Free Agency in NFL Delayed

NFL owners are not buying the argument that players deserve a larger share of the financial pie, but they did buy something else Thursday on the eve of the free-agency deadline.

A little more time.

A few hours after an emergency meeting in New York, during which owners voted unanimously to break off negotiations with the players’ union, the league extended its deadline for free agency by three days, delaying what figures to be a major talent purge by teams over the 2006 salary cap. Free agency now will start Sunday after 9 p.m. PST.

The postponement gives both sides the weekend to try to resolve a situation Commissioner Paul Tagliabue called “as dire as dire can be.” Neither side seemed willing to budge Thursday. The owners met for only 57 minutes at a New York hotel before casting their rare unanimous vote.

The players are asking for at least 60% of the league’s revenue in their next labor deal, four percentage points more than the owners are offering.

“I won’t come down,” said Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn. “The players know that. Only the owners can make a proposal.”

Sports attorney David Cornwell, a former NFL assistant counsel, said he didn’t expect a negotiating breakthrough over the weekend but added that the free-agency postponement “showed that the sides can agree on something.”

Cornwell said breaking off talks “was a negotiating response that the owners are unified in terms of how big the pie is going to be and how thick a piece the players are going to get.”

The players also want a share of team revenues not available to them in the current labor deal. Under their proposed arrangement, players would share in profits from the sale of club seats and luxury suites.

Labor peace has been a cornerstone of the league’s success for nearly two decades. And, unlike other sports in which differences between owners and players have been more substantial, the NFL fissure is relatively narrow. What the players want amounts to roughly $7 million to $8 million more per team in annual salary-cap money, according to Dennis Howard, a marketing professor at the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Center.

“Given what’s at stake and what could be lost by both parties, you’d think they would find a way to reach an accommodation,” Howard said.

There are two years left on the current labor agreement, signed in 1993. If there is no new agreement, however, there will be no salary cap in 2007, which could create a baseball-like disparity between the wealthiest and neediest teams.

Previously, clubs have been able to keep the core of their teams together and stay under the salary cap in part by negotiating cap-friendly contract extensions with some of their highest-paid players. But the uncertainty of the situation now makes that a much more daunting process.

Under the current labor deal, in this the last year of the collective-bargaining agreement, the number of years over which a signing bonus can be spread has been cut from seven to four. It’s one of the “poison pills” built into the agreement to encourage both sides to strike a new deal before allowing things to get to this point.

“Being forced to crunch a signing bonus into four years as opposed to seven will have a significant impact on the overall value of contracts,” Cornwell said. “The unfortunate fact is that the casualties of both sides of this negotiating posture will be this year’s class of free agents, other players released because of their salary-cap numbers, and rookies.”

That includes soon-to-be pros such as USC’s Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart, whose first contracts could be significantly affected by the impasse.

With free agency delayed for 72 hours, there were few dramatic moves Thursday by teams looking to clear salary-cap space. Among the players who will become free agents Sunday night, unless they’re re-signed by their current teams, are Shaun Alexander of Seattle, Edgerrin James of Indianapolis, and Charles Woodson of Oakland.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.