I'm pretty sure your argument can go the other direction also. Now, I'm not one to claim to know all about the lockout, owners, players, or anything really, but.....
In part a) of your post, it may be a little misleading to say that they have "never been requested to take an actual pay cut".
Because, technically, players were collectively asked to take a billion dollar a year pay cut. I'm not exact on this, but the way I saw this thing as it was brought up previously was;
Players make contract money, AND profit sharing from the NFL. ( didn't know about the 50+% thing until all this started)
So.....
NFL makes 9 billion.
NFL keeps 1 billion off the top, before paying out percentages of profit to the players. Leaving 8 billion to split as they agreed.
NFL now wants to keep 2 billion off the top before profit sharing, leaving only 7 billion to split.
7 billion is less than 8 billion, ergo, paycut.
I'm not going to say that I agree with either party on this, I still think they should just agree to a 50-50 split and get back to work, but that's the way I understood a part of this problem to work.