NFL: Labor pains getting closer together
If my fairly extensive experience covering the baseball labor wars of the past three decades allow me any instinct about the NFL dispute at all, let me give you football fans a piece of advice. The guys and gals from ESPN, Fox Sports, NFL.com and all the other print, television and internet reporters are working very hard to give you a feel for what's going on at the super-secret negotiating site outside Washington, D.C., but they are filtering countless small fragments of information that may or may not fit together to give a true sense of where the negotiations stand.
One day, you're hearing that there appears to be some kind of progress. The next, you're reading -- as in the story you can jump to right here -- that the talks "almost blew up."
Here's what everybody knows. The soft deadline for starting the season on time is about Aug. 10, so it seems unlikely that either side is going to make any dramatic concessions on June 15. Maybe the NFL players union and the owners are more reasonable than the people who blew up the 1994 baseball postseason (I certainly hope so), but even the unnamed sources who are expressing optimism are saying that they wouldn't expect an agreement for another month.
In the meantime, I'll bet you my Orioles playoff tickets that there will be at least a couple of occasions where news outlets jump the gun with a piece of information that seems to indicate an agreement is at hand, so don't believe everything you read.
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Comments
Here's the deal. Sports writers don't get paid to report the facts, they get paid to write. If they happen to get the facts right then great, but the story will be printed, facts or no facts.
I would add that August 10th is pushing the envelope though. Signing draft picks and free agents in 30 days would definitely make the first few games interesting, but not in a good way.
I'm thinking they have until July 15th to take care of business, after that the season will become a little chaotic. If a deal is done you know they will attempt to play 16 games according to the schedule whether teams are ready or not.
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Pete's replly: Actually, Bubba, a lot of sportswriters get paid to report the facts. Just not me. I'm a columnist and a blogger, so I'm paid to give my take on stuff.
Posted by: EdgarAllanPoe | June 15, 2011 10:22 PM
Pete, I've said all along that the deal will get done so the player will have only two weeks of camp before exhibition games start. They do it almost every time we get in contract negotiations.
At the end of the day they all know what the core issue is and how much of it the other is willing to give up, so the negotiation is really over, it's the postering that will remain until the window for training camp is almost gone.
Posted by: TGC3RD | June 16, 2011 9:15 AM