"I don't like work stoppages, but you do what you've got to do. You look at the way the game is being played -- competitive balance, the health of the league, how much players are making -- we needed a new system. I'm always quizzical of why a work stoppage gets laid at management. At the end of the day, the players, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, whatever it was, got what they would've gotten without the work stoppage. At the end of the day, we had to have a new system. As Arthur Levitt, who studied our economics at the time said, we were on the treadmill to oblivion. And the game wasn't very good then. Why? Because we had teams with payrolls four times another team's payrolls. And the only way teams with a quarter of a payroll of the higher-payroll teams could compete was to clutch and grab and hook and hold or, said another way, neutralize skill."