First off, if you haven’t read the news from last week, please do. Long story short, I’m getting married this week and then going on honeymoon, so the next two weeks will be mostly guest comics and collaborations from folks gracious enough to help me out.

First up, a comic by the excellent Chirurgeon! (Check out his old football work here)This comic started as a twitter back and forth between the two of us last week and He was gracious enough to help bring it to life when I asked. The idea started as his, so it feels right to have his final art up there.

The idea started because both of us are pretty much baffled by the major criticisms of Joey Bosa through this whole process. Namely the people who seem to think that he should just acquiesce and allow himself to get screwed because his place of employment is a game that is fun to play. Apparently liking what you do means you should just allow the company who already has too much power over you to screw you over. Even though everyone else in the same position was treated better. I don’t know how anyone can view the Chargers as the lesser evil here. For any criticisms of Bosa you might have, The Chargers are almost cartoonish levels of pointlessly evil here. They can afford to pay Bosa. They can afford to give him not one but both of his contract demands. But they won’t, because reasons. They had all the leverage in the world and Bosa is effectively making a heroic last stand against a bully he cannot beat. Maybe Bosa would have never won so you think his holdout was dumb, but that doesn’t mean you should call him a bad word because he wants to be treated fairly, a right of all employees in any workplace. This is more than just a game. It’s his job. Stop demanding he give up all his rights because he gets to play a sport. A sport that heavily damages bodies and minds, no less. These players get paid millions, but in so many ways, they are still treated very unfairly by the billionaires that own them and treat them like property.

I think of it a lot like when people ask me to make them art for nothing, or “exposure”. Exposure is bad compensation for an artist’s talents, and people who think artists should just be happy with Exposure because the artist gets to make art for a living are extortionists. Just because I like what I do doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to get fairly compensated for it. It’s still my job. I’m convinced anyone who uses arguments like this must be stuck doing a crappy job they hate so they automatically resent anyone who gets to do something they find fun for a living because they lack the perspective on that job.

If you are a Chargers fan who thinks Bosa should have just nutted up and just take a shitty contract because reasons, maybe you should consider why you are so eager to support a team actively trying to screw over San Diego; a Team actively ruining it’s reputation to players and agents around the league by showing how cheap and difficult you are to negotiate with. I’ll leave you with Chir’s words for the final bit of this blog post.

“If you ever read about contract disputes between players and teams and find yourself siding with billionaires who routinely extort taxpayers for hundreds of millions of dollars for new stadiums that never make their money back for the communities, you should probably rethink your priorities. Whenever I interview for a new job and negotiate pay, I’m thankful that I don’t have to deal with the same public scrutiny players do for what will most likely the be the only football job they ever have.”

Thanks for the help, Chir!