Are NFL team members overworked?

In today's Wall Street Journal, writer Reed Albergotti outlines what a typical NFL team goes through in a given season, chronicling that the average team spends more labor time in a given season than in any other professional sport.

Here's an amazing statistic from the story, citing a study by the Boston Consulting Group:

- The typical NFL season requires 514,000 hours of labor per team. That's about eight times the effort it took to create, build and market Apple's i-Pod. And, if both the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints--this year's combatants in the Super Bowl--dedicated themselves to construction rather than football, their members would have built the Empire State Building in seven seasons.

There is no collective bargaining agreement in place past the 2011 Super Bowl. And, while long hours aren't at the center of the likely labor dispute--money is, of course--perhaps there should be discussion on the long, long hours required to succeed in this most physically grueling of team sports.