickets are the most expensive out of any of the 3 major sports and football has the shortest season at 16 regular season games. This means that every game missed due to this lockout has a huge effect on the overall season. My grandfather played football for the Los Angeles Rams (when the team actually existed). Back then, people played for the love of the game. There was no money in the game which is one of the reasons he left. He played because it was what he enjoyed and what he was good at. Today, it’s more of a business than a sport and it’s a business run by greed. For me, the lockout is bringing the greed to light: millionaires fighting billionaires. Please. Can’t we just donate the money to Japan and watch some football already? [My apologies if my response seems harsh or offensive at all. No disrespect meant towards those in the NFL; simply my opinion. Thank you.]

Good question.

Football has staked its claim as America’s premier professional sport so there will undoubtedly be some degree of backlash from the fans. However, the scale of that backlash is difficult to anticipate.

Many of the League’s fans see this as a petty argument between two wealthy parties attempting to out money-grab each other. Worse than the “greed” stigma affixed to the lockout has been the horrible PR job done by both Roger Goodell (Commissioner of the NFL) and DeMaurice Smith (Director of the NFLPA). Rather than keeping their remarks regarding the lockout to a minimum, both Smith and Goodell have taken verbal shots at each other in vain attempts to coerce public opinion in their respective favor.

No matter what transpires over the coming months, it seems doubtful that the repercussions from this lockout will have as severe an impact as the 1994-95 labor stoppage in Major League Baseball. When baseball resumed in 1995, attendance plunged by more than 20%, while TV ratings and merchandise revenue tanked by similar numbers.

Personally, I feel as though the lockout will be resolved prior to the start of the 2011 regular season. The owners and players alike have too much money on the line in terms of revenue lost to let this quarrel get in the way.

Will I be upset if regular season games are lost?—Sure, all fans will, yet it won’t make me love the game of football any less. For that reason the fans, even the angry ones, will be back, returning quicker than most people would expect.