Extension for labor talks

Possible short-term (days-weeks) CBA extension

Sources: Extension of NFL talks a possibility - ESPN Los Angeles

One of the few positive signs to come up recently.

C'mon you bastards....stop being greedy and give us football.

I guess it is good news hopefully this means they think they can actually get it done in 24 hours.....but I find the whole thing annoying and just further delaying it is annoying. Just get a deal done already so we can get onto free agency.

Gotta love the reports that the Players send out.

You got Vonnie Holliday telling ESPN that the "two sides are still apart" and then ""I don't see how we can be that close right now unless somebody is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat; I just don't see it," he said."

And then, on the other hand, you've got Jeff Howe tweeting:
"One highly respected player rep has told me the players are "optimistic" a deal can get reached, but a second extension will be necessary".


Vonnie makes it sound all doom and gloom. Another player rep puts a much better light on it..

This is positive news, given how grim the picture was this morning when de-certification and a lock-out seemed almost inevitable. Maybe an agreement will be in place tomorrow!!

fxkane said:

This is positive news, given how grim the picture was this morning when de-certification and a lock-out seemed almost inevitable. Maybe an agreement will be in place tomorrow!!

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I think the most likely senario is that there's another extension put in place but for longer than 24 hours. At least they're talking. Decertification or lockout is what we need to avoid.

DaBruinz said:

Gotta love the reports that the Players send out.

You got Vonnie Holliday telling ESPN that the "two sides are still apart" and then ""I don't see how we can be that close right now unless somebody is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat; I just don't see it," he said."

And then, on the other hand, you've got Jeff Howe tweeting:
"One highly respected player rep has told me the players are "optimistic" a deal can get reached, but a second extension will be necessary".


Vonnie makes it sound all doom and gloom. Another player rep puts a much better light on it..

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I bet Vonnie is the one who is off the reservation and is just speaking the truth. In any negotiation like this, you are told to give optimistic apprisals to the media, so that when the negotiation falls apart, you seem like the optimistic and compromising party, while the party across from you is a stone-walling pessimistic curmudgeon.

Optimism is always the best negotiation attitude even if you refuse to budge an inch.

Instead of taking multiple short extensions, they should set a new serious, possible, and unmovable deadline. This will further imply the immediacy that this situation requires without giving the media and fans an unnecessary roller-coaster ride.

andrewgarrr said:

Instead of taking multiple short extensions, they should set a new serious, possible, and unmovable deadline. This will further imply the immediacy that this situation requires without giving the media and fans an unnecessary roller-coaster ride.

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A 24 hour extension is probably an indication that what's really being considered is a longer extension. You don't take a 24 hour extension to do a deal. It won't get done in 24 hours.

You take a 24 hour extension, because something new is on the table, and one side says, "let's take a look at this and decide whether this constitutes the kind of movement we need to keep negotiating."

As a fan, do you really wan an "unmovable" deadline? What I want as a fan is a deal. I'll sacrifice uncertainty for a better chance at a deal. If the uncertainty is too much for a person, get your doctor to give you xanax. This extension is good news. Hopefully, tomorrow, we'll hear there's a longer extension, because that would be a sign that whatever movement happened today is worth talking about.

Goodell on the front page at ESPN looks like he's gained a lot of weight. In fact, he looks like the principal in Ferris Bueller now!

PatsFaninAZ said:

A 24 hour extension is probably an indication that what's really being considered is a longer extension. You don't take a 24 hour extension to do a deal. It won't get done in 24 hours.

You take a 24 hour extension, because something new is on the table, and one side says, "let's take a look at this and decide whether this constitutes the kind of movement we need to keep negotiating."

As a fan, do you really wan an "unmovable" deadline? What I want as a fan is a deal. I'll sacrifice uncertainty for a better chance at a deal. If the uncertainty is too much for a person, get your doctor to give you xanax. This extension is good news. Hopefully, tomorrow, we'll hear there's a longer extension, because that would be a sign that whatever movement happened today is worth talking about.

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I know a deal probably won't get done in 24 hours. But I don't see the point in announcing a 24 hour extension just to have a longer extension the next day. Why not just come out with the longer extension?

Yes, I really do want an unmovable deadline. I think a hard deadline puts more pressure on both sides to get a deal done quicker. I also said that this hard deadline should be within reason and with sufficient time.

Good points nonetheless.

A crumb's worth of breaking news, from PFT:

Chris Mortensen of ESPN reports that Cohen has persuaded the union to agree to a 7-to-10-day extension. Now, the league needs to consent to a pushing of the deadline back by a week or more.

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Mediator persuades union to agree to longer extension | ProFootballTalk

andrewgarrr said:

Yes, I really do want an unmovable deadline. I think a hard deadline puts more pressure on both sides to get a deal done quicker.

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Probably true. I think for all intents and purposes the expiration of the CBA is pretty close to an unmovable deadline. I think we probably came about 2 hours today from decertification and lawsuit, which I think puts games in serious jeopardy and possibly the entire season. I hope that whatever caused the extension today will compel the parties to do a longer extension tomorrow. If it does, I think that extension will likely be it -- either they'll get it done (or close enough) or they won't. I don't think they are going to agree to a 2-week extension tomorrow and then 2 weeks from now agree to another extension, unless they are close to agreement and just need the time to document everything. So, I think this is close to end game, one way or the other.

upstater1 said:

I bet Vonnie is the one who is off the reservation and is just speaking the truth. In any negotiation like this, you are told to give optimistic apprisals to the media, so that when the negotiation falls apart, you seem like the optimistic and compromising party, while the party across from you is a stone-walling pessimistic curmudgeon.

Optimism is always the best negotiation attitude even if you refuse to budge an inch.

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It's also not uncommon within an organization to get a different opinion on how things are going depending on who you ask. At my company for example, depending on who you ask, we're either about to make a big splash and we're the future of our industry, or we'd be lucky to stay afloat by the end of the month. Chances are the truth is in the middle, but there's always vocal members at each extreme.

I wonder how this plays into it?

Tight leash on Goodell strangles NFL owners - NFL - Yahoo! Sports

Two somewhat opposing views...

1. Would you as an owner trust Goodell's unsupervised judgement with your franchise's value? I would not.

2. It's a negotiating tactic to have your guy at the table have to go back to get an OK on some issues. Buys time to react to new developments.

I think it's understandable the owners are still a bit leery of Goddell -- he's only been through this war once with them.

I would think, though, between Goddell and Pash there's more authority in the room than this article suggests. Pash has been through the wars, working with Tagliabue before he was even in the NFL, and then as the NFL's chief outside lawyer after that. He's pretty well known to the owners.

I said it in my other thread about decertification possibly backfiring on the union. I believe the owners want the union to decertify. I believe that the owners are in the best position they've ever been in to win litigation against the players. Particularly when the one public set of books around shows that the Packers had less than a 10% profit margin. The owners don't really have a whole helluva lot more to give.

Just something to think about.
There are approximately 1500 players in the union. Their split is currently 4.76 billion dollars. At the Salary Cap floor (85%?) I believe that is a little over 4 billion. 4 Billion divided by 1500 is 2.66 million dollars, on average.

I don't think that the Union lawyers are going to be able to find a lot of sympathetic people to listen to how "hard" the players have it when they are averaging 2.66 million dollars in this time of recession. And I don't believe that there are going to be a lot of people who are sympathetic to the players when it comes to health care and pensions. Especially when the 2.66 million average gets taken into consideration.

DaBruinz said:

I said it in my other thread about decertification possibly backfiring on the union. I believe the owners want the union to decertify. I believe that the owners are in the best position they've ever been in to win litigation against the players. Particularly when the one public set of books around shows that the Packers had less than a 10% profit margin. The owners don't really have a whole helluva lot more to give.

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I understand that you feel pretty strongly that the players are the problem here, and you're pretty vocal about that. I wouldn't try to bounce you off that opinion, and you're entitled to it. These are fairly contentious subjects, and people feel strongly about them, and that's all reasonable.

But I do think you're seriously mistaken both about the league wanting decertification and about the NFL's ability to win a lawsuit. You seem to think a lawsuit would turn on how profitable or not profitable the teams are for the owners. That has nothing to do with it. A lawsuit would not be about what is fair for either side. It would about about whether the NFL, as currently constructed, violates antitrust laws.

It does. The NFL winning an antitrust lawsuit, if it came to it, would be an upset the equivalent of a high school team beating the Packers. The only real arguments the NFL has are technical statutory arguments. One of the most significant -- and one they apparently thought could save things -- was rejected by the Supreme Court 9-0 last year in the American Needle case. (The NFL argued that, essentially, it was a unitary organizaion with 32 divisions, so the teams weren't really "combining" within the means of the antitrust law. The court said, basically, "no freaking way.")

I think what you're really saying is that in the court of public opinion the players will not do well if this thing drags out. Maybe. Maybe not. It's very different, though, from predictions about the lawsuit, which the NFL can't win.