Chargers' LB Kevin Burnett joined XX Sports Radio in San Diego to talk about the ongoing NFL labor dispute and his feelings on commissioner Roger Goodell. In short, he thinks Goodell is a "full of it" and "a blatant liar." If you want to hear more of his thoughts on the commish, check out the full interview on Sports Radio Interviews. What I found very interesting was his response when asked whether he thought there would be a 2011 season?
"It has to be. There's no way that the season could just be missed. ... We're going to miss games. I think there's a great possibility that we do miss games, but I don't know how far into the regular season it goes. It may get to one, maybe two games. I definitely think preseason will be X'ed. I don't know how we're going to put a team together, but it'll be exciting to see what happens."
Who knows how plugged in Burnett is to what the union is up to, but he doesn't seem to have much doubt that games will be missed next year. Until now, even after the talks broke down, both sides have remained optimistic that next season would not be affected.
Obviously, missed games is what could really send fans over the edge. While there's certainly a lot of anger over the dispute, the fact is that it really hasn't deprived fans of much so far. The free agency period has been postponed, which is always a big deal, but the season is still pretty far away. If a deal gets done before players would have been taking the field, I think a lot of fans will quickly forget about the labor dispute... but if this drags on to the point that games are missed, that's not something fans are going to forget.