Those of you who regularly read this column know that I have been cautioning for months that it was too early to start to fret about the NFL negotiations with its Players Association. It is no longer too early. Let the "fretting" begin.
This week the collective bargaining agreement between the parties expires, and the parties seem to agree that this should be treated as a deadline. Of course, collective bargaining agreements expire all the time in the private and public sector while negotiations continue and nothing much changes. Parties then may reach an agreement and make the terms retroactive to the expiration of the prior agreement.
There is no reason why the NFL and the NFLPA cannot agree to extend their entire agreement for a day, a week or a month. Last time I checked, no games are scheduled for a while. (Didn't we just enjoy a great Super Bowl?) The one kicker in the NFL-NFLPA agreement requires the parties to extend the time period within which the union can declare itself "decertified." That decision, under the current agreement, must be announced before the agreement expires or the union must wait for six months. I would assume that if the whole agreement is extended, this requirement would also be extended.
The decertification threat, as I have discussed before, is the union's doomsday bomb. Under federal case law, the mere existence of the union gives the NFL an exemption from the antitrust laws. (This puts any union in a terrible position, but I will leave my critique of this Supreme Court opinion for another time.) To put pressure on the 32 owners to reach a favorable accommodation, the union must, in effect, threaten to "commit suicide." The owners may very well call the union's bluff, and the whole matter will be hammered out over the next few years in court or before the National Labor Relations Board. This is just the kind of uncertainty the NFL (and the NFLPA) cannot afford. It will cost the sport dearly.
And so we come down to the two-minute warning. I was cheered by the mutual appointment of George Cohen as the mediator last week. Cohen is as good as they come, with lots of "street cred." He knows labor law and the sports business. He immediately told both sides to "shut up," and they listened. We haven't heard a peep about the negotiations in a week. Cohen candidly admitted that even after a week of negotiations the parties have significant differences. I wouldn't have expected to hear that they were drinking tea in that room in Washington.
We are getting close to the time when there will be a "cost of disagreement," when the failure to make an earnest effort to bridge the gap will result in significant damage to the business. There is no way to assess who is right and who is wrong in this dispute. Like most collective negotiations, the central matter in controversy is money -- who gets what. It is not legitimate to blame the owners for wanting a greater share and to scold the players for wanting to keep what they have won in the past.
Some of the issues that apparently divide the parties should not be too difficult to resolve. The rookie salary scale would seem to be a plan that both the Union and the NFL would find acceptable. The union, by definition, consists of veteran players who get cut short every time an untested rookie takes a large chunk out of a team's salary cap. The move to 18 games seems to me to be equally acceptable as long as the owners do something significant to address the players' legitimate concerns about health and safety. We are left then with money. There are lots of ways to find some point of agreement along the continuum.
It is almost time to see how talented these negotiators are at saving their business. I know some of these folks, and they are first rate. They need not score a touchdown to win. A measly field goal will do. No fumbles, however. We are counting on you.