Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Daily reports that the NFL and the players union met for three hours Tuesday at NFLPA headquarters in Washington, the second meeting of the CBA negotiation process.
Per Mullen, both sides called the session a “good” one.
Still, the union plans to turn the lightly screws on the league as of tomorrow, when a delegation led by NFLPA Executive Director De Smith will meet with federal lawmakers to remind them of the “gifts” that Congress has bestowed upon the NFL.
And with no one prepared to shed tears for players who, by the union’s own admission, earn in the top one percentile of all Americans, Smith plans to shift the focus to the more modestly compensated folks who’ll lose paychecks if football games aren’t played in 2011.
“I’m not sure in an economic downturn whether a business that
generated $8 billion in revenue last year should be contemplating” a lockout, Smith told the Associated Press.
NFL V.P. Joe Browne believes that such rhetoric is premature.
“We’re hopeful that matters can be resolved,” Browne told the AP. “It’s a
little premature to talk about putting stadium workers out of work in
2011.”
It’s also a little immature, in our view, for the union to consider an attack on the same federally-provided “gifts” that have helped the league become what is it, such as the antitrust exemption. The tactic, if it ever becomes anything more than mere saber rattling, is the equivalent of holding a knife to the throat of the goose that lays the golden eggs that line the players’ collective nest.