NFL cuts employees' pay

The NFL lockout has hit the league's employees in the wallet. And not just NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the league's lead negotiator, attorney Jeff Pash, who have voluntarily agreed to reduce their multimillion-dollar salaries to $1 until the lockout ends.

The league's 980 employees have been hit with a 12-percent reduction in pay, and the cuts will be steeper if the lockout still is in place Aug. 1. The highest-level employees -- aside from Goodell and Pash -- would see a 25-percent reduction in pay. Employees have been told it hasn't been determined whether the pay cuts will be rescinded retroactively once the lockout ends.

NFL executive vice president Eric Grubman disclosed the pay cuts Friday at a gathering of Associated Press Sports Editors at the league's Park Avenue headquarters in New York. Grubman also estimated that the league's 32 teams would operate at a combined deficit of $2 billion if the entire season were lost. The NFL's TV money for 2011 is in limbo pending further court rulings, and the clubs say ticket and merchandise sales have slowed.

"It's incredibly expensive to maintain the state of readiness without the revenues coming in," Grubman said.

"We are still planning to have a full season," said Grubman, who declined to specify a "drop-dead" date after which games would have to be missed. The season is scheduled to open Sept. 8, and Ray Anderson, the league's director of football operations, said he'd like to see at least two preseason games before the start of the season.

Mediator Arthur Boylan called a halt to talks earlier this week. Mediation is expected to resume in mid-May. Grubman suggested the call for a delay came in part because the players seemed unwilling to negotiate.

"The NFL is prepared to negotiate now and has been trying to negotiate for the last two years," he said. "If the union shows up on your side of the table [in the conference room], I bet I could find Roger Goodell and Jeff Pash . . . to sit in these seats."

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NFLPA spokesman George Atallah took exception: "NFL owners decided to lock out the players and used NFL officials to do it. Players want to lift that lockout so they can play football. Players take legal action only when NFL owners and officials do bad things that violate the law. A lockout is a bad thing for the players, the game and the fans. The NFL and the owners can lift it at any time."

Atallah refused to get into any specifics about the mediation. "The litigation settlement mediation is confidential," he said. "Anyone that characterizes it publicly violates that confidentiality. It is particularly reprehensible if those characterizations come from a dude [Grubman] that wasn't even there. The NFL keeps peddling a public case for their lockout that is intended to harm and divide everyone associated with the NFL community."

Goodell reiterated his desire to resume talks. "At the end of the day, it's going to come down to negotiation," he said. "The sooner we get there, the better."