NFL Insists It Wants No Part of Lockout

DALLAS -- Serious negotiations are ready to start aimed at averting the NFL work stoppage that at times over the past two-and-a-half years has seemed inevitable.

Jeff Pash, the NFL's counsel and it's lead labor negotiator, reiterated Wednesday that the league wants no part of a lockout even though some owners have talked in those terms ever since the league opted out in April 2008 of the agreement it signed with the union just over two years earlier.

The current agreement expires March 4. The first serious negotiating session since before Thanksgiving will take place here Saturday with both NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and union chief DeMaurice Smith present.

"If we don't reach an agreement by the deadline and there is a disruption in the NFL, we fail to honor the commitment our fans have made to us,'' Pash said. "Both sides have an incentive to get an agreement.''

The two sides are farther apart on some issues than others and on one -- whether the NFL has showed them enough of their profit and loss -- they can't agree at all. Pash reiterated that the league has shown the union's auditors both their income and where the money is being spent; the union says it has seen only the revenue and little of its spending.

Pash said the urgency is based on the fact that on March 4, 500 players will become free agents and that teams will begin losing money if there is a stoppage. Eric Grubman, one of its financial advisers, estimated the figure at $120 million the first month and $350 million by the scheduled start of the season.

Pash, who has been saying for more than a year that he's optimistic about reaching a settlement, strongly suggested that if there is progress, the owners would be willing to stop the clock at the March 4 deadline, continuing on in an attempt to reach an agreement. He said the idea that the league and players could go until the summer or later would turn the preseason into a chaotic situation in which teams would be scrambling to sign players, open training camps and play exhibition games just to get the season started on time.

"The time has come to spare ourselves and our players and our fans the problems that would stem from that,'' he said.

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