No, they aren't teachers and DMV clerks, shivering outside the Wisconsin state capitol, marching for a future.
But the parade of zeros on an NFL player's contract does not mean he has to wear a "Kick Me" sign to work, even if his work is done in front of 70,000 swaying idolators.
The NFL Players Association is on the right side here.
It wanted to negotiate. Instead it wouldn't capitulate, and that is why its members have been locked out of football.
They had no gripe about anything until the owners began pelting them with giveback demands that made you wonder if this was the WNBA.
Finally the NFLPA decertified itself and became a trade association, holding the power to seek an injunction against the lockout, which it has done.
That hearing will happen April 6 and, according to those who know, will determine when or if we'll see football this fall.
The bad faith is epidemic. The owners are using 2011 TV money to tide themselves through the lockout (illegally, as Judge David Doty ruled) and the players are signing up for their own health insurance, drawing up new personal budgets, and waiting.
They have signed an agreement with Athletes Performance, for a place to work out. There is no other company down the street that will hire them, and each year of their perishable careers is vital.
Yet the union is staying together, a tribute to leader DeMaurice Smith who, unlike former union boss Gene Upshaw, is not a management surrogate.
And the solidarity just hardens when:
• Commissioner Roger Goodell condescendingly refers to the "union" in a letter sent to each individual player.
• Management proposes a scheme that locks the players' take at a certain figure, instead of the traditional percentage of the gross.
• And each team's salary cap is theoretically fixed at $141 million, which the NFLPA says is a decrease from the previous proposal.
A hockey lockout destroyed the 2004-05 season, but all parties seemed to agree that the game was hemorrhaging.
By contrast, football might be the one true growth industry in America.
Sports Illustrated estimated that the NFL churns out the equivalent of the GNP of Macedonia, with $125 million per team in broadcast rights, $2 billion league-wide in admissions, and untold billions in corporate sponsorships and stadium naming rights.
The NFL refuses to open its books or even divulge the intricacies of the TV money heist in 2011, while pretending the players are "partners" in this wonderful adventure.
So what should "fairness" look like?
Steelers safety Ryan Clark says his owner, Dan Rooney, could forge a deal within hours. "He's in the locker room with us, he knows our families and our kids," Clark said. "He's the only owner who drives a Buick."
Perhaps Rooney would help draw the lines somewhere in these margins:
• An 18-game regular season must be taken completely off the table. It would be 50 percent longer than each of the first four seasons Jim Brown played, and would make each game less relevant and more dangerous.
• Contracts should be totally guaranteed. They aren't, which allows the clubs to shuffle the salary-cap deck. If the players got this plum, they could let the owners have a rookie wage scale, which is also preferable. Sam Bradford shouldn't be making $50 million before he even shows up.
• The salary cap should remain tight, with one exception: The NFL should use the limited version of the Larry Bird rule that the NBA has. The club can exceed the cap to sign one of its own players, and not another one until that contract has expired.
• The NFL has been fairly generous with post-football benefits (i.e., a possible $88,000 per year for medical and custodial care resulting from dementia). Vested players can continue receiving medical benefits for five years after they leave football. That should be doubled to 10 years, and then the Health Reimbursement Acccount should activate.
• After all that, the players can afford to be flexible on the total compensation, as long as it remains a percentage of gross.
• And Goodell should get even broader powers to suspend players for injurious hits and, especially, criminal behavior out of uniform.
Presentation is important here. When Smith says the union was asked to write the owners a $1 billion check or when Adrian Peterson actually uses the word "slavery" in this conversation, the public turns deaf.
And it shouldn't. This is a more serious issue than late-night comics and grumpy barflies think. A football shutdown is both outrageous and wildly illogical.
Baseball basks in a similarly golden age and its labor problems are clerical by comparison.
Should Bud Selig become commissioner of both sports? Has it gotten that weird?
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