Five years since their last truncated season, the National Football League players have begun another countdown to a strike. They have resolved to walk out Sept. 22, after the schedule's second week, if management continues to ignore their latest call to freedom.
NO FREEDOM, NO FOOTBALL T shirts first appeared on muscle-bound picket lines in 1974, during the second of three N.F.L. work stoppages, which are coming to be routine events. The quarrel is generally over control, but the players always settle for cash.
In 1982, when the union's incontrovertible demand for "55% of the gross" was etched in Silly Putty,...
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