DBoys
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POSTED 9:35 a.m. EST, March 7, 2006
It's Tuesday, which means that it's time for a bunch of rich white dudes (and one rich white chick) to convene in Dallas to determine whether they can work out their differences in the interests of continued labor peace.
It's Tuesday, which means that it's time for a bunch of rich white dudes (and one rich white chick) to convene in Dallas to determine whether they can work out their differences in the interests of continued labor peace.
But the 59.5 percent question continues to be whether the Commish actually is endorsing the union's latest proposal, or whether he's merely delivering it.
Mark Maske of The Washington Post (who does tremendous work -- at that's a lot coming from us because we pretty much hate everybody) tries to get to the bottom of this key issue.
"Everyone wants to know if he's going to endorse it," NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw stold Maske. "My main issue is that he presents it. He doesn't get a vote. The owners have the votes. [But] if he didn't support it, you wouldn't think he'd be presenting it."
In contrast, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told Maske that Tagliabue would merely be presenting the union's offer without a recommendation.
The deeper issue, as we've previously explained, is whether Tags has any remaining juice with his employers. If he makes a recommendation and if at least 24 of them don't agree with it, he suddenly becomes football's version of Fay Vincent. But if Tagliabue is merely the postal worker who drops off the envelope to the owners, he won't look bad if at least nine of them stamp the thing "return to sender."
One thing is certain -- at a minimum, Tagliabue fears that he won't muster enough support among the owners, which is prompting him to play it safe so that he won't have to quit. It's not about ego for him, in our view. Instead, we think he's trying to protect the owners from making a move that would render him neutered for the remainder of his tenure, which would then make it even harder for him to preside over the business of the league. And at a time with so much friction in the ranks of the owners, a resignation by Tagliabue (no matter how tempted he is to do it) would be disastrous.
The bigger problem here is that, if Tagliabue can't get enough of these folks on the same page, we doubt that anyone else can, either. So at some point (maybe now) it'll be time to start thinking about the very real possibility of the formation of two separate pro football leagues -- one in which there's full or complete revenue sharing, and one in which it's every team for itself.
