Romantic sacrifice.

CBS/Turner signs 14-year, $10.8 billion deal with the NCAA for exclusive rights to the men's basketball tournament after the NCAA opts out of the final three years of an 11-year, $6 billion dollar contract.

ESPN signs 12-year, $1.86 billion deal with the Atlantic Coast Conference for exclusive rights to broadcast conference football and men's basketball games.

CBS signs 15-year, $800 million deal with the Southeastern Conference for football and basketball rights.

ESPN also signs 15-year, $2.25 billion deal with the SEC for sport broadcast rights — ultimately more than 5,500 televised events, including football games not already on CBS.

ESPN signs 20-year, $300 million deal with the University of Texas for sport broadcast rights, including at least one football game per year.

ESPN signs $125 million-a-year deal with the Bowl Championship Series for exclusive rights to the four most prestigious post season NCAA Division I Football post-season games and the "BCS National Championship Game".

Big Ten schools earn $22 million-a-year from television contracts, football bowl games and NCAA licensing.

The University of Georgia generated $52.5 million in football profits from 1 July, 2009 to 30 June, 2010.

A.J. Green, former Georgia football player and projected first-round pick in the upcoming NFL Draft, wore the number '8' on his jersey. Price of an "Authentic" Georgia football jersey, from the official NCAA merchandise store, adorned with the number '8': $150.00.  Green's name, hysterically, is not across the back of the jersey because the NCAA believes that itself and schools should not profit off the name of amateur athletes.  That even though they market them, that even though they sign billion-dollar contracts to showcase them on television where they are repeatedly called by name, they won't sell a jersey with an athlete's name on it in the name of keeping the sport 'pure'.  In the name of upholding 'amateurism'.

So, on 8 September, 2010, in the name of maintaining the purity of collegiate athletics, the NCAA suspended Georgia football player A.J. Green four games for selling a game-worn bowl jersey for $1000.

the romantic ideal of amateur athletics : actual modern-day amateurism :: watching a sunset with your lover at the Eiffel Tower : a quickie in some filthy bathroom stall

Which is to say: unequivocal bullshit.

So the question to ask then, to tie this to matters at hand: is the pushed-by-the-right narrative that public-union employees must 'sacrifice for the job' as lacking of credible romanticism as the NCAA's demands are for the monetary celibacy of college athletes?

Are both notions heavy on saccharine and short on tangible merits?  Is giving up individual rights in the name of public servitude essential?  Is it necessary?  Is becoming less an individual and more a spoke of the wheel of government service a demand a just society must make for economic and societal solvency?

I don't find it unreasonable to suggest or accept that inherent to public service is sacrifice.  That when accommodating the 'greater good', an individual has obligations beyond themselves.  This I find to be indisputable.  But I don't believe collective bargaining to be some impassable landmine for adept, fair and budgeted public service.  I don't find an inherent sacrifice within the professions to be justification for the trampling of the individual by a state or State.  I don't find it reasonable to stampede for stampeding's sake.

Barring public unions from striking?  Fair.  Reasonable.  Necessary for the maintaining of order and safety and structure of a society.  A necessary sacrifice.

Barring public unions from collectively bargaining for matters other than capped wage increases?  The eradication of negotiations for benefits?  Rules of the workplace?  Workplace safety?  How can one view these achieved goals — for now — of Wisconsin Governor — for now — Scott Walker as anything but the continued nationwide assault on the middle class and the individual from those on the right?  As anything but a match of the NCAA's unequivocal bullshit?  Is Gov. Walker nuanced enough to understand granting public unions collective bargaining is not an opening of the state's reserves for the pillaging of public unions?  That collective bargaining does not remove 'no' from a state's vocabulary when met with a wholly preposterous request?

There is a proper weight to the sacrifice asked of public-union employees and a proper use of that weight.  But the proper use of that weight is not tying it around the legs of individuals and throwing them in the water, however ill-attributed to romanticism it may be.