The Front Row with JASON ELLIOTT July 6, 2011

Once this whole fiasco started after the Super Bowl, I always thought that the NFL lockout could be over by the Fourth of July.

The holiday came and went on Monday with no new progress.

Well, some anyway - both the owners and players are getting company on the outside looking in.

WHILE THE sport of football waits (still patiently) for an official start to its season, the NBA has since locked its players out, leaving baseball and hockey as the only two active professional sports actually doing business.

Fans of hockey got a good playoff series and outside of some riots in Vancouver, a fairly quiet postseason as Boston won the Stanley Cup.

Pennant races are still a couple months away in baseball, but judging from the progress that has been made in the NFL this year, there could be two options that fans will have to deal with.

The first is counting the days before the Idaho Vandals start fall practice or Coeur d'Alene, Lake City or Post Falls plays a home game.

The answer - sooner than you think.

If things play out the way they should, there will be football at some point in 2011.

Whether or not it involves professional athletes, who knows.

Here's a thought - why not lock owners into a room with the players and not let them leave until a deal is made?

Besides, if it takes Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith to get locked in a room for a week to get a deal done, so be it.

THE NBA, while just having its season end less than a month ago, could be in a little deeper trouble.

Players don't seem likely to settle and have prepared themselves for a long, drawn-out fight to get what they want.

Meanwhile should the season be interrupted, it may not matter to those owners in charge of making a deal happen.

Even with all the attention the league got this year, whether the “decision” or the Miami Heat’s meltdown in the finals that brought fans back, they run the same risk of losing fans who are just tired of lockouts, labor disputes and millionaires fighting with billionaires about money.

But there is a bright side to this whole freeze on league activity in both sports.

At least there’s baseball.

If both sports continue to grow apart past October or early November, that could become the problem.

With no football on weekends, fans will have to get their kicks on Saturdays watching teams from the Pac-12 and Big Sky conferences instead of on Fox or CBS.

And who knows, by the time they settle the NFL lockout, Brett Favre’s shoulder might be healed to leave him contemplating another run at a Super Bowl.

God help us all.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached via telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or by email at [email protected].