Updated: March 6, 2006, 12:11 PM ET
Deal or no deal? NFL owners to vote Tuesday
ESPN.com news services
At a meeting Tuesday in Dallas, NFL owners will vote to accept or reject a players' union proposal to extend the Collective Bargaining Agreement, ESPN's Chris Mortensen is reporting.
NFL management, led by commissioner Paul Tagliabue called the union an hour before the Sunday midnight deadline to say that they take the proposal to all 32 owners, Mortensen reports. Twenty-four of the 32 owners must OK the deal for it to be ratified.
Monday in New York, Tagliabue, NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw and lawyers for both sides are meeting to put the players' latest proposal into a written document to present to owners for approval.
The league and union agreed to postpone free agency another 72 hours until Thursday at 12:01 a.m. ET. Teams have until 9 p.m. on Wednesday to get under the salary cap of 94.5 million.
"The NFL negotiators called us tonight after our negotiations broke off to indicate that they will take our complete package to the owners for an approval vote on Tuesday," Upshaw said late Sunday night. "We have therefore agreed to extend the free agency deadline until midnight Wednesday in order to provide time for that vote to be accomplished. It was the NFL's previous rejection of our proposal earlier this evening that caused the talks to break down."
The deal that NFL owners will vote on guarantees that players will receive 59.5 percent of all football revenue over the six-year extension of the CBA, Mortensen reports. That 59.5 percent includes a "cash over cap" limit that addresses the concerns of low revenue clubs about how much teams actually spend on their payrolls in a given year.
The deal also includes the ability to give credits and make adjustments on individual teams' spending on cash over the cap, according to what Upshaw told Mortensen. It is possible that a team that exceeds the spending limit will have their salary cap adjusted the following year by the amount they spend over the cap.
That formula could be the subject of major debate during Tuesday's owner meetings in Dallas between low- and high-revenue clubs. Sources told Mortensen that New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft has emerged as the most vocal high-revenue franchise that is a strong dissenter to a new revenue sharing model.
Upshaw said he still thinks revenue sharing is the key, although Harold Henderson, the NFL's executive vice president for labor relations, said it was never discussed Sunday. Upshaw also said the players would do as well or better sticking with the current agreement.
"Under our previous cap agreement, we got just less than 60 percent of all of the revenues. The NFL now wants us to cut that percentage to less than 57 percent. Given the enormous revenue growth the NFL is experiencing, I am not about to give back gains which we have made in the past. It is clear to me that we will do much better under our current CBA in 2006 and particularly in 2007, the uncapped year," Upshaw said.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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