Spartan Times

League strike still possible

By Mathew Steele, Reporter

For those of you who don’t know, the NFL is on the verge of a major labor strike for the 2011- 2012 seasons. With the collective bargain agreement coming to an end soon, it is beginning to look more and more like the National Football League will start a labor strike as of the 2011 football season.

The current collective bargaining agreement was set to expire last week, but two extensions have been made to push the deadline to 11:59 p.m. on Friday, March 11, 2011. The agreement is the deal that the NFL team owners and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) have established so that both sides can be happy with the way the League is handled. It ranges from health insurance and care, to wages, to the way the revenue is distributed.

One NFLPA executive committee member, Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita, said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press and NFL Network Tuesday that what the NFL has turned over to the union so far “hasn’t been sufficient.”

But Patriots owner Robert Craft says that a deal is “possible.”

“We are doing everything we can to get a deal consummated; I personally believe it is possible…,” Craft recently said in an interview with Comcast Sports New England.

The main problem is what amount of the $9 billion the owners and NFLPA should each get. The owners already get $1 billion for stadium maintenance and improvement. They went into negotiations requesting another billion be added to that amount before any of the revenue be divided among players.

The players’ main concern is that the NFL owners have not opened their books of revenue to the players. The owners say that the players have enough information whereas the union says it does not have enough.

“We’re being asked to give back almost a billion dollars, so it’s important for us to adequately analyze and interpret the little bit of information that’s been provided,” said Fujita, who attended negotiations last month but not this week. “And ultimately, if they’re unwilling to provide full audited statements, then we need to know what other information we need to make a sound decision.”

NFLPA Executive Director for Internal Affairs George Atallah was asked if full transparency was a potential deal breaker, to which Atallah replied: “In the face of an almost billion-dollar ask? Yes.”

For now, as it seems with everything in sports, the only thing we can do is wait. With two more federally mediated sessions scheduled for this week, a new deal to be made looks promising, but if it isn’t, expect a labor lockout from the NFL players for a minimum of six months.

Information from the Associated Daily Press and espn.go.com/NFL contributed to this report.

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