NBA Lockout Will Dwarf the NFL Strife: NBA Lockout Will Dwarf the NFL Strife

NBA Lockout Will Dwarf the NFL Strife: NBA Lockout Will Dwarf the NFL Strife: "NBA Lockout Will Dwarf the NFL Strife : On the same day that the National Basketball Association officially embarked on a long and tortu..."

NBA Lockout Will Dwarf the NFL Strife

NBA Lockout Will Dwarf the NFL Strife: On the same day that the National Basketball Association officially embarked on a long and torturous quest to achieve a new collective bargaining agreement, the National Football League's own quest for a new CBA took a turn for the worse. As a Thursday report from ESPN NFL guru Chris Mortensen tells the tale, the sense of optimism that had gathered around the labor negotiations over the last couple weeks has taken a huge hit this week. The players and owners have been at the table for four days in a row, and a few player sources said that talks are going "backwards." Marvelous. How is this happening exactly? According to Mortensen's sources, the owners have attempted to change the formula for dividing the league's $9 billion. They had previously pitched the idea of a 48 percent share for the players with no credit off the top, but are now asking for a $400 to $500 million credit. Factor that in, and the players' share of the league's revenue decreases to 45 percent. Because their share in the previous CBA was somewhere in the neighborhood of 53 percent, it's easy to see why one player referred to the new proposal as "unacceptable." The most troubling quote, though, was from one player who said that the owners' proposal "sets us back to March 11 ... before the lockout." For the sake of football fans everywhere, I hope that particular player is exaggerating. Unfortunately, he probably isn't. After all, it has been overwhelmingly apparent since even before the blasted lockout went into effect that neither the owners nor the players were going to be in any hurry to reach a new deal. And given the way talks have broken down this week, it sounds like they are staying true to form. Right now, it would be easy to get angry at the owners for trying to alter the deal at what I guess you could call the 11th hour. They may be greedy, but they're not stupid. Their first offer of 48 percent with $1 billion off the top was met with resistance, so they low-balled it with an offer of 48 percent and nothing off the top. That was met with optimism, so they decided to push the envelope a little. It may sound silly to us, but when you're arguing over $9 billion, every penny counts. At this point, it's pretty obvious that a deal is not going to get done by July 4, a pipe-dream target date that was set by a handful of optimists in and around the league. The other date you hear most often is July 15, which would give the players and owners a whole two weeks to continue their little game of tug of war. Even if a deal does get done by July 15, both sides will be cutting it close. That would leave just a couple of weeks for teams to get their acts together with free agency and the like, and practically no time at all would pass before the first preseason game on August 7. From a glass-half-full perspective, two weeks is plenty of time to get this thing done. From a glass-half-empty perspective, it's plenty of time for the owners and players to keep moving backwards.