"The official National Football League Game Summary for the Oct. 4, 1987, meeting between the Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles is preserved deep within the league's archives, a scanned copy of a document that originally was executed on an electric typewriter late in the afternoon of what the cover sheet insists was a sunny, 50-degree day at Veterans Stadium.

Those who were on hand for the loud, scary scene in which a fleet of revving, horn-blasting tractor trailers driven by Teamsters ringed the stadium fender to fender to dissuade customers from entering the building remember the day as anything but mild and pleasant.

The first page of the summary lists the attendance as 4,074 and, for emphasis, as if it were needed, someone wrote the word "STRIKE" in red letters at the top of the page, and someone else's hand wrote "Strike game" in blue near the bottom.

It seemed unreal at the time, and still does today, and many of the issues that were unresolved by the players' strike in 1987 have led the league and its employees to the current situation, one in which the owners are threatening to lock out the players and jeopardize the coming season. Maybe they couldn't stage pretend games with pretend players as they did 24 years ago, but that strategy caused the real players to fold then.

In the previous work stoppage, the owners could claim some moral higher ground because it was the players who elected to strike, but even in the event of a lockout, don't assume anything.

The federal ruling last week that the NFL cannot receive $4 billion from the television networks if the season is not played was widely seen as a victory for the players, one that would force the league to negotiate without a fluffy financial cushion in its back pocket. That's true as far as it goes, but it also gives the owners incentive to build a stage behind the barn and put on a show if they could only figure out how to do it."