By Mark Maske Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 6, 2006; 11:57 AM
NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Players Association chief Gene Upshaw have reached a tentative agreement on a labor settlement that will be presented to the sport's team owners for approval during a meeting scheduled to begin Tuesday afternoon in Dallas, a source familiar with the proceedings said this morning.
League spokesman Greg Aiello denied this morning that there is a deal between Tagliabue and Upshaw. But one owner and a front office executive said this morning that their teams had been told a deal between the two is completed.
Negotiators for the two sides will resume talks today to put the details of the agreement between Tagliabue and Upshaw into writing, the source said.
The deal would have to be approved by at least 24 of the 32 NFL teams to go into effect. Details of the proposed settlement were not immediately available.
On Sunday morning, the deal appeared to be on the verge of getting done when Upshaw indicated that he thought the owners and the union were close. Negotiations resumed just after 11 a.m. in New York, and union officials still thought around noon that an agreement with the owners was within reach. But they said that the owners backtracked in their proposals from there -- while the league said it offered to increase player compensation to unprecedented levels -- and negotiations broke off around 6:30 p.m.
Upshaw and other union representatives headed to dinner, saying they had no plans for the deliberations to resume before the scheduled opening of the league's free agent market at midnight. Clearly, however, something was up. The two sides had agreed around 5 p.m. to postpone a 6 p.m. deadline until 10 for teams to release players to get under the $94.5 million-per-team salary cap. After the negotiations broke up, the deadline was pushed back again until 11:30. Why push back the deadline if negotiations were dead? Obviously, they weren't.
The owners and Tagliabue conducted a conference call and, according to Upshaw, the union's leaders received a phone call saying the league would put the players' latest proposal before the owners for a ratification vote during a meeting in Dallas scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Tuesday. At that point, Upshaw said, the league and union agreed to a second three-day postponement of the opening of free agency, now scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Teams now have until Wednesday night to be under the salary cap; if they must release players to do so, those moves must be completed by 9 p.m. Wednesday.
This morning's development means the owners will now vote on an approved deal instead of a proposal.
At a meeting Tuesday in Dallas, NFL owners will vote to accept or reject a players' union proposal to extend the Collective Bargaining Agreement, ESPN's Chris Mortensen is reporting.
NFL management, led by commissioner Paul Tagliabue called the union an hour before the Sunday midnight deadline to say that they take the proposal to all 32 owners, Mortensen reports. Twenty-four of the 32 owners must OK the deal for it to be ratified.
Monday in New York, Tagliabue, NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw and lawyers for both sides are meeting to put the players' latest proposal into a written document to present to owners for approval.
The league and union agreed to postpone free agency another 72 hours until Thursday at 12:01 a.m. ET. Teams have until 9 p.m. on Wednesday to get under the salary cap of 94.5 million.
"The NFL negotiators called us tonight after our negotiations broke off to indicate that they will take our complete package to the owners for an approval vote on Tuesday," Upshaw said late Sunday night. "We have therefore agreed to extend the free agency deadline until midnight Wednesday in order to provide time for that vote to be accomplished. It was the NFL's previous rejection of our proposal earlier this evening that caused the talks to break down."
The deal that NFL owners will vote on guarantees that players will receive 59.5 percent of all football revenue over the six-year extension of the CBA, Mortensen reports. That 59.5 percent includes a "cash over cap" limit that addresses the concerns of low revenue clubs about how much teams actually spend on their payrolls in a given year.
The deal also includes the ability to give credits and make adjustments on individual teams' spending on cash over the cap, according to what Upshaw told Mortensen. It is possible that a team that exceeds the spending limit will have their salary cap adjusted the following year by the amount they spend over the cap.
That formula could be the subject of major debate during Tuesday's owner meetings in Dallas between low- and high-revenue clubs. Sources say New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft has emerged as the most vocal high-revenue franchise that is a strong dissenter to a new revenue sharing model.
Upshaw said he still thinks revenue sharing is the key, although Harold Henderson, the NFL's executive vice president for labor relations, said it was never discussed Sunday. Upshaw also said the players would do as well or better sticking with the current agreement.
"Under our previous cap agreement, we got just less than 60 percent of all of the revenues. The NFL now wants us to cut that percentage to less than 57 percent. Given the enormous revenue growth the NFL is experiencing, I am not about to give back gains which we have made in the past. It is clear to me that we will do much better under our current CBA in 2006 and particularly in 2007, the uncapped year," Upshaw said.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
By Mark Maske Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 6, 2006; 1:36 PM
NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Players Association chief Gene Upshaw have agreed on a labor settlement that will be presented to team owners for approval during a meeting scheduled to begin Tuesday afternoon in Dallas, a source familiar with the players' position said this morning.
There is disagreement about what the sides have accomplished in talks that continued this morning and early afternoon after formal negotiations broke down Sunday evening. League spokesman Greg Aiello said there is no deal between Tagliabue and Upshaw and that owners will vote on the union's proposal. But that proposal has been the subject of the talks today and the union believes the owners will vote on a proposal that Tagliabue supports.
One owner and a front-office executive said today that their teams had been told a deal between the two is completed.
A participant in the negotiations, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations were ongoing, said that representatives of the owners and the union would spend today putting the terms of the deal into writing.
The details of the proposed agreement were not immediately available, but the participant in the talks said they might be available later.
Any proposed labor settlement would have to be approved by at least 24 of the 32 NFL owners to go into effect.
The person involved in the talks said the proposed settlement is more complex than is being portrayed in reports that it would give the players 59.5 percent of an expanded pool of league revenues as compensation. The salary cap figure would fluctuate annually based not only on changes in revenues, the person said, but also on how much money the 32 NFL teams collectively spent above or below the flexible salary cap the previous season.
If the teams collectively spent less than the salary cap allotment in a season, the next season's cap would move upward in the players' favor. If the clubs collectively spent more than the salary cap allotment in a season, the cap would move lower the following season to guarantee the players less money.
In the 12 seasons that the NFL has had a salary cap system, such "cash over cap" expenditures have averaged about 4 percent annually. But the expenditures have been far less over the past five seasons, producing problems for the negotiators in this set of bargaining in assessing how much extra money teams will spend in future seasons.
Talks between the league and union broke off Sunday evening. But the night ended with Upshaw saying that the league had agreed to present the union's proposal to the owners Tuesday. The union and league agreed Sunday to postpone the opening of the league's free agent market until 12:01 a.m. Thursday to give the owners time to consider the proposal.
Talks broke off Sunday with the union apparently seeking about 59.5 percent of league revenues under a salary cap system, and the owners apparently offering about 56.5 percent. But that gap perhaps could be bridged by a mechanism to factor "cash over cap" expenditures into the salary cap system.
The owners' meeting is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Tuesday and could spill over into Wednesday.
Upshaw previously has said that any labor settlement would have to be accompanied by an agreement among the owners for the teams to increase the degree to which they share their locally generated revenues. But there are deep divisions among the owners over revenue-sharing issues.
The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
League spokesman Greg Aiello denied this morning that there is a deal between Tagliabue and Upshaw. But one owner and a front office executive said this morning that their teams had been told a deal between the two is completed.
At a meeting Tuesday in Dallas, NFL owners will vote to accept or reject a players' union proposal to extend the Collective Bargaining Agreement, ESPN's Chris Mortensen is reporting.
Why do we not keep all CBA posts in the Poll thread above/below?
Daniel Snyder has defined incompetence, failure and greed to true Washington Redskins fans for over a decade and a half. Stay away from football operations !!!
Daniel Snyder has defined incompetence, failure and greed to true Washington Redskins fans for over a decade and a half. Stay away from football operations !!!
