NFL Labor Negotiations Continue Amid Signs Of Hope

Added on Mar 08, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

NFL football fans have been holding their breaths over the state of the league labor situation since the end of the season. A ‘worst case scenario’ is a possible lockout that could delay or cancel the 2011 NFL season. The collective bargaining agreement was scheduled to expire last Thursday but the NFL and the Player’s Association agreed to a 24 hour extension as negotiations continued. Since then, they’ve agreed to keep talking for another week in hopes that a deal can be reached.

Despite reports that another extension was forthcoming, NFL Players Association President DeMaurice Smith was very vague about the status of the negotiations:

“We want to continue to thank our fans for still being patient as we work through this.”

NFL lead negotiator Jeff Pash had more to say:

“If we can make the kind of progress that you needed to make to have a further extension, that’s where we’d be looking. Hopefully, we can make some progress and keep this thing going. That’s obviously in everybody’s interest. It’s been our goal all along and we’re going to just keep at it.”

Pash suggested that progress was being made, though it was difficult to quantify in precise terms:
“You can’t measure it like that. … It’s not like a stock that you could chart on an hour-by-hour basis. There are a lot of issues, it’s complicated. People are working hard, and I think we’re just going to have to keep at it.”

League commissioner Roger Goodell was noncommital about what could be expected:

“We’re going back to work hard again.”

Even US President Barack Obama was asked about a possible role in the negotiations, though for once he opted to stay on the sidelines and let the labor/management marketplace work out their issues on their own:

“I’m a big football fan but I also think that for an industry that’s making $9 billion a year in revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way and be true to their fans, who are the ones who obviously allow for all the money that they’re making. So my expectation and hope is that they will resolve it without me intervening, because it turns out I’ve got a lot of other stuff to do.”

There have been some indications that a deal may be forthcoming, though obviously no one is willing to go on record. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft who is currently on a taxpayer funded vacation…er….’trade mission’…to Israel with the governor of Massachusetts sounded particularly hopeful: