8th Circuit Court Grants Stay, Lockout Continues

[SmootSmack]

They played under the 2006 CBA with the knowledge, since 2008, that if no new agreement was reached prior to this March the CBA they had agreed to would be void since the owners chose to opt out.

And the owners have rejected proposals from the players since last spring

N.F.L. Owners Reject Players’ Bid to Extend Current Agreement - NYTimes.com

NFLPA Made Proposals To NFL On How To Split Revenues - SportsBusiness Daily | SportsBusiness Journal

NFLPA's Proven Performance Plan Would Shorten Rookie Contracts, Distribute Savings - SBNation.com

And as far as the owners showing up at all meetings

Business matter became personal for union - NFL - Yahoo! Sports

Yet from the players’ perspective, control is very much at the heart of this fight, and it has been since the owners unanimously voted to opt out of the CBA in 2008, a mere two years after they’d agreed to an extension.

From that point on, owners embarked upon a not-so-subtle strategy to “take back our league,” as enunciated by the Carolina Panthers’ Jerry Richardson to his peers last March. They were fully prepared to lock out the players until a decision by U.S. District Court Judge David Doty imperiled the uninterrupted television payments on which they’d been counting derailed their plans.

That was last Tuesday, two days before the CBA was set to expire. And while Doty’s ruling motivated the owners to try to cut a deal – and the union twice agreed to short-term extensions in an effort to come to terms – Smith and his fellow negotiators continued to chafe over what they believed was a pattern of disrespect from the other side.

First, there was Richardson’s condescending treatment of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning(notes), former NFL player Sean Morey(notes) and other union negotiators during a Feb. 5 bargaining session. Shortly thereafter, owners abruptly canceled a planned five-hour bargaining session, apparently because they were angry over the union’s characterization of a hypothetical economic model.

Even after federal mediator George Cohen began presiding over the sessions, union negotiators thought they were being shined on by the league, as most or all of the owners were absent from the bulk of the meetings. Finally, last Wednesday – the day after Doty’s decision – 10 executives from the league’s labor management committee showed up for the talks at the FMCS building. They left to join the rest of the league’s owners at a meeting 25 miles away in Chantilly, Va., and Smith and other union negotiators were under the impression that those owners would return for the next round of discussions.

Instead, the union leaders learned that those owners, including the Dallas Cowboys’ Jerry Jones and the New England Patriots’ Robert Kraft, had flown home on private planes, leaving only two members of the league’s labor committee (New York Giants owner John Mara and Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy) to attend Thursday’s crucial session.

Even after negotiating a pair of extensions, the league’s negotiating team showed up this past Monday without displaying a sense of urgency. On Thursday afternoon – with Friday’s deadline looming – Smith and other union negotiators left the FMCS building and walked back to NFLPA headquarters. They were told by Cohen to expect a call before 4:30 p.m., at which point they’d be summoned to return for another session of talks.

The union officials waited as 4:30 arrived, then 5, but the call never came. Finally, Atallah learned via a reporter’s post on Twitter that the owners who’d been in attendance were on a conference call with the rest of the league’s owners.

Said Atallah: “I turned to De and said, ‘Oh, that’s funny – we were supposed to be over there right now. “He said, ‘Are you serious?’ At 6:15 we called the mediator’s office, and he told us, ‘Well, they’re packing up to go, so we’re not doing anything tonight.’ And then we heard they all went to dinner.”