In a dramatic change of heart late Sunday night, the NFL and its players union delayed the start of free agency until Thursday. The league also agreed to take the union's proposal for an extension of the collective bargaining agreement to a vote of the full ownership group in a meeting Tuesday.
The turnaround took place hours after talks broke off Sunday night, and only about an hour before teams had to be under the salary cap at midnight, with free agency to begin at 12:01am Monday. It means there is one last hope that the league and the union can finally reach agreement on a deal that would assure labor peace.
The NFL players association executive director, Gene Upshaw, said he was having dinner with some colleagues Sunday night. When he left the restaurant, he received a cell phone message from members of the owners' bargaining group, asking to talk. They wanted to push back free agency. Upshaw agreed to that on one condition: That the full group of 32 owners get to vote on the union's proposal -- which seeks 59.5 percent of total football revenue for players -- at a meeting of owners in Dallas on Tuesday.
"It's absolutely crazy," Upshaw said in a telephone interview late Sunday night. "We're like the gang that can't shoot straight. I would never have agreed to move the deadline unless they acceded to my financial conditions. I want to go to bed, too. But once they agreed to take our proposal to the owners, I had no choice."
Whether 24 of the 32 owners -- the required majority -- will ratify the union's proposal remains to be seen. Last Thursday, owners unanimously rejected a union proposal, precipitating the first postponement of free agency.
Only hours before, it appeared as if there was no hope for talks to resume, and even less chance for the sides to reach a deal that would extend the agreement. If no agreement is reached in the next year, the 2006 season will be the final one played with a salary cap, and 2007 will be an uncapped year.
There was hope early Sunday that the sides would reach agreement on a deal that had eluded them for more than a year. After talks broke off Saturday night, they resumed on Sunday morning after a late Saturday night flurry of e-mail messages.
Just a half-hour before the 6pm Sunday deadline for players to be waived, the league announced that the deadline had been pushed back to 10pm, spurring speculation that a deal was within reach. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had earlier told owners to expect a meeting today, when they could ratify a new deal. But less than two hours after the waiver deadline was extended, the talks ended.
"Now it's over," Upshaw said early Sunday evening. "We go to the uncapped year. The last thing I said was, "The longer we meet, the further apart we get. It's a huge problem. We just can't keep doing this."
When Upshaw was asked if he expected negotiations to resume later in the off-season, he replied, "There's nothing to talk about."
Upshaw has said that players want to go to an uncapped year because they expect it to be a financial windfall. He was expected to recommend to player representatives next week that they begin the process of decertifying the union, which could prevent the owners from locking out the players and could lead to a court battle with the league after the 2007 season.
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