Dear NFL, NFLPA: an Open Letter To Both Sides

Dear NFL and NFLPA,

First let me say that any and all concerns either players, team officials, coaches or league executives have about playing a season during the COVID-19 pandemic are legitimate, and warranted.

We get it! We all get it and we agree that protecting your families from possible sickness or death is your first concern.

This is a scary time for us all!

Me personally, I have a father who is 75. He is a Vietnam veteran who was wounded three times and is one-hundred percent disabled from his military service. He is diabetic and takes more pills than should be legally allowed on a daily basis.

My family and I, we get it. Believe me, we get it and are doing everything imaginable to protect him and keep him alive, because we know if he contracts this he most likely CAN'T survive it.

My mom takes care of him and they have been locked inside their house, and yard for the most part since this began. I go to the store for them when they need things, or mom uses the store shoppers at the grocery store who get her items and bring them out to her so she doesn't have to go inside.

Then there are the front-line workers who have been in the face of this since the beginning. Yes, I know they chose those fields, and God bless them for it. It was a choice but they get your concerns too.

Then there are the everyday people who work in those grocery stores and other places who provide everyday needs for the rest of us. They are in the face of this virus every single day, having no choice but to work to provide for themselves and their families, and many don't make much more than minimum wage.

Some work more than one job to provide for their families, and then still barely scrape by in their tiny apartments and houses in small cities and towns across the nation.

Many of them have never been inside an NFL stadium because the cost of tickets, parking, and concessions are simply outside their budgets.

So seeing players who at minimum make between $142,800 a year (salary for a practice squad player who spends the entire season on the squad) to a rookie making the league minimum $610,000 all the way to the players making millions publicly complaining about playing the season, we the people have little concern or sympathy for you.

Again, I'm with you on concerns. We all have them, but to publicly complain about it when you have the option of playing or not, while the rest of us MUST work and can't "opt-out" if we want to eat or have roofs over our heads, it's a bad look for, and from you.

I, like most people reading this, wasn't blessed with the physical talents to play professional sports, so I just write about them, and others watch. Me personally, I've met many current NFL players with the vast majority of them being good people, some of which I still talk with to this day, so this is not an indictment of them personally.

It is, however, an indictment of the public perception these open complaints give to the rest of us who aren't as fortunate or financially well off.

We get it, we're all concerned for our families' safety and well being. You won't hear me complain one bit for any individual player deciding to sit it out.

But when I sit here and read the open complaints from millionaires complaining loudest and having the option to sit out, it really ticks me off.

You have the option to sit out! Exercise it, sit out, and protect your families.

The rest of us wish we had that option!

Follow Greg on Twitter @GregAriasSports and @SIVanderbilt or Facebook at Vanderbilt Commodores-Maven