Gumby said:
Personally, I dont think this latest news is any great portender of resolution on Tuesday. I think we just kicked the can down the road another 3 days in the negotiation strategies.
Just check out the 2 different takes on what is going on...........
Do you catch the difference? Gene Upshaw says they are going to vote on approval whereas the NFL spokesman says they are just going to consider the proposal.
Two completely different meanings and I dont expect the NFL with its disparate blocks of interests will be able to agree to this deal without making some kind of counter-offer.
Lenny P has a really good piece up now on just what apparently happened last night (though not why) and how a deal that was already rejected suddenly ended up being put to a vote. And Lenny predicts there could be consequences for Tagliabue for possibly snatching PR defeat from the jaws of just a plain old defeat when HE decided to do a 180 and back the already rejected union proposal at least to the extent he will now try to sell it to ownership on Tuesday.
Lenny questions whether he has the votes or can somehow cobble 24 votes together to basically pull Upshaw's tail out of the fire. Tags is not a concensus builder. Sounds like perhaps he and Gene have been in bed for way too long and Tags has decided if it's all going in the crapper better the owners than the Commissioner or Union leader shoulder the blame. Nice way to treat guys who have employed you for the last 17 years.
"By agreeing to present the union's proposal to the 32-owner membership, commissioner Paul Tagliabue has taken NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw off the hook with his increasingly restless and angst-ridden player constituency. And, far less important but still somewhat significant, with whatever fans are casually interested in the tedious and drawn-out labor discussions.
In any battle pitting millionaires and billionaires, the public, comprised mostly of thousandaires, typically empathizes with no one, because it can relate to neither combatant. But by taking the union's proposal to the owners, a blueprint not terribly dissimilar to the one unanimously rejected by owners Thursday in a 57-minute meeting, Tagliabue and the NFL have unwittingly declared Upshaw and the NFLPA the winners in the public relations battle.
And given the ham-handed history of the union and its leader, viewed in the past as having historically caved in labor negotiations, that is no small feat.
Under the current circumstances, no one is going to remember that Upshaw, who said numerous times that he couldn't settle for a deal that didn't include 60 percent of the total league revenues directed to players, is shy of that benchmark. Or that Upshaw, who claimed he would delay the start of free agency "under no circumstances" stopped the clock on two occasions. Nope, the NFLPA boss suddenly looks pretty good, even to the players and agents who have questioned his leadership over the past week.
Because the bottom line is this: Tagliabue has put the onus on the owners. If the deal falls apart now, it will be the owners -- who are still locked in an intramural battle over revenue sharing among themselves that could turn contentious Tuesday -- who bear the brunt of public criticism."
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=pasquarelli_len&id=2356568
