NFLPA preparing legal action if contract talks stall
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2316888

DETROIT -- The NFL Players Association is preparing to take the league to court if there is no immediate progress on a new contract.

NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw set March 9 as the date he will begin consulting players on legal action if no deal has been reached to extend the collective bargaining agreement. Upshaw said Thursday that the current stalemate is due more to a disagreement among the owners on revenue sharing than conflict between the league and the union.

The current contract expires after the 2007 season, but it calls for an uncapped year in '07. Without a new CBA, negotiations on individual contracts in the free-agent period that begins March 3 will be much more difficult for teams and players.

"The price of poker will go up," Upshaw said at the union's Super Bowl news conference. "We can not stay in the place where we are now."

The league and the owners have been negotiating for more than a year on an extension to the contract first agreed upon in 1993.

But this is the first time there has been a stalemate, primarily because of the dispute between high-revenue teams such as Washington, Dallas, Houston and New England, and teams with less local money available from items ranging from parking to stadium signage.

Upshaw insisted the union is prepared for decertification, which involves disbanding and going to antitrust court to ask for a set of rules under which the NFL would operate. The union did that to end the monthlong 1987 strike and played without a contract until 1992, when the court ruled in its favor -- leading to the current deal negotiated with commissioner Paul Tagliabue and the owners. That deal included free agency for the first time, as well as the salary cap, which took effect in 1993.

"We've demonstrated we are not afraid to decertify," Upshaw said. "We understand the laws and what's available to us."

Upshaw warned if the dispute continues through 2007, then the salary cap is likely to be gone -- for good.

Richard Berthelsen, the union's general counsel, said if the decertification strategy is used, it could keep the owners from locking out the players and allowing games to continue. "If there is no union, the labor laws would not apply, so you wouldn't have a lockout," he said.

Despite Upshaw's strong words Thursday, both sides believe privately that an agreement can be reached fairly soon.

Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney has helped settle NFL labor disputes for three decades. He said last week that while there was little movement in the dispute, he is still optimistic there could be action among the owners fairly soon.

Upshaw pointed out Thursday that the $24 billion television deal reached last year with CBS, NBC, Fox and ESPN gives the networks incentive to help settle the dispute. And he quoted Denver owner Pat Bowlen as saying: "If we can't reach agreement, we should all be shot."

Still, some of the high-revenue owners have suggested they could live with a different system.

"It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we didn't have a salary cap," Dallas' Jerry Jones said last fall.

At one point, Upshaw even joked about the high-revenue owners, notably Washington's Daniel Snyder, who has more than 20 coaches on his payroll, including some of the NFL's highest-paid assistants.

"They are going to have to decide how to spend their money if they're going to reach agreement among themselves," he said. "You might cut back on the coaches on your payroll. I love Dan Snyder because he spends a lot of money on players. But there are others in that high-revenue group who take in $300 million and have just a $66 million payroll."

Upshaw and Tagliabue have always had a good relationship during negotiations and Tagliabue, who turned 65 in November, has delayed his retirement in part to get the labor problems settled.

Negotiations are expected to intensify after the Super Bowl. Rooney, Upshaw and league officials have said they don't think there will be an agreement by the start of free agency next month. However, the issue is likely to be the primary topic among the owners at their annual meeting, which begins March 25 in Orlando, Fla.

That might allow for an agreement by the draft, which will take place a month later.

"Without an agreement after the draft, you would have a lot of unsigned players, a lot of first- and second-round draft picks who would be waiting to see what system we would be using," he said.

Upshaw also reiterated the healthy state of the sport: "We're not talking about a struggling industry here."

I think this may be Tags' toughest negotiation yet. I enjoy the strange bedfellows this has created. Jerry Jones, Dan Snyder and....Robert Kraft?

This will get interesting. If it gets to the point of decertification, the NFL owners may not like the result. The funny part is that that Tagliabue and Upshaw agree, it's just a few rich owners who don't want revenue sharing.

Until something actually happens (not counting the rattling of sabers like this) I'm inclined to keep this filed uner "non-event."

That's what makes me really wonder how "difficult" this is going to be. It's really Snyder and Jones and maybe a couple of other guys in one corner and everybody else in the other. The other owners should have no problem forcing a deal on Jones and Snyder and just make them live with it.

The biggest sticking point of the negotiations is local revenue. The NFLPA wants to put that in the pot for salary cap purposes, and if that happens then other NFL owners want it in revenue sharing too. That would be a huge blow to a few teams and a minor blow to some other teams. There might be a few teams it would help -- some teams may get more money in local revenue sharing than they would pay in a higher salary cap.

I'm with Quik -- I think a lot of this is saber rattling for now. I did hear the Chiefs GM Carl Peterson say yesterday that there is some confusion on this year's cap because the CBA apparently isn't clear on what the cap will be in '06 before the uncapped year in '07. Teams have been given a salary cap "range" but haven't been told what the cap will actually be yet. If it isn't settled in the next few weeks, that could slow down early FA.

Actually I heard on the radio this morning that the group of rich owners is barely more than 1/3rd (or whatever minimum they need), which means they can block any deal.

An update
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2348417

ESPN.com news services


NFL labor talks broke off Tuesday three days before the start of free agency, leaving teams and players in a quandary about negotiating new contracts.

Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Association, spent the last three days meeting in New York and Washington with commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

"We're deadlocked. There's nowhere to go," Upshaw said. "There's no reason to continue meeting."

The NFL acknowledged the talks had broken off and said no further discussions were scheduled. The league said it would not extend Friday's deadline for the start of free agency.

Although the contract does not expire until after the 2007 season, this is a critical period in the negotiations to extend the 12-year-old contract. Talks have been going on for more than a year.


Without an extension, the 2007 season would become a so-called uncapped year with no spending limit and no minimum, and players could potentially face a lockout in 2008.

Team officials and player agents have said that doing business without an extension -- particularly with the free agent signing period set to begin Friday and the draft on April 29-30 -- will prove virtually impossible. Because of the extreme circumstances that would exist with an uncapped year on the horizon, it would be difficult to meet the financial expectations of free agents and high-round draft choices.


"We're too far apart on our economics and too far apart on revenue sharing -- the ball is in their court," Upshaw said. "We'll go to the uncapped year, there won't be an extension."

Free agency is scheduled to start Friday. If the deal is not extended, this would be the last year with a salary cap, so agents and team officials want to know how to structure contracts.

For example, if there is no extension, the salary cap is expected to be about $95 million this season and annual raises after 2006 in a long-term deal would be limited to 30 percent. If the deal is extended the cap could be $10 million or more higher.

The sides have agreed on a number of issues. The biggest one is changing the formula for the amount of money to go to the players from "designated gross revenues" -- primarily television and ticket sales -- to "total gross revenues," which include almost every bit a money a a team generates.

They differ, however, on the percentage of revenues to be allocated to the players -- the union is asking for 60 percent and the league's current offer is 56.2 percent.

But there are also disputes among groups of owners on that issue, too. Tagliabue has called a league meeting in New York for Thursday to explain to NFL clubs why the sides have been unable to come to an agreement.

Teams with lower revenues -- mostly small-market clubs -- say that if the contributions to the players' fund are equally apportioned among 32 franchises, they will have to pay a substantially larger proportion of their nontelevision and ticket money because they have less. Owners of high-revenue teams, like Dallas' Jerry Jones, claim spreading the load equally would force some teams to work harder to generate new sources of money.

Another high-revenue owner, New England's Robert Kraft, says the formula does not take stadium debt into account, as he has on Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.


ESPN.com's Len Pasquarelli reported Monday that league owners were scheduled to meet Tuesday via conference call to discuss the status of negotiations.

Two owners told Pasquarelli on Monday afternoon that they have delayed their departures from Indianapolis, site of the NFL scouting combine since Wednesday, to accommodate the 6 p.m. ET timing of the conference call.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said "internal revenue-sharing issues" would not be discussed at the meeting.

Information from The Associated Press and ESPN.com's Len Pasquarelli was used in this report.

Getting more interesting...

Decalaring an impasse with days to go before a deadline remains a "non event" in my book... though I'm more concerned than before.

Anything that gets baseball back to its preferred state as America's sport is good in my books...

Maybe Gene Upshaw will come back and be Art Shell's Linemen coach.

Fat chance of that happening. Baseball's owners are their own worst enemy.

Yeah, baseball owners will do something dumb. Then, they'll say "it's ok...we're gonna add another wild card." Then all will be forgiven for a few more years because more teams are in the playoffs.

Baseball's central problem is the game itself. But they absolutely do plenty of stupid things to hasten its inevitable decline.

Back to the NFL, the local sports radio show is already talking about the Redkins needing to make salary cap cuts as soon as tomorrow in anticipation of a "stangant" cap situation for the coming year. Is this, as I suspect, just more bluster -- or are we going to see cap-strapped teams actually needing to take firmer and earlier actions due to this anticipated impasse?

You concerned yet? Cause this whole "Armegeddon of cuts" day tomorrow scares the shit out of me. Granted I don't think that my team will have to drastically cut a lot of guys, but I do think that they will lose someone like Jeff Hartings when before they could have had a few more weeks to try to work something out. The fact that the "Cap out" button is essentially gone from use is also a bad thing, a team like Washington will really be screwed. I bet they work out some 11th hour thing tonight, I hope Upshaw isnt this greedy and stupid as to fuck this up.

Heathen! Eh, at least it hasn't become a made for TV sport. :D

On topic, I'll be shocked if the big guns agree to share all their revenue. It is ridiculous that a team that makes no effort to generate funds (a la Paul Brown Stadium) should benefit equally to one that does.

They'll split the difference on the revenue demands and get something done. JMO tho.

Well, they've said there's an emergency owners meeting scheduled for tomorrow, so unless nothing comes out of that I'm not going to get too worked up about this whole thing. It doesn't make sense to make all those cuts an entire day before the deadline until at least after the emergency meeting. I'm sure some people will be cut tomorrow morning, but I suspect mostly guys who would be cut anyway. There's no reason to cut the other guys until after the emergency owners meeting.

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail... but when there's money at stake, that is almost never the case.

Sounds like the owners' emergency meeting is over and nada....

edit: and the deadline for pre-free agency movement has been extended from 4pm today to 10pm today.

Mr. Overpaid finally agreed to renegotiate his contract, yay!

You're like 16 hours late. That was all yesterday, and there is a new emergency meeting going on right now.

and Tags just went on TV and said no CBA will be reached I think

nope. The one that was going on was the one I was reporting on.

Yep, he said the owners voted unanimously to break off talks with the Players union. Looks like "Bloody Thursday" might happen after all.

Ah, okay. I was confused as the deadline extension from 4 until 10 was announced yesterday.

It's going to be an "interesting" offseason it looks like. Oh well, at least my FOF league doesn't have to worry about a CBA

It's a balance and I can see both sides of the equation. Teams that take some risk and take on debt to fund capital improvements and aggressively court new revenue streams and marketing opportunities should get the benefit of their hard work. There is a lot less incentive for an owner to go out and try to sell out his luxury boxes and try to hammer out the best possible deal on naming rights to a stadium when it won't give his team a competitive advantage. So, you assume, the league will make less money as a whole because owners will not be working as hard as they are now to bring in big ticket items.

On the other side, it gives a competitive advantage to teams in large wealthy markets. The more money they have that they don't have to share, the more they can use signing bonuses to spread out cap hits and lure free agents, and the more they can pay coaches and GMs, and the better facilities they can maintain to attract free agents and keep them in prime condition.

As a fan of a small market team with a miserly owner, I am all for sharing all the wealth. As an objective matter concerning what is best for the league as a whole . . . I am not sure.

The fact that Tabliabue managed to get a unanimous vote by whipping Jones and Snyder into formation is a huge signal. The owners are united on this, and there is no chance of the union getting some of the major market owners to break ranks. This can only end badly for the union.

This will be an interesting off season if there's no agreement today (which appears to be the case). Looking at the teams in good shape, I think Seattle and San Diego could come out of this in very good shape if they do some bargain shopping in free agency.

I wonder if Quik is concerned yet ;).

I'm not, but Quiksand might be... ;)

More and more I'm becoming a college football fan.

:eek:

They already launched a three day delay of any meaningful effects resulting from having no deal. Still not concerned.

I see this delay as having more to do with the negotiations between the big market and small market owners than it does with the NFLPA. Mort is reporting that Dan Rooney and Jerry Richardson are the ones responsible for staying behind after the vote today to try and get the talks restarted.

Agree - this ins't about the league and the NFLPA coming to terms, this is about the league coming to terms with itself on revenue sharing. The NFLPA wisely chooses not to sign a contract until the owners actually have come to a consensus on revenue sharing. This is one of those rare times when I side with the union in a labor deal.


-Anxiety

As long as Gene gets Kerry Collins cut for sure, I'm all for this.

That's a very peculiar statement. Care to elaborate on the problem with the game itself? I had thought the central problem was the economics of the game.

The system where the coaches make millions but the kids aren't allowed to make a penny ? The system where everyone makes bucks of the people doing the work ? Great system...

RA, would that affect the age minimum?

Unless you play in the SEC.

Baseball is not especially interesting to watch on television, it is too slow-paced for modern audiences. Massive television audiences are the lifeblood of major sports, and baseball will never have them again.

Those in control of the sport no doubt keep it from reaching its greatest potential, but its central probem is that it's just not sufficiently entertaining to watch.

Hmm, I understand. Maybe they need to change the rules to make it a full-contact sport with a player beating their chest after every pitch (or takedown).

But then again, I rarely watch games anymore. I just prefer to fast-sim them to the next morning when the box scores and standings appear. :)

I fast-sim to the World Series then start rooting for the team that is one out away from winning it all.

Part of the problem with baseball is the lack of passion for the game amongst a lot of its players. There's too many take it or leave it guys for my taste. Maybe its the money or maybe times have just changed but I can't think of many guys that would agree with the greatest sports quote of all time.

"I'd walk through Hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball." - Pete Rose

And you see where that kind of Rose-like competitiveness gets you ;).

Ratings? Fannies in the seats? World Championships? What? ;)

Well, the owners and the union are going to be meeting in NY today to try to hammer out an extension.

Not sure. I cut and pasted that from the espn.com's Q&A on labor issues.

hxxp://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2351462

I would assume that you could sign as a FA when you're 18 years old since the union would decertify.