Time for Roger Goodell to cut his losses(By Gene Wojciechowski)

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As spin doctors go, Roger Goodell is his own teaching hospital. The NFL commissioner can perform plastic surgery on the perception of these labor negotiations as if it were a tummy tuck.

Sometimes, especially after he's massaged the facts into a total state of relaxation, you want to shake his hand and say, "Well played, Mauer." That's how good he can be -- which is one of the reasons the NFL owners hired him in the first place.

You can read the Goodell op-ed piece for yourself. But the gist of it is this: "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HELP US! THE BIG, MEAN U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE AND THE EVEN BIGGER, MEANER PLAYERS' UNION LAWYERS ARE GOING TO RUIN THE NFL! WE'LL HAVE -- GASP! -- A FREE-MARKET SYSTEM!"

It is Goodell's doomsday scenario. It is also a scare tactic, and a clumsy one at that.

Goodell and the owners are mad that Judge Susan Nelson ruled for the players and ended the NFL-imposed lockout on Monday. The owners immediately took the case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals -- sort of the league's legal Hail Mary pass.

In the meantime, Goodell and his laptop went to work.

Wrote Goodell: "For six weeks, there has been a work stoppage in the National Football League as the league has sought to negotiate a new collective-bargaining agreement with the players. But Judge Nelson ordered the end of the stoppage and recognized the players' right to dissolve their union. By blessing this negotiating tactic, the decision may endanger one of the most popular and successful sports leagues in history."

Uh, Roger, it wasn't a work stoppage. It was a lockout. A lockout that the owners initiated and executed. There was a work stoppage because the owners told the players to quit coming to work.

And I love how Goodell says the decision "may endanger" the NFL. Not, "I guarantee you it will." Not, "I have concrete proof that it will." Just the possibility that it will. Nothing more. The truth is, the ruling may not endanger the NFL at all.

Goodell and the owners want it both ways. You can cut the hypocrisy with a spork.

More Goodell: "Is this the NFL that players want? A league where elite players attract enormous compensation and benefits while other players -- those lacking the glamour and bargaining power of the stars -- play for less money, fewer benefits and shorter careers than they have today? A league where the competitive ability of teams in smaller communities (Buffalo, New Orleans, Green Bay and others) is forever cast into doubt by blind adherence to free-market principles that favor teams in larger, better-situated markets?"

Cue string music.

So let me get this straight: It's OK if NFL owners adhere to free-market principles when they sell their teams to the highest bidder or bolt to another city for a sweetheart stadium and luxury suite deal. But it's not OK for the players to have the same options?

And I hate to break it to Goodell, but the league already favors teams in larger, better-situated markets. That's why Daniel Snyder spends money on his Washington Redskins (hello, Albert Haynesworth) as if he's printing Benjamins in the trainer's room. That's why Jerry Jones can leverage his holdings to build a $1.2 billion JerryWorld. That's why there's a waiting line to become an NFL owner in the first place.