Glen Cove hosted critical NFL meetings

Long Island has its place in NFL history, from being the home of Jim Brown to the home of the Jets. But its role in this summer's negotiations -- which ultimately helped save the upcoming season and provided a decade of labor peace in the league -- could become the region's greatest impact on the sport.

It turns out that two of the most critical days of meetings between the two sides took place in a century-old Gold Coast relic on the North Shore of Nassau County. On June 7 and 8, 12 men -- six from each side, with no lawyers -- met face-to-face at Glen Cove Mansion. When finished, they still were more than a month from ending the lockout and bringing football back, but they had agreed upon the basic financial structure of the new deal.

It was the Long Island Accord.

While the setting may have been gilded and their work to save the $9-billion industry important, at one point the negotiations devolved into a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek.

Jeff Pash, general counsel and lead negotiator for the NFL during talks, had driven to historic Glen Cove Mansion with fellow league negotiator Bob Batterman to have dinner with representatives from their side and discuss how the day's bargaining had gone. But as soon as their car pulled up the long flower-lined driveway on Dosoris Lane and around the parking circle, they were frantically waved to a back entrance of the stately building.

Once they finally entered ("literally smuggled in," Pash described it), they were whisked away and stuffed into a storage room filled with folded-up tables and stacks of chairs.

These meetings were for principles only -- players and owners -- and no lawyers were allowed. If Pash or Batterman had been seen by the players, it could have ruined any progress that had been made. It was bad enough that they'd been spotted by United States Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan, the court-ordered mediator in the process.

"Judge Boylan came in and said, 'Oh, my God, look who's here. You guys have to stay out of sight. If the players see you, they'll go crazy,' " Pash recalled. "So we had to stay hidden back with all the eight- and six-foot banquet tables. I can tell you every size banquet table that they have at the Glen Cove Mansion."

Face to face

While hindsight points to the Gatsby-esque estate as the setting for those important dialogues, the talks were not without their hiccups. Pash's unwanted guest appearance was the least of them. There were several moments when progress seemed tenuous.

Ultimately, at the urging of Boylan and from an idea hatched by NFL treasurer Joe Siclare, the sides agreed not to split the entire pie but to first divide the pie into three pieces and then split those at different percentages.

"It was at those meetings that we focused in on the concept of different percentages," Pash said. "That structure was put in place at these meetings. Obviously, there was a lot of work after that, but I would say when the Glen Cove meetings finished, the basic outlines of an economic deal were put in place."

Ultimately, the players would get 55 percent of the league's broadcast revenue, 45 percent of merchandise and promotion money, and 40 percent of local team revenue such as tickets, parking and stadium enhancements.

Just as important as hammering out the numbers was the relationship that was built going forward.

"It was crucial," said NFLPA president and former Jets center Kevin Mawae, who took part in the negotiations. "The owners had their concerns, the players had their concerns, and until the two sides actually met face-to-face and knew exactly what each others' issues were, it would have been difficult to move forward in the process."

Pash may have been persona non grata at the meetings, but it was his idea to hold them there.

A week earlier, the two sides had met an hour west of Chicago, and they were looking for secluded areas near major cities where they could get their work done in privacy. Pash, who lives in Locust Valley, had sent his children to tennis camps at Glen Cove Mansion. And, he said, he'd always recalled the line by Audrey Hepburn in "Sabrina" in which she described the estate as "the grandest home on Dosoris Lane."

Hush, hush

There also was some discretion and espionage involved. Owners and players who flew into New York were taken to the estate under assumed names and checked in under aliases.

"You can hide anywhere in New York and nobody can find you," said Mawae, who lived in Garden City when he played for the Jets. "Whether we were downtown or out on Long Island or out in Jersey somewhere, there are so many people and so many places you could be that we knew it would be difficult for anybody to pin us down."

As far as Glen Cove Mansion is concerned, its vow of silence did not end with those meetings or even with the lockout. Asked about the conference in June, the property's director of sales and marketing, Fred Leuthold, had no comment and would not even confirm that the NFL meetings took place there.

"It was like Tom Clancy stuff," Mawae said of the secrecy involved.

But what if Pash and Batterman had been found? Could it really have blown up the negotiations? Would the nation be watching the first round of preseason football games this weekend?

Maybe.

But maybe not.

"That would be news to me," Mawae said when told of the storage-room siege. "If Jeff Pash would have been in those meetings, then it would have gotten a little bit more frustrating . . . It wouldn't have ended it, but we would have had to spend a lot of time making sure we knew who was calling the shots and who wasn't.

"Jeff Pash wasn't the one who we were interested in talking to. It was the owners."

And for two days on Long Island, that's exactly what they did.