WEEI has Holley and Curran's interview yesterday with MarK Ganis up in it's audio vault.
Mark Ganis on the NFL lockout and when we can expect it to end
I think if both sides digest this ruling over the weekend a deal is doable next week. But I think in order for that to happen the players have to grasp what this ruling represents. Sure the anti trust suit can continue, but so can the lockout in the interim. The owners know they made a tactical error last time out in allowing the games to go on while the players sued them. They were determined not to do that this time and this decision has essentially said they don't have to. Nobody wants to lose games, let alone regular season games because of the potential long term backlash as well as short term financial hit. But we all know on some level that unity rhetoric aside the players on the whole cannot withstand the short term financial hit of a lost season.
All along we've heard that the key issue is the revenue split. That seemed to be close to settled weeks ago when they essentially agreed to the flat all revenue split of 48/52 and a cash spending floor exceeding the old cap spending floor. It's only since then that anscillary issues have become increasingly difficult to negotiate. There is a reason for that. Someone doesn't want that deal done. And someone else may not want any deal done. Aside from round one rookies, the players will be better off with this deal in the long term than they would have been with the old deal. They will make more money in the short and long term (courtesy of the rookie cap alone). There will be improved retirement and long term health care benefits and eligibility rules and there will be an increased emphasis on existing work rules to mitigate injury risk (everything from # of OTA's to padded practices to better drug testing to weed out PED users who increased the level of risk to themselves long term and others short term and a better process to insure swift justice).
The clear cut losers in this deal will be the top tier agents who lose their perception driven slam dunk annual trip to the bank being handed to them on a platter and the lawyers who only make money when ad nauseum trips to court pad their billable hours.
For all his faults Goodell got his troops in order as the scenario unfolded. He's appeased the haves with the basic deal and the have nots with assurances of some continued supplemental revenue sharing formula in a league that already leads the pack by a mile in sharing 75% of pooled revenue equally.
This guy is on the mark. It's time for Tom and Peyton and Drew to rally their fellow plaintiffs and peers to cut the BS red herring stalling and get a fair deal done and get back to work before a small agenda driven group cooks their golden egg laying goose.
I hope Mr. Kraft is back at the table Monday or Tuesday. Otherwise I'll take that as a sign that like on Friday when he was absent he sensed the scripted stall would render his presence a waste of time because the other side still isn't quite ready to do a deal.
