The NFL's labor negotiations broke off on Tuesday, leaving teams with just the slimmest hope that a deal to extend the collective bargaining agreement would be reached in time to avoid chaos when free agency begins tomorrow.
No further talks are scheduled, the NFL said in a statement, and the league will not postpone free agency.
"We're deadlocked," Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the players association, told AP on Tuesday. "There's nowhere to go."
PHOTO: AP
lower cap
Barring a last-minute deal, that's bad news for teams, which will now have to get under a salary cap estimated to be about US$95 million. With a deal, the cap was expected to be about US$105 million.
If no agreement is reached, a deluge of players will be cut Thursday, and this will be the last season played with a salary cap, setting up a new set of rules for how contracts must be structured.
"I think 30 to 50 percent of teams won't participate in free agency, because they won't be able to," said Jim Steiner, the agent for Shaun Alexander, who is expected to be one of the biggest free agents. "It's going to be tougher for the teams, tougher for the players, tougher for the agents."
see you in court
The current deal expires after the 2007 season, and Upshaw had said that if there was no new deal, he would talk to a meeting of union representatives next week about beginning the process of decertifying the union. That could ultimately lead to a courtroom battle.
At the beginning of the day, there was optimism that a deal was within reach after three days of talks between Upshaw and Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. When no deal materialized, Tagliabue called a special league meeting for Thursday in New York to explain "how the NFLPA is overreaching," the league's statement said.
NFL owners and the players union disagree on the percentage of revenue that goes to players. The union is seeking 60 percent of total football revenue, a category that covers nearly everything a team earns. The league's offer is thought to be just above 56 percent.
owner versus owner
Richard Berthelsen, the union's general counsel, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that the stumbling block is that owners can't agree among themselves on revenue sharing. Owners are divided between high-revenue teams that want to keep more of the money they generate, and lower-revenue teams that want the money to be shared by all teams.
"We feel our position is very fair, considering the league's revenues," Berthelsen said. "It's just that some clubs do so much better than others. For those at the other end to be able to afford the deal, they need help."
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