NFL, NFLPA Reach Final Agreement to End Lockout Early Monday Morning

Early Monday morning, the sides in the NFL labor battle finally reached full agreement to end the lockout, with an press conference scheduled later this afternoon to announce the deal expected to be 10-years in length. The news of the early morning deal was first reported by Jay Glazer of FOX Sports.

Some small contract language details still need to be added, but shortly after the NFLPA Exec Committee will review from 11am to noon ET and vote immediately thereafter. From there, a full vote by the Player Representatives and the entire player body will take place. But, sources close to the deal on both sides of the table believe that approval will come after the Exec. Committee recommends the deal.

Changes to the new agreement have taken place to terms since owner vote last week on terms for their final proposal. As for any changes since then, the NFL’s Labor Committee had been delegated the authority to close the deal.

The new timeline for teams reporting will be 10 teams on Wed, 10 on Thurs, 10 Fri, and 2 (Jets and Texans) on Sunday.

The agreement is a bit of a leap of faith by the owners. The lockout will be lifted before the NFLPA is recertified. To do so requires 50 percent, plus 1 vote by the players to do so. The expectation is that it will happen Tues, with Weds. at the latest.

Two key issues have not yet surfaced. One is whether the players got language in the CBA that will allow them to opt out of the agreement at some point, possibly within 6 years of the 10 year deal. The owners had a similar provision in the last CBA, and exercised that option in 2008.

The other issue that looms is how the global settlement for the two outstanding litigations will be handled. One is the class-action antitrust lawsuit that has Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Peyton Manning as the star lead plaintiffs.

The lockout, the longest in NFL history, began on March 11 and is now 135 days long.

Arian Foster, the NFL's leading rusher in 2010, played hide of a knee injury

The NFL rushing leader in 2010, Arian Foster of the Houston Texans , revealed that he played with torn meniscus, an injury that kept secret.
In an interview with The Sporting News, Foster, who set the record for most rushing yards for a player who was drafted into the Draft with 1.616, had surgery in February after being injured a cartilage in the Pro Bowl, held January 30 in Hawaii. At that time, he underwent arthroscopic surgery on his knee less right and attributed his great season to "hard work and opportunity", he told the NFL Network.
"My responsibility and my job is to make sure that people in the team management does not replace search replace you because every day," said Foster. "And therefore, I have to make sure I lock in the best way I run the best and caught passes for the best. That's my job. "
Voted number 25 on the vote of the players choose the best 100 of 2011, Foster pleaded as a great admirer of his colleagues Chris Johnson, Tennessee Titans and Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings, but he believes his style of play makes it more complete in another category. "What I think is unique about the way I play is in all aspects of the sport. I feel I can play excellently ... I feel that I like to lock in the best way I can catch the ball and I can run, "said Foster.

Lawyers try to set table for key labor figures as talks continue

The seventh week of the latest phase of NFL labor negotiations kicked off Monday at a Manhattan law firm, with the status of the preseason hanging in the balance.

Legal teams and staff for the owners and players met separately in the morning hours, then came together for joint meetings at 2:30 p.m. The session broke about five hours later.
The format for this week is similar to the previous two, with language and details handled by the lawyers earlier in the week, and owners and players joining later to negotiate core issues.

As such, the lawyers and staff will have another set of meetings on Tuesday morning. Players and owners, as well as NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, will be in contact via conference call, and return to New York for face-to-face sessions on Wednesday.

The league's objective is to have a completed proposal to present to the owners for a vote at their meeting in Atlanta on July 21. But there's still plenty of work to be done to achieve that, and it's by no means a foregone conclusion that it will happen.

Primary among the sticking points is the rookie salary system. While the two parties have made major progress on the larger issue of the revenue split, the rookie problem is one smaller item that flows into the bigger one and could threaten it. Also to be resolved is the funding of retiree benefits, another issue that runs into the revenue split.

Among those at Monday's meeting were NFL general counsel Jeff Pash, outside counsel Bob Batterman, senior VP of law and labor policy Adolpho Birch, and NFLPA outside counsel Jeffrey Kessler. The idea of these smaller early-week sessions is to knock out much of the groundwork and smaller items, so when the bigger issues are taken care of, it will be a smoother process going from a basic agreement to a signed document to the beginning of the league year.

Last week, the players and owners had a tough day of negotiations on Thursday, followed by a Friday in which almost no progress was made. At the heart of the stalemate was the rookie wage issue, but that isn't the only outstanding problem to be solved.
The schedule moving forward for owners and players is open-ended, with an eye on saving the preseason and the bounty in revenue associated with it. The league's projection is that $1 billion would be lost with the cancellation of the preseason, a figure the players say is inflated. At any rate, it's a significant piece of the overall revenue pie, and its disappearance would likely change the tenor of talks dramatically, starting with the trickle-down effect it would have on the owners' offer to the players.

The next date on the calendar after this week is July 19, when the principles from each party and their lawyers will be in Minnesota to update U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan, who has overseen talks but is on vacation this week. The optimistic point of view would be that the session would be to discuss logistics in settling the litigation between the parties. The pessimistic view would have the parties engaged in another round of talks there, with preseason games coming off the schedule.

Some internal deadlines have set July 15 as the date to have an agreement in order to save the preseason in its natural form.

Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout Video !

from: NFL Lockout.com

Frustrated by the ongoing owner-imposed lockout, several NFL players and Hollywood stars recently teamed up with Funny or Die to release a fictional trailer called “Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout.”

In the video, Taylor Lautner plays a farmer hearing voices in his head that convince him to build a football field on his land. Once the field is completed, locked out NFL players such as Tony Gonzalez, Ray Lewis, Dwight Freeney, DeSean Jackson, Antonio Cromartie, Shaun Phillips, Steve Smith, Kirk Morrison and Shawne Merriman show up to play the game they love.

Ray Liotta, who starred as Shoeless Joe Jackson in the original “Field of Dreams,” makes an appearance in the trailer playing the role of Roger Goodell. Kevin Costner makes a cameo at the end of the video.

Well this sure shows the love for this sport, so we shall support it and watch it and pray it starts again this fall. But in the mean time let's enjoy the summer with the best baseball games !