Friday was supposed Christmas morning, but with less jolly old guys with beards and a lot more paperwork.

The players voted Wednesday and the owners were schedule to do so on Thursday. If both accepted, it's just a matter of dotting the I's, crossing the T's and breaking out enormous barrels of celebratory vodka.

...Or that's how it was supposed to go. Unfortunately, the players didn't vote Wednesday. The owners passed it 31-0, with Al Davis abstaining, but the players are expressing some doubts. The result is that this whole thing has been pushed back into at least next week, and we have missed the goalpost once again. It's like having the worst kicker in the world with the game on the line, every time.

So we wait once more for everyone to get on the same damn page. We hope that finally, mercifully, everyone realizes that the longer this drags out, the more trouble the NFL is going to have getting its best product on the field. We wait until something that started in February and led to months of painful squabbling and a lack of the game we love most finally topples, like a Berlin Wall of suck.

Use your morning to discuss this and what we hope will soon be actual Falcons football. Pray.