Tentative Deal Reached on Labor Deal

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Players Association chief Gene Upshaw have reached a tentative agreement on a labor settlement that will be presented to the sport's team owners for approval during a meeting scheduled to begin Tuesday afternoon in Dallas, a source familiar with the proceedings said this morning.

Negotiators for the two sides will resume talks today to put the details of the agreement between Tagliabue and Upshaw into writing, the source said.

The deal would have to be approved by at least 24 of the 32 NFL teams to go into effect. Details of the proposed settlement were not immediately available.

On Sunday morning, the deal appeared to be on the verge of getting done when Upshaw indicated that he thought the owners and the union were close. Negotiations resumed just after 11 a.m. in New York, and union officials still thought around noon that an agreement with the owners was within reach. But they said that the owners backtracked in their proposals from there -- while the league said it offered to increase player compensation to unprecedented levels -- and negotiations broke off around 6:30 p.m.

Upshaw and other union representatives headed to dinner, saying they had no plans for the deliberations to resume before the scheduled opening of the league's free agent market at midnight. Clearly, however, something was up. The two sides had agreed around 5 p.m. to postpone a 6 p.m. deadline until 10 for teams to release players to get under the $94.5 million-per-team salary cap. After the negotiations broke up, the deadline was pushed back again until 11:30. Why push back the deadline if negotiations were dead? Obviously, they weren't.

The owners and Tagliabue conducted a conference call and, according to Upshaw, the union's leaders received a phone call saying the league would put the players' latest proposal before the owners for a ratification vote during a meeting in Dallas scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Tuesday. At that point, Upshaw said, the league and union agreed to a second three-day postponement of the opening of free agency, now scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Teams now have until Wednesday night to be under the salary cap; if they must release players to do so, those moves must be completed by 9 p.m. Wednesday.

This morning's development means the owners will now vote on an approved deal instead of a proposal.

Hey, if this old, please delete.

I don't think it's old. It's fine. I just can't take any more of these delays though. The talks are dead, we have an agreement, the talks are dead, we need more time, etc. I wonder why people hate lawyers?

This is not old but more a clarification of the situation. The "approved" stamp hadn't been eluded to before Maske's column. Upshaw has a good relationship with the Post adn Maske so I am guessing this is the first anyone has heard of that. That is promising that the deal is "approved" by the management council. Gives it a better shot of getting ratified by the owners in gemeral. All they need is 24 votes and I would guess based on previous reports they are somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 votes strong with 10 being opposed based on revenue sharing issues. It was reported that Snyder was willing to bend a little to get a deal done so maybe that's 23 and I would bet at least one other guy will blink too. Cross fingers that this gets done.

What is the satus of this thread and is there a link? Thanks.

Link please.

Found it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/06/AR2006030600660.html

Mort was saying on ESPNNews the owners will vote for it at their meeting on Tuesday, which may extend into Wednesday. I think he said one sticking point is going to be the whole "cash over cap" thing with the have and have-not owners battling each other over it.

It's promising that they came to an agreement, but we still need the owners to approve. That gets hairy with revenue sharing issues, so it remains to be seen how this will turn out. I'm guessing we'll know tomorrow after the owners' meeting.

i just hope they agree on something so it will be over with.
keeping my fingers crossed....

hoping for the best for both sides......