NFL, players union cancel talks

Associated Press

washington

Negotiations to prevent an NFL lockout took a grim turn Thursday with the cancellation of the second day of a planned two-day bargaining session.

“We wish we were negotiating today,” NFL Players Association spokesman George Atallah said. “That’s all I can say.”

There are just three weeks to go before the collective bargaining agreement expires on March 3.

The NFL confirmed that Commissioner Roger Goodell has canceled an owners’ meeting scheduled for next Tuesday in Philadelphia, where labor was expected to be a topic.

“Despite the inaccurate characterizations of [Wednesday’s] meeting, out of respect to the collective bargaining process and our negotiating partner, we are going to continue to conduct negotiations with the union in private,” league spokesman Greg Aiello told The Associated Press via e-mail, “and not engage in a point-counterpoint on the specifics of either side’s proposals or the meeting process. Instead, we will work as hard as possible to reach a fair agreement by March 4. We are fully focused on that goal.”

The collapse of the talks came as a surprise. The two sides got together Wednesday for the second time in five days, the previous negotiations taking place in Dallas on Saturday before the Super Bowl. Neither Atallah nor NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith would comment on why Thursday’s session was called off.

The union sent a memo Thursday to player agents updating the status of discussions on a rookie wage scale. A union proposal to decrease the maximum length of rookie contracts to four years for players selected in the first three rounds, and three years for players chosen after that, also included a limit on financial incentives and salary escalators that could be included in rookie deals.

Those limits would, the NFLPA claims, provide the cost certainty the league is seeking for its rookie salary pool.

According to the memo seen by The Associated Press, the NFL’s response was a five-year wage scale with base salary escalators. That would virtually eliminate individual negotiation of rookie contracts.

Owners opted out of the current CBA in 2008 and are seeking a bigger cut of the league’s revenues.