NFL owners opt out of labor agreement
ATLANTA (AP) - May 20, 2008 The league, however, emphasized that it will keep negotiating
with the NFL Players Association and said games will be played
"without threat of interruption for at least the next three
seasons."
The owners had until Nov. 8 to opt out of the agreement, a
provision written into the deal when it was signed in March 2006.
They decided to act early, partly because they didn't want to do so
while the 2008 season had begun.
Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFLPA, said on Sirius NFL
Radio he learned of the owners' decision by e-mail from
commissioner Roger Goodell.
"My response to his e-mail was very simple: 'What a
surprise,"' Upshaw said sarcastically.
Upshaw has been predicting this the last few months and last
weekend referred to the owners as "greedy."
The last time an agreement was made, the deal was done a year
before the capless year. Upshaw said during a conference call the
realistic deadline is 2010 because the cap for 2007 already has
been set at $123 million. The original contract, signed in 1993,
specified that the final year of the deal be without a cap.
"As they say during the draft, we're on the clock," Upshaw
said. "That's basically what it means."
The owners noted in their statement that they are paying $4.5
billion to players this year, just under 60 percent of their total
revenues as specified in the 2006 agreement.
They acknowledge that before the 1996 agreement the pendulum had
swung toward them. Now, they contend, the new deal combined with a
decline in the economy has made the agreement more favorable to
players.
Negotiations already have started and will continue with no
immediate threat to the order of business. In fact, the deal,
originally scheduled to end in 2013, had the opt-out built in.
"When we negotiated this deal we had two stop points that you
could decide to terminate, either side," Upshaw said. "Obviously,
the owners have decided to take this termination early. We expected
it. But it means that there is football through 2010, not through
2012."