John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

[hawaiiansteel]

Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

By John Harris, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, February 13, 2010

John Harris is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review sports columnist and can be reached at 412-481-5432 or via e-mail.


Here's a sports fan's eye-view of the cantankerous labor negotiations between NFL owners and players:

On the way to the posh Four Seasons hotel in New York City to hammer out a deal, the players' Ferrari collides with the owners' limo. During an argument over who's at fault, a plate of Waterford China carrying Beluga caviar is shattered.

Mayhem ensues, and an arbitrator sends both sides to a neutral corner.

Perceptions being what they are, the sports public doesn't give a hoot about who's right, who's at fault, how much money players are making, or how much money team owners are losing.

Joe Pittsburgh is paid by the hour, lives paycheck to paycheck and has just enough money left over to buy a marked-down, size XXL authentic Troy Polamalu game jersey.

It's bad enough that grown men can become rich playing a kid's game and that in many NFL cities taxpayers foot the bill to finance the stadiums where the games are played.

But being forced to read and hear about billionaire owners squabbling with millionaire athletes over profit margins when the American economy is trying to stave off disaster is a slap in the face to sports fans everywhere.

The bottom line is no one wants to see a work stoppage in 2011. Owners and players would be foolish to kill their golden goose.

This is all about give and take. And it doesn't matter what side's giving and what side's taking.

Commissioner Roger Goodell, who represents the owners, wants the players to agree to a rookie wage scale. Union chief DeMaurice Smith, who represents the players, wants owners to give some of that concession money to veteran players.

Neither side is budging.

What's the problem? The NFL is experiencing unbridled prosperity.

The league is coming off a season in which Super Bowl XLIV between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts was the most-watched program in the history of television with an average of 106.5 million viewers, taking over the spot held for 27 years by the final episode of M*A*S*H.

A commercial spoofing Doritos during Super Bowl XLIV was seen by an estimated 116.2 million viewers, making it the all-time most-viewed airing of a TV commercial.

Advertisers paid as much as $2.8 million for a 30-second commercial during the game.

Smith said the league would receive $5 billion from its television network deals even if no games are played in 2011. That would give owners less incentive to strike a deal.

Players, on the other hand, won't be paid if no games are played in 2011.

Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said that some teams are bleeding money. But why ask players to make concessions now?

If owners want players to give back money, why are they paying them so much in the first place?

Why did Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder sign defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth to a $100 million contract with $41 million guaranteed last year?

Why did the Detroit Lions give No. 1 overall draft pick Matthew Stafford $41 million guaranteed? The Lions are owned by William Clay Ford Sr., whose family's other business, Ford Motor Company, is struggling to sell cars. Still, the Lions lavished money on an unproven rookie quarterback before he took his first NFL snap.

Why did Indianapolis owner Jim Irsay tell reporters during Super Bowl week that he wants to make quarterback Peyton Manning the highest-paid player in the league, including up to $50 million in bonus money?

If teams are hurting financially, how can Irsay reward Manning with a record-setting contract?

The owners set the pay scale. Now they're asking the players to save them from themselves.

And if the players don't go along with the program, they'll be cast as greedy money-grubbers who don't care about the fans who buy their jerseys and support their teams, even in a recession.

Given that the owners have a built-in $5 billion nest-egg in the event the league closes shop in 2011, the players figure to be the ones giving and the owners taking in order for labor peace to ensue.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

Complaints emerge from agents regarding lack of CBA info

Posted by Mike Florio on February 13, 2010 9:38 PM ET

As the NFL and the players union continue to push toward an uncapped year and with no reason to believe that a new CBA will be finalized by March 5, we've heard that multiple agents are concerned that the NFLPA is not providing the agents, and in turn the players, with enough information regarding the status of the talks, or the rules of the first year without a salary cap since the salary cap was first adopted in the early 1990s.

Multiple agents are getting their information from third parties (like PFT), and they believe that they should be getting their information directly from the union.

There's a belief in some circles that the NFLPA should get the benefit of the doubt, given that the current regime has been in place for less than a year, and in light of the reality that they're trying to focus (as they should) on the issues presented by management.

Still, we're told that a possible rift (or more properly a "schism") is developing between players who want to defend their decision to elect De Smith as Executive Director and agents who want results.

So it could be that some agents will complain about anything and everything until signs of real progress emerge. Regardless of the motivation, the complaints currently are focused on the lack of guidance coming from the NFLPA regarding the realities of the looming uncapped year.

[Djfan]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

What a mess. If the NFL takes the year off, I'm done.

What do you bet the NHL is hoping for a strike year.

[buckeyehoppy]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

What a mess. If the NFL takes the year off, I'm done.

What do you bet the NHL is hoping for a strike year.

I can relate, Dj. Altho, I'm not necessarily done if they don't play in 2011. The owner's fund for the lockout is simply ridiculous and they couldn't possibly be blamed for holding out as long as possible. Yeah, it would be greedy as hell. But they set up their deal with no regard to what the players thought, to be sure.

What will break it for me is if certain owners end up getting their way in "baseballizing" the NFL... getting rid of the salary cap and revenue sharing. If that ever happens, you can kiss my @$$ goodbye. The NFL will be dictated by the owners with the deepest pockets, with the biggest stadia and the largest TV markets. Their "work stoppage" fund will look like the contents of a tip jar compared with what the few "elite" owners will be lining their pockets with in the aftermath.

If I wanted to deal with that, I'd only have to look as far as my preference of baseball teams, the Cleveland Indians, and how an underfunded ownership has taken one of the best stories in the sport in the 1990s and turned it into a laughing stock once again.

I'll be damned if I'm gonna spend that time watching a bunch of bratty boys who swam too long in the gene pool and got surrounded by a bunch of hangers-on who never denied them any adulation, playing for a fraternity of winners of the trust fund lottery who have had the good fortune to get into an exclusive 32 member racket that is so winsome an entertainment attraction that they can get major, publicly traded corporations to dole out millions for product placement and consideration.

And if both sides want to get into a pi$$ing contest over their billions, who am I to stop them? History says they'll both get their way, as they always have. And the fans will forgive them of their transgressions while they struggle with the mortgage and the food their families will eat. The players and owners will have no such concerns.

Bottom line is that I'm getting older and have a laundry list of $hit I'd like to do with the rest of my life. The impending NFL lockout is only giving me another pretty good excuse to figure out other worthwhile pursuits.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

since the baseball strike, i have lost my passion for the sport and have never really followed it like i used to...but then again, maybe that's also got something to do with the fact that the Pirates are my favorite team...


League's new labor site tries to drive wedge between players, union

Posted by Mike Florio on February 14, 2010 1:10 PM ET

We've tried to make it clear over the past few days that we have only one constituency when it comes to the ongoing labor feud between the NFL and the players union -- football fans.

And so we are committed to calling out both sides when necessary in the hopes of pressuring the parties to put the interests of the game -- and football fans -- above their own bickering regarding the question of whether too much is ever enough.

Last night, we pointed out that multiple agents believe that the union is doing a subpar job of providing information to players regarding the rules of the uncapped year. Now, we take issue with the manner in which the NFL is using its brand new NFLLabor.com web site.

The current lead item trumpets an article from Pete Dougherty of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, in which Dougherty declares, "As free agency begins, owners have an edge over players."

Dougherty points to the fact that more than 200 players who won't be eligible for unrestricted free agency due to the rules of the uncapped year constitutes "a big loss for performers in a young man's game."

Though the NFL didn't write the article, the decision to feature Dougherty's piece as the top item on a web site dedicated to the labor dispute has one obvious purpose -- to stir up the players who are going to miss their shot at unrestricted free agency in 2010.

The apparent goal? To get the 200-plus players who'll be relegated to restricted free agency to squeeze the union into taking the best deal that the league offers before March 5 -- or after March 5 to spark a mutiny once the money begins to flow to the players who are eligible for unrestricted free agency.

Again, this isn't how business partners should be behaving. There can be no NFL without NFL-caliber players, and NFL-caliber players will have no place to play south of Canada without the NFL. Fairly obvious tactics by both sides to drive wedges and/or curry favor with the average fan will only create more obstacles to doing a deal -- and the only impact it will have on the general public is to get the public generally pissed off at everyone involved.

Last Sunday, 55 percent of the nation's televisions weren't watching the ultimate annual product that the NFL has to offer. It means that there are plenty of other things that we can do with our time, and plenty of football fans will find something else to do if the NFL and the NFL players can't work out their differences -- regardless of which side is actually at fault.

But, hey, the Bob Batterman playbook worked great for the NHL. Just ask all the people who stopped following hockey during the one-year lockout, and who never have gone back.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

Steve Tisch throws a bouquet to De Smith

Posted by Mike Florio on February 15, 2010 11:24 PM ET

In many lines of work, good cop/bad cop approach often gets things done.

In the NFL's current labor battle with the players union, the fraternity of owners apparently has a good cop and a bad cop residing within the same franchise.

Last month, Giants co-owner John Mara teed off on the lack of progress in negotiations toward a new labor deal, calling the union out for failing to make a "meaningful counterproposal" to an offer made by the NFL in November.

Now, Giants co-owner Steve Tisch is heaping praise on NFLPA Executive Director De Smith.

One day after Smith gave a performance at the union's annual press conference that made us think more of Johnnie Cochran than Gene Upshaw, Tisch spoke glowingly of the new union boss.

"He is sort of the new face of the players association," Tisch told SportsBusiness Journal, "he is being publicly very strong and passionate, which I totally understand and there is no reason why he shouldn't be. He does understand the issues . . . he is a very bright guy and he is not at all naive about what is going on which I think will compel him to sit down with us and get a deal done. No one wants a lockout."

In other words, Tisch believes Smith behaves differently when communicating with the owners than he does when talking to the public or to the union membership. In the latter context, Smith resorted at the annual union press event to rhetoric based on facts taken out of context at best, fabricated at worst. If he acts that way when behind closed doors, a deal will never get done.

So if Smith truly "gets it" (and some in ownership don't believe he does), maybe he's making the situation sound worse than it is in order to soften up the rank and file to the possibility of a lockout, in the hopes of ultimately getting them to be willing to accept the best deal the league eventually will make.

If so, it's no different than the things a lawyer says to his client with trial approaching and a final settlement or plea offer on the horizon. The client needs to fully comprehend the possibility of losing in order to best appreciate the best offer that eventually will be put on the table.

For the sake of all football fans and everyone who would suffer a negative economic impact in the event of a work stoppage (and, contrary to what many of you think, we'd likely make a ton of money during a lockout that lasts a month or less), we hope that Tisch is right.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

this thing is just gonna get uglier and uglier...


Updated: February 16, 2010, 7:38 PM ET
NFLPA wants revenue pool reassessed

By Chris Mortensen
ESPN

The NFL Players Association is charging the NFL Management Council with short-changing low-revenue clubs on the amount of money that has been distributed from the supplemental revenue pool, according to the union's filing Tuesday with the Special Master.

Specifically, the NFLPA states that the Management Council recently informed the union that it distributed just $68.3 million in 2006, $90.2 million in 2007 and $94.7 million in 2008 to those low-revenue clubs that were deemed qualified for supplemental invoke. The scheduled amounts of money per the labor agreement, the union claims, should have been $100 million in 2006, $105 million in 2007 and $120 million in 2008.

"What we would like to have happen is find out how much the program was shorted and then to make sure that that money is applied in the way it was intended," said Jeffrey Kessler, the outside counsel for the NFLPA.

The Management Council argued that it was granted discretion on a formula to determine which clubs qualified for the supplemental income and, apparently, the amounts distributed to each club.

A league spokesman said, "Qualifiers have been part of the supplemental revenue sharing system since its inception. The union approved the use of qualifiers in the CBA. The operation of the qualifiers has been consistent with the resolution adopted when the extension was approved and has not disadvantaged any low-revenue club. We are confident that the operation of the system will be upheld by the Special Master."

The union countered in its complaint to Special Master Stephen Burbank: "The qualifier provisions only concern the standards for determining which teams qualify for a distribution; they have nothing to do with determining the total amount of money in the RSM pool to be distributed among those teams that qualify."

Burbank ruled recently that the league could not disband the supplemental revenue pool as it had planned for the uncapped 2010 season. The projected monies for that pool were $220 million.

"Such funds are important to insure that the lower-revenue teams can field competitive teams, offer competitive salaries and provide their fans with hope for success on the field each NFL season," Kessler said.

Without a deal in the next few weeks to preserve labor peace, teams will operate next season without a salary cap. And if no deal can be reached next season, a work stoppage could occur in 2011.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

NFL draft will operate under standard rookie salary pool

Even in an uncapped year, NFL will employ a standard slotting system because the
lack of a rookie pool could have led to numerous contract stalemates. The NFL
hopes to address the rookie salary structure in new CBA talks.

By Don Banks, SI.com


While the NFL will almost certainly enter its long-anticipated "uncapped" year next month, the league's 2010 draft will continue to operate under the rookie salary pool and slotting system that have been staples of the current collective bargaining agreement, a league spokesman confirmed to SI.com on Wednesday.

The rookie salary pool -- which previously functioned as a salary cap for first-year players under the NFL's soon-to-expire overall salary cap -- could have been dropped at the league's behest in an uncapped year, as the CBA stipulated. But the league decided to retain the rookie salary pool for 2010, even though it hopes any new CBA negotiations will address what it believes are the inequities of its rookie salary structure.

As has been the case with each draft class under the current CBA, this year's crop of NFL rookies will see their potential contract value determined by their draft spot -- the so-called slotting system. Had the league intended to opt out of the rookie salary pool in 2010, it would have had to notify the NFL Players Association by Feb. 20.
"The rookie pool is on under the normal formula,'' NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said. "That has been communicated to the clubs. It's part of the CBA, and there's no reason to discontinue that. There will be no notification to the union, because it's not being cancelled.''

Most analysts believe the 2010 draft will be one of the deepest in years, with a record number of juniors expected to infuse the first round (as many as 20-24 by some estimations). Many in the league believed the potential lack of a rookie pool in 2010 would coax even more underclassmen into April's draft -- especially given the uncertainty surrounding the potential rookie salary structure any new labor deal may produce.

Aiello said the league's clubs were made aware of the intention to have a rookie salary pool at the NFL's annual labor seminar in December. That occurred the month before a mid-January deadline for college juniors deciding whether to declare for the 2010 draft.
But a club executive told SI.com on Wednesday he still hadn't heard any definitive word from the league regarding whether it intended to have a rookie salary pool this year.
"I think everyone's planning as if there will be a rookie pool, but there's not been any word from the league,'' the club executive said. "Everyone's just operating on the assumption there will be a pool. I always figured if it was going to be different, they'd tell us.''

Some league observers felt the absence of a slotting system could result in more Michael Crabtree-like contract stalemates, in which agents try to assign value to a player without adhering strictly to where the player was drafted. That could have led to a greater emphasis on "signability'' in this year's draft, with teams eager to identify which highly-regarded prospects might have tried to capitalize on the one-year absence of a draft slotting system.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has been out-spoken in his desire to change the league's rookie salary structure, and last month the NFL reportedly proposed to the players union a new rookie wage scale for this year's draft, with players paid a fixed amount based on draft slot. The NFLPA responded with its own rookie salary proposal, but tied it to a two-year extension to the current CBA -- an idea which went nowhere. The NFL seems willing to deal with the rookie salary question separate from the looming labor talks.

The league's rookie salary pool is determined each May, following the NFL draft, and is based on that year's overall salary cap. It is in part determined by how many draft picks a team has and where those picks are located.

[RuthlessBurgher]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

What do you bet the NHL is hoping for a strike year.

It's possible that in addition to an NFL lockout in 2011, we could be looking at an NBA lockout in 2011 as well. Imagine if both football and basketball took the year off and hockey was the only sport being played from the World Series until the following year's spring training.

[url]http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/basketball/nba/01/09/hunter.labor/index.html[/url]

[Oviedo]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

What do you bet the NHL is hoping for a strike year.

It's possible that in addition to an NFL lockout in 2011, we could be looking at an NBA lockout in 2011 as well. Imagine if both football and basketball took the year off and hockey was the only sport being played from the World Series until the following year's spring training.

[url]http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/basketball/nba/01/09/hunter.labor/index.html[/url]

Great for the Penguins. Too bad the new arena won't hold 30,000+ fans.

My concern in all of this is that the new head of the player's union seems like a "grandstander" to me and may be more intersted getting his mug on TV and getting a tough guy reputation than doing what is long term best for the players.

This is typical of most union leaders. While members of the union don't get paid during strikes, they still do and they are never the ones who lose their jobs.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

Some think Vincent was hired by NFL as a union "wedge"

Posted by Mike Florio on February 20, 2010 8:29 AM ET


When the National Football League announced that former NFLPA president Troy Vincent had taken a job with the league office, heads jerked throughout the football-following world.

The man who long coveted the chance to run the union -- and who was rejected by the rank and file a year ago after a multiple-month smear campaign -- had joined forces with management. Of all the former players whom the league could have hired, the league chose Vincent.

Predictably, some believe that the NFL will use Vincent as a "wedge" to divide players, per Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Journal. Even more predictably, the league denies any such motivation, explaining that Vincent say the job posted online and applied for it.

In our view, however, everything the league does until a new CBA is finalized must first be scrutinized from the perspective of the labor situation. Though the NFL hasn't said it, the cumulative impact of its actions of late send a clear message -- getting a new labor deal on terms favorable to the owners occupies the top spot on the league's to-do list.

And the league surely wants to drive a wedge between the players and the union, for the same reasons the union would love to drive a wedge between the owners. As one source recently pointed out, this labor fight will be a war of attrition, with the side that realizes the most internal harm the most likely to cry "uncle."

The risk, of course, is that efforts to divide the players could in reality unite them. For example, to the extent that some players are experiencing buyer's remorse regarding the decision to choose De Smith and not Vincent, Vincent's perceived defection could erase those doubts.

So, basically, this thing continues to get more and more interesting.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

30 percent rule still looms over uncapped year

Posted by Mike Florio on February 21, 2010 5:50 PM ET


With the salary cap disappearing in 2010, plenty of players still under contract might be looking for new deals.

If, after all, there's no spending limit and fewer free agents are available and guys are operating under deals done when a cap was in place, some of them might expect a big raise.

But there's a problem, as one league source pointed out in response to our recent suggestion that the decision of Steve Smith (the young, good one) to change agents could be a sign that he wants to strike it rich.

The 30 percent rule applies to the renegotiation of any contracts.

It means that the player's salary in 2010 can't be more than 30 percent greater than the player's salary in 2009. For players still operating under the minimum base salaries of a slotted rookie deal, that's a problem. A big problem.

But there's a loophole. NFL director of corporate communications Dan Masonson has confirmed for us that signing bonuses won't count toward the 30 percent rule. Still, it means that the bulk of a player's compensation would have to be funneled to him via a signing bonus, with limited base salaries in future years. While the player might be fine with that in 2010, the player might feel a lot differently in the out years of the deal.

Then there's the looming lockout. Why would a team want to front load a deal with a huge signing bonus in 2010 if there might be no football in 2011? Every player who receives such a deal is one less player who will have to face the prospect of living game check to game check with no game check.

So keep an eye on this angle as the uncapped year begins. Plenty of players under contract will want more money. It's unlikely that many will get it.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

League reiterates position on "$5 billion" lockout fund

Posted by Mike Florio on February 22, 2010 7:50 AM ET


After NFLPA Executive Director De Smith broke out the wireless mic on February 4 so that he could walk back and forth across the stage like a trial lawyer in the well of a courtroom when conducting his first pre-Super Bowl press conference, NFL general counsel Jeff Pash knocked down several of the points that Smith was trying to make to the general public via easily-digestible sound bites.

The three messages from Smith that resonated most clearly were: (1) the league wants players to take an "18 percent pay cut"; (2) the league is a non-profit organization; and (3) the league has specifically renegotiated television contracts so that $5 billion will be paid to the NFL in 2011 if there's no football played.

In a conference call conducted not long after Smith's remarks ended, Pash addressed each of those points. As to the most eyebrow-raising -- the idea that the league has engineered a $5 billion money-for-nothing incentive to lock players out -- Pash was clear.

"It is hardly the first time that a television contract has had that type of provision in it," Pash said. "That goes back in my experience at least to the early 1980's. More to the point, it is nothing more than a financing mechanism. The networks aren't going to hand over large amounts of money to us, and if they don't get a product [in return] tell us to go ahead and keep that money. We will have to give it back to them and take reductions about what we get from them for future years. I am quite certain that the networks will make sure that they are made whole and then some if we are not able to televise games. It is not a payment, it is a financing mechanism. It is no different than borrowing on a home equity line. You still have to pay it back."

We made this point last year, not long after it was pointed out that the NFL's new deal with DirecTV contains a pay-for-no-play provision. "All sports league media deals are structured so payments continue in a lockout or strike," an industry source said at the time. "The money is then deducted off future years. . . . The news would have been had this not been the case."

So the $5 billion would be paid back later, dramatically reducing the owners' profit margin in years during which they'd be paying players and incurring the other expenses associated with running pro football teams.

We're revisiting this issue because there's a new item in the Boston Herald regarding the point Pash made 18 days ago. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello tells Ian Rapoport of the Herald that Smith's point on the $5 billion lockout fund is "completely inaccurate." Aiello reiterates that the money, if paid, must be repaid.

The more intriguing aspect to us is that the article has the look and feel of the league making an affirmative effort to "get the word out" regarding its response to Smith's assertion. Though it's entirely possible that Rapoport was simply doing some cleanup work based on notes he took during Smith's press conference, it's also possible (if not probable) that the league decided that the response to Smith's assertion didn't get as much attention as it should have received at the time, and that it made sense during a relative lull in the flow of NFL news to fill the vacuum with an effort to clarify the record regarding one of the three liberties Smith took with reality during his press conference.

Though we included a general reference to the inaccuracy of the information in a February 5 SportingNews.com column calling for the league and the union to act more like partners and less like enemies, there had yet to be a clear rebuttal of Smith's contention.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

Union memo drops strong hint about looming collusion charge

Posted by Mike Florio on February 23, 2010 1:47 PM ET


Though the disclosure that the union asked the NFL to extend the current capped system for a year represents the portion of the memo from NFLPA Executive Director De Smith to all players agents that will generate the most attention, there's a more ominous message in the two paragraphs that follow the articulation of Smith's desire to freeze the current system in place.

Here's the full text of the two paragraphs in question:

"The NFLPA just recently won a Special Master decision against the NFL and its clubs which will force the high revenue clubs to share millions of additional dollars with the low revenue, small market clubs during the 2010 season. The decision to pursue this action was based upon our belief that we had to make more money available to sign players in the uncapped year.

"Remember also that the uncapped year provides just that -- no cap or limit on the amount of money a club may spend on player salaries. The last time there was an uncapped season in the NFL was in 1993, and in that season clubs spent collectively over 70% of league revenue on player costs. While we cannot predict what will happen in 2010, we suspect that it will be dependent on the individual player and team. Given the projected increases in NFL revenues for 2010, more money should be available for player salaries than ever before. In addition, keep in mind that each NFL club will be saving approximately $10 million in benefit costs as a result of their not having to fund certain benefits in the uncapped year. That money can and should be used for player salaries."

In other words, Smith is making it clear that, if teams don't spend significant money on the available free agents and/or players already under contract, the union will have something to say about the matter. Even if there's never enough hard evidence to prove collusion, there are other ways that the NFLPA can use a lack of spending on veteran players to instigate controversy.

For example, we believe there could be a rash of high-profile players speaking out about the failure of their respective teams to spend money in order to build competitive rosters. In this regard, keep a close eye on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, a recent arrival to the union effort whose voice would carry plenty of weight in the ongoing effort by the NFLPA to paint the owners as the bad guys in this fight between billionaires and millionaires.

Then there's the offseason program. Apart from the reality that many of the restricted free agents who would have been unrestricted free agents will refrain from signing their tender offers and thus staying away from most offseason practices, the players already under contract have every right to boycott the offseason strength and conditioning program and all voluntary offseason practice sessions.

As one agent told Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Journal regarding restricted free agents, "If they want this fight, let's have it right now." That thinking applies to all other players, too.

So the players can strike without striking, and there's nothing the NFL can do about it.

Wait, there is. The NFL can roll up their sleeves and get a new deal done. A deal that's fair to everyone.

As we pointed out last week, if there's enough money to justify paying a former Commissioner $3.3 million more than three years after he retired, there's more than enough money for the players and owners to share.

[hawaiiansteel]

Re: John Harris: NFL owners figure to win labor fight

Source: Some in union think Kessler wants to force a lockout

Posted by Mike Florio on February 24, 2010 4:42 PM ET


We've heard from time to time over the past several weeks that some within the union power structure actually want the owners to lock out the players. But we've refrained from posting on it because it all sounded a little far-fetched (like, you know, the plot of Quarterback of the Future).

But in the wake of David Cornwell's item from last week regarding his belief that the NFL's plan isn't to lock out the players but to impose unilaterally new work rules and then force the players to accept those rules and strike, a source with knowledge of the situation tells us that Cornwell's article "caused a stir" at the union -- and that some in the union believe that long-time outside counsel Jeffrey Kessler wants to force a lockout.

If the owners lock out the players, the union would then be in position to attempt to wreak havoc through the political connections of Executive Director De Smith, who already has suggested mutually harmful strategies like attacking the NFL's broadcasting antitrust exemption and the tax-exempt status of the league office.

The thinking is that the union will get the best possible deal only with that kind of leverage, and that leverage of that kind will come only if the owners padlock the gates.

Implicit in this mindset is a belief within the union that a strike in the face of unilaterally-imposed work rules would fail, just as the 1982 and 1987 strikes failed.

A union source who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue strongly doubted the accuracy of the allegation. And the source reiterated he contention that the NFL has hired Bob Batterman, who orchestrated the NHL lockout and who is deeply involved in a possible MLS lockout.

We still believe firmly that the ultimate goal should be to get a deal done -- and for the league and the union to behave more like partners and less like enemies. Maybe the best way to make that happen in the short term would involve the union asking Kessler to step aside and the league parting ways with Batterman. We know it won't happen but, hey, we can dream, too.