Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

NFLPA cautions that decertification is not a lock

DeMaurice Smith, Scott Fujita

Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita, left, and NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, walk to an NFL/NFLPA mediation session at Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service headquarters in Washington, on Monday, Feb. 21, 2011. After months of infrequent, and sometimes contentious bargaining, the league and union have met every day since Friday, to come to terms over a series of issues, not least of which is how to divide about $9 billion in annual revenues. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

AP

Like every bit of labor news that comes along, Saturday’s news that the NFLPA is planning to decertify may not be as cut and dried as it initially appears.

NFL Network’s Albert Breer quotes a NFLPA source that it’s “not a rock-solid guarantee” that decertification will happen. That doesn’t really conflict with ESPN’s initial report that said the union “plans” to decertify.

Plans can change.

As one source told Bob Glauber of Newsday, “A lot of things can happen over the next 2-3 days.”

Breer points out one the motivation for the timing of the move. Judge David Doty’s jurisdiction over the case ends on March 3. Breer says that the union would have to wait six months to decertify if they don’t before March 4.