With the NFL and the players’ union not meeting three days before the first uncapped year since 1993 commences, the league’s owners are meeting.
And the league is claiming that the 32 billionaires and multi-multi-multi-millionaires are on the same page like never before.
NFL Executive V.P. of Communications and Public Affairs Joe Browne declared on his Twitter page after today’s 90-minute labor update that he has “never seen the owners so united in all my [years] with the NFL.”
It’s bad news for the NFLPA -- and it could be bad news for the rest of us. Whatever the plan may be, the owners plan to implement it. If, as the union believes, that plan entails a lockout, then a lockout could be coming.
Of course, the goal could be to get enough of the players to make enough calls to the NFLPA offices in the hopes of making the union go wobbly in the knees and do a deal. Whether it works or not remains to be seen.
And even if a deal isn’t done by Friday, the NFLPA annual meeting later this month in Hawaii could be extremely interesting. Two years ago, former Executive Director Gene Upshaw believed that Troy Vincent was trying to launch a coup. Though such concerns might have been unreasonable in 2008, we wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that someone plans to make a push for new leadership in 2010.