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ROSEMONT, Ill. — The NFL doesn’t have labor peace or the guarantee of a full 2011 season just yet, but they are on the horizon.
The league’s owners held a surprisingly brisk, five-hour meeting yesterday to discuss the framework of a new collective bargaining agreement, then emerged mostly upbeat that a deal could get done within the month — in enough time to save the entire season.
“We still have a lot of work to do, but it was a good day,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said as the owners departed much earlier than expected.
It is now the locked-out players’ turn to get their membership in line, so a deal can be reached by the mid-July target range. The players’ leadership is supposed to meet today in Boston to bring their side up to speed in advance of more face-to-face negotiations there between the two sides this week.
Yesterday’s meeting was expected to be a huge test of Goodell’s leadership because several small-market clubs had balked at the latest league proposal, specifically that every team would be required to spend at least 90 percent of the salary cap each year on player payroll.
But if there were any significant internal opposition — much less enough to prevent Goodell from getting the necessary 24 of 32 votes to approve a new deal — it was nowhere to be found in the hallways of the meeting site.
“This is the season to get a deal,” an admittedly upbeat Colts owner Jim Irsay said. “Why get a deal Oct. 1 that you could have had July 7?”
If the sides do reach a deal by mid-July, league sources said the free-agency period would start soon afterward — most likely within a couple of days of a handshake deal — and last roughly two weeks before training camps started.
The onus now is on NFL Players Association chief DeMaurice Smith to sell the owners’ proposal to his side. That could be tricky, if only because the latest offer would result in the players getting 48 percent of total revenue instead of the roughly 53 percent they received under the previous agreement.
The owners set aside $1 billion for themselves from total revenue each year under the previous CBA, but that skim would cease under the new deal.
What will likely make the percentage cut an easier sell for Smith is the league projecting total revenue to double (to $18 billion from the current $9 billion) by 2016. Experts say that is a highly ambitious goal, but not out of the question in light of the sport’s relentlessly skyrocketing popularity.
The owners appear to be in a more conciliatory mood on other aspects, too, with league sources confirming their latest proposal would reinstate unrestricted free agency for players not under contract with at least four years of service time, set aside talk of an 18-game season and increase health benefits to retired players.
Both sides also have shown a desire to take some of the bloat out of rookie contracts, although specific details on how to do that have not yet leaked out of the secretive negotiations.
Above all, the owners and players appear to hear the fans grumbling and the clock ticking.
“There isn’t [a drop-dead date to save the entire season], but obviously time is moving quickly,” Goodell said. “We’re fast approaching the training-camp period, and I think there’s an urgency on the part of everybody to get this done.”
