Mention the word "strike" or "lockout" to a sports fan and you'll see them recoil as if they were near someone that had the plague.

Sadly though, it is an event that has become all too common in recent years.  The NHL lost the entire 2004-05 season when the league and the players union were unable to reach an agreement.  They had another in 1994-95 that shortened that season to 48 games.  The NBA suffered through a lockout that cut the 1998-99 season to 50 games instead of the normal 82.

Baseball isn't exempt either.  They had a strike that started in August of 1994, the season ending prematurely with no World Series, and ending in 1995.  It was the first season with no World Series since 1904.  That was on the heels of the strike in 1981, which led to split season division winners and a fiasco that seemed more suited for the CBA than major league baseball.

The only one of the four major sports leagues NOT affected by a strike or lockout in the last two decades has been the NFL.  The last work stoppage for them was in 1987, when the players union went on strike for a month, but only canceled a week's worth of games.  Strike football, which was glamorized on the big screen in the Keanu Reeves movie "The Replacements", was as disturbing as trying to give acne products to a bunch of pimply teenagers. It wasn't something you really wanted to see.

Here we are nearly a quarter of a century later, and the NFL is faced with the same potential issue.  With the possibility of an uncapped year in 2010, owners are crying foul about losing money, sparking grumblings about a potential lockout in 2011.  There has been a war of words between owners and players about how much money is being lost, with owners saying that many teams are struggling to finish in the black.  Players meantime, continue to demand that owners open their books and show the bottom line to show who is losing money and how much is involved.

DeMaurice Smith, the head of the NFLPA, has stated that on a scale of 1 to 10 regarding the likelihood of a lockout in 2011 that his answer is "14."  He has pointed to the fact that the league would receive $5 billion in television money even if games were not played in 2011 as a key indicator that the owners are leaning in that direction.  Here is more about what Smith had to say, courtesy of NFL.com:

"Has any one of the prior deals included $5 billion to not play football?" Smith said, referring to previous collective bargaining agreements that were extended or redone. "The answer's no."

Smith has also said that in the latest offer from the owners, that the percent of applied revenues that would go to the player pool was 41 percent, a far cry from the current 59 percent. 

Either way, it looks like trouble brewing on the horizon and something, someone is going to have to give to save us all from another season of discontent.