NFL, union agree to seven-day extension

WASHINGTON - The NFL has often been described as a deadline league, especially when it comes to negotiating contracts and collective-bargaining agreements. It's a perfect description for the drama unfolding over the latest talks on a CBA extension.

Less than 24 hours after avoiding a potential doomsday scenario of an indefinite work stoppage, the league and its players union extended their window of negotiations for seven more days - through next Friday - in an effort to hammer out a long-term deal.

Even so, there is no guarantee the extension will result in a new CBA.

Worst-case scenario: The talks break down, the union files for decertification and the league imposes a lockout.

Best-case scenario: The marathon negotiations - Friday was Day 11 before federal mediator George H. Cohen - result in a new deal that allows the league to avoid its first work stoppage since the 1987 players strike.

"We are continuing to work hard, trying to identify solutions," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday afternoon, shortly after both sides signed off on the extension. "We believe that this will be solved through negotiations, and that's what we're focused on. So we'll continue to work hard, and we'll be back next week."

NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, who is negotiating his first CBA since taking over as union chief, said he hoped a settlement would come out of the extended negotiations.

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"We look forward to a deal coming out of that," he said. "What we have always had as our core is the football that our players love to play and the fans who love to watch it. There's never going to be a day when we're not going to have those two things first and foremost in our minds."

Friday's agreement didn't mean that the two sides are any closer to resolving their differences over the three key issues of the CBA: how to share $9 billion in revenue, the implementation of a rookie wage scale and the expansion of the regular season from 16 to 18 games.

Any progress made over the last week has been small and there still is a need for greater flexibility on both sides.

But the act of continuing negotiations was construed as a positive, even though significant hurdles need to be overcome. According to two people familiar with the inner workings of the talks, there has been an improved atmosphere in the tenor of the talks, which might ultimately contribute to successful negotiations next week.

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Jeff Pash, the NFL's chief negotiator, said there had "been enough discussion and enough substance to the discussions that the mediators thought it made sense to come back and keep at it and so we're happy to do that."

Pash also gave a vote of confidence to collective bargaining, which has come under attack in several areas around the country, including Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker is attempting to strip public employees of collective-bargaining rights.

"All over this country, collective bargaining is being challenged," Pash said. "We're committed to it. We believe it can work."

Now it's a matter of getting an agreement, something Pash said will involve compromise, a word he had rarely used before Friday. "I think we're at a stage where the issues have been joined, there's been a tremendous amount of discuss," he said. "It's time to dig deep and try to find solutions and try to be creative and try to compromise in a way that will work for everybody. The commissioner has been very clear if both sides give a little everyone can gain a lot. That's what we have to try to do next week."