Sorry, fans: Labor trouble far from over

Even with the NFL and the NFL Players Association having agreed to another week's worth of negotiations Friday, it would be a mistake for fans to be lulled into a false sense of security about the status of the 2011 season.

Sure, it's a good sign that talks continue. And if things go well this week, there might be reason to celebrate a new collective-bargaining agreement that ensures labor peace for years to come.

The league hasn't had a work stoppage in more than 23 years; the 1987 players strike was the last time labor problems bled into the season.

The hope here - and, frankly, everywhere people have an interest in football - is that cooler heads prevail, meaningful concessions are made on both sides of the bargaining table, and a deal is hammered out before the doomsday scenario of a decertification by the union and a lockout by the owners.

The league and the union will try to hash it out again this week at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services building on the corner of K Street and 21st Street in Washington. The two sides already have met there under the auspices of mediator George H. Cohen for 11 days, and with only incremental progress so far, there is a long way to go before a deal gets done.

Although fans may have gotten a genuine sense of hope after the owners and players agreed to two extensions of the CBA expiration deadline, discussions with people who are intimately familiar with the talks indicate there will have to be significant movement from both sides for a deal to happen.

The biggest challenge - surprise, surprise - is the NFL's insistence that $1 billion in additional money from the $9 billion in annual revenue be kept for the owners to invest in growing the game. The owners contend that using that money - mostly for the purpose of building new stadiums, especially in California, where the state's three NFL teams need new facilities - will help produce more revenue that ultimately will be shared with the players.

There also are the issues of adding two regular-season games and implementing a rookie wage scale. My sense here is that the players are willing to go along with both ideas, but only if the NFL lifts its demand to take that billion dollars off the top. The owners might be willing to budge a little, but certainly not enough for the players to agree on a new deal.

I also get the sense that time indeed is growing short on the players' side, and that they're prepared to end talks this week and decertify. That move would blow up the talks entirely and move the discussion from the bargaining table to the courtroom. The NFLPA already has superstar quarterbacks Drew Brees, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady ready to affix their signatures as plaintiffs in antitrust legislation against the league.

The Cliff Notes version of what would happen then: NFLPA decertifies, files injunction to prevent owners from instituting lockout. Owners challenge the injunction and, if successful, impose a lockout. No football for anyone until further notice. No free agency. No games scheduled. Only the April 28-30 draft would be on the docket, and teams could only pick players, not sign them.

After that, it would be up to federal Judge David Doty. His rulings in favor of the players continually have angered the owners, to the point that they're trying to have him removed from overseeing the CBA. It will be a topic of discussion this week, because owners know and fear that Doty could cost them billions of dollars based on his rulings.

Case in point: Doty ruled last week that the league violated the CBA by agreeing to television contracts worth more than $4 billion, money that would have been collected by the league even if no games are played in 2011. Doty ruled that money amounted to a war chest for a planned lockout; now he is to decide what happens to that money, and whether the NFL not only loses it but has to pay legal damages on top of it.

But Doty never did offer a specific timetable for deciding on damages, a move perceived by some involved in the labor negotiations as a signal that he was nudging the two parties to settle their differences at the bargaining table first.

And here we are: another week's worth of talks to get a deal and head off more legal machinations. Five more days of bargaining to head off a work stoppage.

It's time for the NFL to make a better case to the players - and, quite frankly, to the rest of us who can't wrap our minds around the idea that a league at the height of its popularity is asking for such significant givebacks.

It's time to work out a deal.

And for the NFL to get back to being about football.