It’s so easy to recall the Race to 10, LeGarrette Blount’s punishing runs, Barrett Ruud’s embarrassing tackling, and Josh Freeman putting the Bucs on his back with 25 touchdowns and just six interceptions last season.

But it’s easy to forget that Freeman had a broken thumb in the preseason and was adversely affected by the injury during the regular season.

Yes, he is human.

Freeman, who recently turned 23, was asked to reflect on the thumb during an interview Friday with the dean of Tampa Bay sports radio, Steve Duemig of WDAE-AM 620. Freeman explained that the busted thumb got in his head.

Steve Duemig: How much did that thumb stop your progression early in the season?

Josh Freeman: “More so than anything, it didn’t allow me to get into my comfort level until a few games in. …I’m telling you man, our preparation in the offseason, you gotta love it. I felt like I was ready to go, to take on the world. And then you have the thumb injury and then you start to kinda question, ‘Am I going to be back? Is this thing going to hold up? Is this all for nothing?’ …The training staff and the doctors did a good job not letting me get after it too quick. Because, you know, it’s like an addiction of mine. Not being able to throw the ball, having a cast on your thumb, you know you want to just go throw it. I wanted to throw left-handed after a little while.

Joe finds Freeman’s choice of the word “addiction” interesting. Clearly, Freeman is obsessed with football and greatness. That can only be good, unless he goes overboard.

Regardless, hearing of Freeman feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable at the start of the 2010 season gave Joe a new level of respect for the kid. The Bucs did start 2-0, and clearly he wasn’t 100 percent mentally.

No Bucs fan wants to think about a potential lockout of NFL players in March, but Josh Freeman says he’s ready right now for Day 1 of a lockout.

Speaking to the dean of Tampa Bay sports radio Friday, Steve Duemig of WDAE-AM 620, Freeman explained that he and his key teammates on offense will be unified and working if they are separated from the organization.

“I’ve got all the film I need for the offseason. I got the projector, the computers, all that stuff is all in place. We’ve had coaches say, ‘Hey, you can use our high school field.’ It’s just going to be getting everybody down there,” Freeman said.

“If guys aren’t getting paid, they’re not going to really have that much motivation to be in Tampa. …But our receiving corps [is ready]. I was hanging out with LeGarrette [Blount} at Gasparilla, and everybody’s ready.”

Joe will have more Saturday on Freeman and his obsession with practice and preparation.

While Joe’s rooting hard against any form of lockout, it sure would be fun to watch Freeman and his young guns on offense breaking their asses at a Tampa high school this spring without the supervision of team officials. Joe might even hire cheerleaders to encourage the young men.

Astute Business Insider writer Nicholas Carlson sat down for an extensive Q & A with the leader of the Bristol Soviets’ online sports empire, ESPN.com chief Jon Kosner, to talk about the state of the industry. The article was published today.

Carlson reveals to Kosner that he’s a Buccaneers fan and relies on JoeBucsFan.com for every last morsel of his Bucs news.

Here’s how Carlson — who Joe has never met, spoken to, or bribed via a third party — eloquently phrased it:

BI: I follow a local sports blog called JoeBucsFan. I still read plenty of ESPN content, but only if it’s about the Bucs, and he finds it and links to it.  It’s the same with the local paper’s sports stuff. I don’t read it unless he links to it.  Am I normal, am I an outlier, is that an increasing trend, what’s going on there?

Boy, Joe sure enjoyed that. The chief of BSPN.com, and a surefire Trey Wingo sympathizer, is confronted with Joe in an important interview. His response and the entire interview can be found via the link above.

Joe will have a lot to say on this subject on Monday. Quite a bit (including a telling Bucs interview obtained in Dallas).

For now, Joe’s just grateful that his voice has become so pervasive throughout the Bucs’ fan base.

Back for his weekly trip to the end zone of the NFL universe, popular radio personality Adam Schein travels through football space and time outs and delivers his take on Super Bowl. Consider yourself sucked in to the latest episode of Cosmic Schein!

Video: Cosmic Schein: Super Bowl Pick

There are many reasons why Joe has BSPN blocked on his DirecTV (though he will watch the network for football and college basketball games). One of which is the producers and suits who indoctrinate the innocent have their heads so far up a handful of northeastern teams’ collective arses (including the Patriots) they wouldn’t know the difference from a blue sky and, well, a septic tank.

So Joe’s eyebrows were raised when he read a Twittering from Ross Tucker, a man Joe knows from his solid work on Sirius NFL Radio, who mocked the choice of Bill Belicheat for NFL coach of the year over Raheem Morris.

@RossTuckerNFL: Didn’t get a vote for Coach of Year but would have voted for Raheem Morris. Lots of worthy candidates but young Bucs 10-6 is crazy.

Whoa!

Now Joe knows Tucker, a journeyman offensive lineman who nearly became a Bucs player, has a degree from Princeton, but even a guy with a community college degree would know that not goosestepping in line with the edicts of the Soviet Disney Mice will surely get one thrown out on the street like a common vagrant. Tucker writes a column for BSPN.

Tucker better hope his salary from Sirius NFL Radio is sufficient. Or he better delete that Twittering before the wrong set of Bolshevik eyes reads it.

In a declaration sure to conjure memories of Broadway Joe Namath guaranteeing a Jets win before Super Bowl III, Bucs wide receiver Mike Williams is telling the world the Buccaneers are a lock for the playoffs in 2011.

Noted Bill Belichick admirer eye-RAH! Kaufman of The Tampa Tribune took notes while Williams spoke in Dallas.

“We’re a young team, but we’re guaranteeing the playoffs,” said Williams, who was a finalist for the Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Year award, won by Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. “And if we get in the playoffs, we know we can do some damage.”

So there you have it, Williams has planted a pewter and red flag in the sand. It’s playoffs for 2011! And he even said “we” are guaranteeing the playoffs, so Joe can surmise he’s not alone.

Joe’s glad the Bucs players see themselves as Super Bowl contender material.

Joe sincerely hopes Mark Dominik does everything possible this offseason to make the Bucs a Super Bowl team. No reason to be too patient when you’re 10-6 with plenty of weapons.

If you had purchased a now-extinct Buccaneers seat deposit in order to buy season tickets, every year when you bought tickets a portion of the deposit cash applied to the sale and the rest stayed on deposit.

Ditched your season tickets?

Then you flushed your remaining deposit cash down the toilet.

But the Bucs are now reaching their hands into the potty to give fans that money back in the form of food, drink and merchandise. Letters were sent to former season ticket holders advising them that if they buy 2011 season tickets by Sunday — without a deposit or long term contract — the amount of their forfeited deposits will be credited to them in concessions.

Joe has received numerous e-mails from giddy fans. (Please stop e-mailing.) And Joe tips his cap to longtime reader James in Dunedin, who sent Joe his paper trail from the Buccaneers.

As one fan wrote Joe, “Team Glazer’s going to buy me and my son lunch and beer at every home game, how could I not get season tix again? I’ll probably have enough to snag jerseys too.”

Interesting move by Team Glazer, a wise decision for long term growth — lasting fans for the mythical “lasting contender.” Bucs officials remind Joe that all season ticket holders will receive a discount on concessions next season.

Joe wonders what kind of response is coming in.

Joe’s going to go on a rambling recount of his days in frigid, icy, memorable Dallas.

As most of Joe’s readers know, Joe went to Dallas to land some interviews, shoot some photos and make contacts at both Super Bowl Media Day and on radio row.

When Joe arrived Monday and went to the credential center at the Lone Star horse track to get his passes from the NFL, Joe had a hunch things were about to get screwy when the NFL types wouldn’t let Joe have his pass until the next morning.

With a very short window to get the pass and haul arse to Jerry’s World, there wasn’t much time to waste. Joe planned to get there at 6:30 a.m. as soon as the doors opened, hoping the icy rain expected the next morning would hold off.

Not Joe, nor anyone, expected what was to take place a few hours later.

First, Joe’s new blackberry didn’t flip to Central time. So when Joe thought he was getting up at 4 a.m., it was actually 3 a.m.

Joe heard the wind but was too groggy to put two-and-two together. He turned on the Weather Channel (Joe’s hotel did not have NFL Network, what, was Out House Networks the cable provider?) and noticed that there was freezing rain falling.

So Joe showered and got downstairs, expecting a hellish hour-long drive (with the freezing rain) to get to the Lone Star park. Joe spoke with a girl at the front desk who told Joe “it’s really bad,” and that local authorities were begging people to stay off the roads. Joe sucked it up and went out to his rental car expecting to be able to get out of the parking lot.

Wow, it was ugly. Joe was immediately hit in the face with freezing rain, blowing in the 25 mph winds. Joe thought his face was being sandblasted and it was in the teens.

There was so much ice on Joe’s car, trying to scrape inch-thick ice with a credit card was like trying to castrate an elephant with a tongue depresser: a lost cause.

After getting beat up by the freezing rain and getting literally nowhere scraping ice, Joe gave up and prayed NFL warden commissioner Roger Goodell would delay Media Day.

No luck.

Joe began reading the Twitterings of Adam Schefter and Rich Eisen documenting how awful it was outside. Schefter Twittered the ice and wind was blowing so hard on his hotel windows he thought someone broke into his room. Later that night, Joe met a radio guy from Sarasota who told Joe the same.

As Joe detailed, he was able to find a scraper in the afternoon and by that time what little sun appeared had helped melt a little bit of the ice off the windshield. Still, Joe was out there for 20 minutes before he was able to free up the windshield wipers, which were buried under the ice.

Getting to Super Bowl Media Headquarters for radio row, Joe parked two blocks away and walked. The last time Joe was this cold was when he went through 24-below working in Kansas City.

To be clear, Joe is not down on Dallas. This was an act of God. The people there were so nice and even when the roads were clear Monday, traffic was very navigable, far better than malfunction junction in Tampa.

After returning from radio row (Joe was all but begged by one of America’s top columnists to drink with him that night, who was impressed Joe would go to such lengths to develop contacts and interview various media bigwigs, but Joe was spooked about driving on ice even after just one beer, so Joe begged off), Joe’s hotel lounge and eatery was packed. Alive. The previous evening it was empty.

Joe initially thought it was Packers and/or Steelers fans filing in. But no, it was hordes of travelers who were stranded in Dallas as the airports were shutdown.

To give readers an idea of how bad it was, hotel workers couldn’t get to the hotel. So the restaurant literally drafted maids after their shift, put them in nice clothes and enlisted them to work as waitresses. Let’s just say not only did Joe’s waitress not know the menu, she had , well, um, a language barrier and couldn’t pronounce simply items like “pasta.”

Joe waited 90 minutes for food, a cheeseburger that was so wrong Joe thought it was someone else’s order. Other hungry patrons waited over two hours. There was a Denny’s nearby but no one wanted to go so little as two blocks as the weather was so horrible (16 degrees, zero wind chill) and the sidewalks/roads so icy, people were just happy to be inside and somewhat warm, no matter the wait for food.

Some people were not as patient or understanding as Joe. Maybe Joe was bribed after being fed free beer due to the wait?

Next day, Wednesday, Joe found out his flight home was canceled due to the airport being shut down again. Dallas airports are not equipped to handle highs in the teens and wind chills in the low single-digits and planes couldn’t get deiced.

Remembering the nightmare of the previous evening, Joe drove two blocks to Denny’s. Mistake.

Because of the record-low temperatures, there were blackouts and brownouts all over Dallas. Many had their furnaces blow out. That was the case at Denny’s near Joe’s hotel. They lost their heat.

Joe walked in and knew there was a problem. When asked where to sit, Joe replied, “Wherever it’s warm.” Joe was seated next to the kitchen. When asked what Joe wanted to eat, Joe said, “Anything hot. Give me black coffee and anything hot, a turkey sandwich, fries, anything, so long as it is hot.”

When Joe paid his check, he saw his own breath… INSIDE DENNY’S!

Joe finally made it back late last night in WARM Tampa. First time Joe was warm in two days.

Joe heard Adam Schein, co-host of “The Blitz,” heard exclusively on Sirius NFL Radio say that no matter where he was in Dallas, he was cold. He was right. Everyplace was cold and one had to wear a coat at all times. Only place Joe was remotely warm was his hotel room where the temperature was cranked to 85.

Schein also remarked that the entire city of Dallas was under ice. He was right again. The city does not have salt trucks and the locals didn’t have any salt to melt the ice. So unless someone decided to chip away with a hoe or a shovel, there was a sheet of ice everywhere: sidewalks, parking lots, roads.

Though Joe missed Media Day, he did salvage the trip by getting to radio row. Given the harsh winter Joe experienced for the first time in at least a dozen years, Joe was reminded why he lives in Florida.

The votes are in from 50 allegedly educated sportswriters across the nation, and legendary Patriots cheat Bill Belichick is the NFL Coach of the Year.

Booooo.

Per ProFootballTalk.com, Belichick garnered 30 of the 50 votes. Raheem Morris of the Bucs was second with 11. Todd Haley of the Chiefs had 4.5. 

Joe just doesn’t get how the voters overlooked the simple math of it all.

Most pundits probably pegged the Pats for 11 wins, but they won 14.  And those same experts, including local voter eye-RAH! Kaufman of The Tampa Tribune, picked the Bucs to win about five games, but they finished with 10.

So how exactly did Belicheat “outcoach” Raheem in 2010?

Looking at just the regular season snapshot, which the Coach of the Year voting is, Raheem had the youngest team in the NFL and led a bunch of rookies and no-names to 10 wins. The Bucs won three of their last four games relying on guys like Al Woods, Frank Okam, Dakoda Watson, Corey Lynch and E.J. Biggers to start on defense.

But forgetting about that, one would think Raheem’s story, and the Bucs’ success, would have been enough to sway more voters to give him the nod over, say, an arrogant, sweathirt-wearing, media loathing cheater like Belichick.

Evil does win out sometimes. 

The instant-impact, manbeast defensive tackle of the 2010 draft, Ndamukong Suh, was welcomed by the loving embrace of defensive line veterans Kyle Vanden Bosch and Corey Williams at Detroit Lions camp.

That made all the difference in the world for his development, so said Suh.  Speaking today on ESPN Radio, Suh credited the mentoring of Vanden Bosch and Williams for his meteoric success in the NFL. 

Listening to Suh gush over his teacher teammates made Joe wonder how Gerald McCoy and Brian Price, and the other young Bucs d-lineman, missed out on hands-on veteran leadership.

Stylez White had experience, but he was quoted saying he didn’t see himself in a true leadership role. Released Ryan Sims? Joe’s not going there.

Some think the Bucs could draft two defensive ends quite high in April. Joe’s not in that camp, but Joe really thinks the Bucs could score — on multiple levels — with the right DE in free agency.

There’s no substitute for learning from a great mentor.

When asked to break down the play of horny, sleazy Ben Roethlisberger, Suh instantly compared him to Josh Freeman. …The Freeman love train continues.

Joe used to be a season ticket holder. One particular game Joe will never forget, even through the fog of multiple beers through a tailgate party and a Bucs game.

It was a late Sunday afternoon. Darkness enveloped the CITS like ice in Dallas. The Bucs took a late lead against the Packers. It appeared Brett Favre was on the verge of another comeback for the men in cheddar and green.

But no! The Bucs got a turnover. Chad Clifton, like a lazy right wing in the NHL, waddled down the field despite the fact he was now a defender, not an offensive lineman.

Bucs great defensive tackle Warren Sapp knew this. Now instead of a defensive tackle, he was an offensive tackle, Sapp totally wiped out Clifton with a crushing block, breaking Clifton’s pelvis.

Though Joe never, ever wants to see a player get hurt, Joe was absolutely geeked about Sapp’s block. It was smart football. It was physical football. It was football the way it was meant to be played. It was glorious.

After the game, then-Packers coach Mike Sherman confronted Sapp believing the hit was dirty and the two nearly came to blows.

At Super Bowl Media Day Tuesday, Sapp, now an analyst for the greatest channel on television, the NFL Network, which is wired in every real man’s home, was confronted by Packers reporters about the Clifton incident and Sapp lashed out, so writes Rob Demovsky of the Green Bay Gazette.

“That’s a very long time ago, man,” Sapp said. ”Jerry Rice, I was the only person who tackled Jerry Rice and got him off the field for the first time in his life. It doesn’t come with the same vile as Chad Clifton. I’m trying to figure out why. In the trenches we play a different game. We play a game that none of you are familiar with. We do things to each other that only linemen do to each other. He needed his head on a swivel, he understands that now.

“I made him a household name and $42 million, what’s the problem here? I still don’t understand. You wouldn’t know who Chad Clifton was if it weren’t for me, but now I’m so vile that I put on a block on the guy. Really? C’mon. Stop it.”

Exactly!

Joe thought at the time that Sherman was horribly out of line in confronting Sapp and Joe thinks it’s out of line to pester Sapp about this play.

The play was perfectly legal. Even if James Harrison made the hit NFL warden commissioner Roger Goodell couldn’t have fined him because there was nothing remotely close to helmet-to-helmet contact.

Yes, it was a shame Clifton got hurt. But damnit, this is football! If Clay Matthews made the same kind of play, Joe would stand and offer a golf clap.

Former Bucs great defensive end Simeon Rice often talks in tongues. Listen and watch Rice ramble in this BSPN video about the Bucs’ legacy from winning the Super Bowl, Mike Tomlin and other subjects. Joe was getting to the point where he wanted subtitles.

Though Joe sadly didn’t make Super Bowl Media Day at the house that Jerry Jones built due to the ice storm that buried Dallas Tuesday, Joe found out later he was far from alone. Joe did make it to radio row later in the afternoon and got a few interviews and was able to take some photos.

Driving past downtown Dallas on I-35E Tuesday.

When Joe wrote earlier he had to drive through the country to get to the NFL Super Bowl credential center near Lone Star Park horse track, Joe meant the country. Floridians, what you see on the road and the hood of Joe's car is ice.

Another photo of Joe driving down icy Texas country roads

"Slamman" Jay Mohr

The best pair of NFL talkingheads known to Joe, Pat Kirwan and Tim Ryan, co-hosts of "Movin' the Chains" heard exclusively on Sirius NFL Radio.

The one and only Chris "Mad Dog" Russo interviews Rams quarterback Sam Bradford on Sirius-XM's Mad Dog Radio.

Rams quarterback Sam Bradford answers a question from Chris Russo.

The creator, curator and overall guru of ProFootballTalk.com, Mike Florio, far right, poses with a bunch of radio guys from a show and town Joe knows not.

A glance from the outside of the Super Bowl media headquarters in frigid, wintery downtown Dallas.

Life must be good for Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports if he has the lovely sideline princess Charissa Thompson hanging on his arm.

Joe remembers how some of his dedicated readers used to mock Joe’s “Blackout Tour” and fans who actually went to the games.

Why, these fans chuckled, they can watch any games they want online in the comfort of their own home with cheaper beer, zero parking fees and no lines at the restroom.

These same fans admitted — both privately and pubicly — to watching NFL games on foreign websites.

That just got a bit more difficult.

Per a strange website entitled TorrentFreak.com, the long arm of the federal law has come down on certain sites known to stream illegal feeds of NFL games. The U.S. federal government, per this website, has seized the sites and shut them down.

US authorities have seized the domain of the hugely popular sports streaming and P2P download site Rojadirecta. The site, which is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, lost its .org domain which now redirects to a notice from DOJ/ICE. Rojadirecta is an unusual target because two courts in Spain have ruled that the site operates legally, and other than the .org domain the site has no links to the US.

That’s not the only site. Joe knows of another but will not list it here.

In short, your days of watching of blacked out Bucs home games on Internet are likely numbered.

Joe’s “Blackout Tour” isn’t so silly now, is it?

The NFL continues to do anything to convince soccer-mad England that it should be watching gridiron greats every weekend.

Just leave these silly Englishmen alone to foolishly agonize over Manchester United having evil American owners that only brought them championship after championship after championship. They’re a world away and are never going to embrace football.

Now the NFL wants us to pay attention to NFLUK.com and care about how a bunch of crumpet munchers vote on NFL Coach of the Year.

Raheem Morris is a finalist, and the big announcement of the inaugural “NFL UK Awards” comes out on Sunday.

After the Bucs defecated in London in 2009, maybe Raheem actually has a shot of winning following the Bucs’ big revival in 2010. Then again. Who cares? 

What’s next? NFL Ukraine names D-line coach of the decade?

As Joe has done since he launched this little home of his on the interwebs, Joe has gone to Super Bowl Media Day each year to load up on interviews with big wig media types on Bucs related subjects Joe uses through the offseason.

Oh, Joe also likes to get unique photos as well.

Joe arrived yesterday in Dallas and all was good. Made a dry run to a very high rent horse track literally in the middle of the north Texas country where the NFL has set up offices so media types can get their credentials. Sadly, Joe couldn’t coerce the NFL to let Joe have his media pass yesterday afternoon.

That’s proving costly now.

Because Joe is now stranded in his hotel room due to the snow/ice storm that hit Dallas early this morning. His rental car is caked with ice and no scraper in hand. The roads are so miserable, local authorities have closed schools and county offices, even the airports are shutdown as local government officials are begging people not to get on the streets.

And Roger Goodell expects Joe to drive on winding country roads to get his credentials? Joe grew up in the Midwest and knows better than to drive country roads in an ice storm. That’s begging for trouble in a riceburning compact piece of aluminum.

Joe hopes to make it to the Super Bowl Media Center to talk to some people on radio row and get some photos. Hopes to.

Joe will still have to navigate those country roads to obtain his pass. But going to Jerry’s World, as the locals call the new Cowboys Stadium, looks to be out for Joe, who was all geeked to see the inside of Amercia’s sports Taj Mahal.

Update: Here’s a picture of downtown Dallas Interstate I-35E at 8:20 a.m. looking outside Joe’s hotel window. You can see the city — except for NFL Media Day — is shut down.

Yeah, Joe knows it’s a crapshoot looking at a schedule in February to see if it will be formidable or not.

The Bucs took full advantage of a soft schedule highlighted by the dregs of the NFL known as the NFC West. This year the schedule, at face value, seemed stout.

But hold up, says eye-RAH! Kaufman of the Tampa Tribune. He believes the schedule is soft. Again. So he wrote on the TBO Bucs Twitter feed.

Of Tampa Bay’s 10 out-of-division opponents next season, only three (Bears, Colts, Packers) posted winning records in 2010. Good omen?

Joe suspects the Dolts will bounce back from all their injuries. Hey, Opie Taylor is still quarterback. The Bears? Depends what Jay Cutler’s blood sugar is like. The Packers? Joe believes they are on the cusp of a dynasty but if the Packers win Sunday, teams always have Super Bowl hangovers that last until the next season.

So even with three non-division teams on the Bucs’ 2011 schedule with winning records, Joe’s not hiding in a closet yet.

Joe thinks it’s pretty cool that a bunch of football nuts on the Internet convinced a major columnist he was an “idiot”about Josh Freeman last week.

The magic of Twitter somewhat humbled Dallas Morning News columnist Tim Cowlishaw after he apparently didn’t give the proper love to Freeman — in Twitter messages. (For those who don’t use Twitter, well, you can at least follow Joe. It’s free.)

Joe can’t imagine Bucs fans follow Cowlishaw on Twitter, so perhaps the Freeman love train really has spread across the nation, or at least to Texas.

Cowlishaw penned a column today ranking his top-10 quarterbacks who could win you a Super Bowl in the next five seasons and a playoff game in the next two seasons, a ranking strictly based on the talent of the QB. He’s got Freeman 10th, after explaining that he originally didn’t have No. 5 on his list.

I threw this idea out on twitter last week (in a much condensed form, obviously). I have revised my list due to the “must win in 2 years” rule and because of the number of people that politiely informed me I was an idiot for not having Tampa Bay’s Josh Freeman on my list.

I think they might be correct. On both counts.

That said, Joe hates all these stupid lists. But Joe would have placed Freeman higher than 10th, primarily because he just turned 23 and his skill set and intangibles should improve faster than the veterans ahead of him.

Surprisingly quiet day for Bucs fans, so Joe thought he’d chat tonight about all things Bucs. Though Joe is not going to get into ins and outs of potential draftees. For Joe, that’s just insanity before the combine and free agency.

Come back to chat at 11 p.m. … And get ready for some offbeat Super Bowl coverage this week. Yes, Joe is in Dallas.

"No luck with the Cheez Doodles, but this is good enough."

For years, Joe’s been known to inhale bags of crunchy Cape Cod potato chips, but that’s not what Joe finds interesting about the brand today.

Cape Cod is now a new official, multiyear sponsor of the Bucs, per the team’s official website.

“The Cape Cod brand symbolizes quality and we are thrilled to have them join our sponsor portfolio,” said Buccaneers Co-Chairman Bryan Glazer.  “We look forward to integrating them promotionally in the marketplace throughout the year.”

This is particularly interesting considering Roger Goodell, per Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback column on SI.com today, is concerned a lockout could affect sponsorship revenue and season tickets.

“… …Will fans put money down for season tickets? Will sponsors set aside money to advertise on games they’re not sure will be played? My fear is that players think there won’t be any damage done until we miss games. Not true. Also, what’s your free-agency window going to be if this goes far?”

Joe gets Goodell’s concern, but what does it say when teams are locking up new sponsors before there’s any official labor strife? The NFL has companies throwing money at it. Sure, Joe gets that there could be a lockout clause in place, but it seems that the business community won’t be scared away from the NFL anytime soon.

As for selling season tickets, Joe’s sure those sales would take an unfortunate hit in Tampa if there’s a lockout. Considering the Bucs have little demand for tickets, what’s the urgency that the Bucs can create to buy season tickets come the spring if there’s a lockout in place?

Joe suspects Bucs sales reps would here plenty of, “Call me back when the team shows up.”