Despite reaching a small agreement on Wednesday over a modified rookie wage scale, the NFL and NFLPA are running out of time to put an overall CBA agreement in place. The current extension to the CBA negotiations expires tonight, and since the two sides did not meet in person yesterday, it is seeming more and more likely that the sides will either re-extend the negotiations or head into a lockout.
At the moment, the two sides are “only” $700 million apart in negotiating how to distribute revenue streams. While this is progress from the original $1 billion difference between the two sides, significant progress still needs to be made to reach a deal today. The prospects of the NFL and NFLPA finding a compromise between their two sides appears slim, especially when you consider what NFL negotiator Jeff Pash said yesterday:
“If both sides have an equal commitment to getting this deal done, it will get done,” Pash said. “I don’t know if both sides have an equal commitment. You’ve heard plenty of what I’ve heard as well. If that’s the case, if both sides have that commitment, there’s a deal to be made.”
The NFLPA was less than pleased with this statement, and NFLPA director DeMaurice Smith fired back:
“Jeff Pash was part of an executive team that sold the networks a $4 billion ticket to a game they knew wouldn’t be played. The only thing they’ve been committed to is a lockout.”
In other words, this isn’t going to be pretty.