As the sun rises on Super Bowl XLV, the latest class of Hall of Fame inductees were announced and for once, I don't have any problem with the folks that were left off this year.

Not that they aren't worthy, but the players (and Ed Sabol) who got in this time around were absolutely the right choice. The players who were left off will no doubt eventually get in, so let's not get our jock straps in a bunch.

The NFLPA is reportedly contemplating boycotting the NFL Scouting Combine and the NFL Draft. When there are labor disputes, it's a very gray area that determines where the public opinion will land. Either the players are greedy or the owners are unfair.

To date, the NFLPA has had the needle edging in their direction. Although the owners have some valid points like a rookie wage scale, the fact that they refuse to disclose their finances has at least this observer wondering what they're hiding.

The folks who usually get lost in these disputes are the fans. The last three labor stoppages in American professional sports both ended with a fan hangover. Attendance was slow to come back for Major League Baseball after the strike of 1994-5 as well as the NBA after 1999 and the NHL lost a good amount of fans and television exposure.

The NFL is the equivalent of that kid in High School who could do absolutely nothing wrong. He'd cut class, give the teacher attitude, and knock the books out of weaker kids' hands but never end up in detention and date the homecoming queen. God I hated those guys, but I love the NFL which would make any kind of work stoppage that much more aggravating.

Boycotting the combine and the draft, which isn't must-see-TV by any means, would rob NFL fans of the one thing they do best: bitch about their teams. Well, maybe that's just Bears fans, but less fan interaction is not usually what you want. Not to mention that if the players are doing everything in their power to make it look like they just want to play football then by default the owners look like the bad guys.

In the end, it's all semantics because even if there is a work stoppage and fans momentarily lose interest, the NFL will probably rebound faster than any of the other professional leagues. It would just be another case of that prick in High School knocking the books out of your hands and making you that much later for class.

Jerks.