NFL players, owners resume meaningless talks

Once again on Monday, NFL players, owners and their representatives put on their suits and took their pointless walk to the bargaining table. They will settle nothing, of course. None of them much wants to be there. They will make no agreements, find no common ground and do nothing to bring the lockout to an end.

They have no interest in ending the lockout now.

But the magistrate judge overseeing their case has asked for these talks, if for nothing else to create the illusion that the two sides are working on a resolution. In a few days, another impasse likely will be declared, the negotiators will go home and the fans will continue to lose.

With the NFL being granted a stay Monday of Judge Susan Nelson’s ruling last month to end the lockout, there will be no football before June 3. No trades, no free-agent signings, no roster moves. Players won’t be able to meet with team trainers. Coaches won’t be able to give instruction to new draft picks, some of whom are expected to be important pieces of their team whenever football begins again. Newly drafted quarterbacks won’t be able to study their team’s playbooks or watch tapes of the offense. It’s as if they had never been picked at all.

Nothing will happen before the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments on an injunction delivered by a lower court that ordered the lockout over and everybody back to work.

That’s why June 3 matters, it’s the day the Eighth Circuit has chosen to officially deal with the lockout. The Court will absorb the information given by both sides, ponder it and perhaps even come up with a ruling only a few days after the arguments began. The hope is when the court does so, the ruling will give one side a reason to reignite the talks.

The problem is that it’s far too soon for anyone to feel the lockout’s pinch to make something happen. As long as the courts remain an option and nobody is facing the pain of losing gate receipts and game checks the fight will slog along, with neither side making a commitment to ending this.

They just don’t want to.

About as much was heard in the words of Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II on Monday when he told the NFL Network: “We’d like to make progress but it will be hard to do. We have to wait to see what happens June 3.”

Rooney’s comment was put on Twitter and later picked up by ProFootballTalk.com, which ran it under the headline: “Rooney confirms that mediation, for now, is worthless.”

It was probably the most profound thing uttered about the lockout all day.

Lawyers representing retired players head to court for Monday’s mediation.
(Getty Images)

There have been breaking points on both sides in recent weeks, but neither side really cares enough to collapse right now. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft worried aloud to a Boston reporter that the lingering court disputes are going to anger the fans.

It was a swipe at the players who took the fight to the courtroom. Of course this was only after the owners tried to crush the players by locking them out and taking billions in deals cut with the television networks to pay the league regardless of whether there is a season.

Nobody gets away here. Each side is guilty. The owners resorted to their best weapon: denying the players their pay until they crawled back. And the players have responded with the only thing that has ever worked for them: dragging the owners to court.

So here we are in the middle of May, with nothing fundamentally wrong with the structure of the NFL and each side having pushed the buttons on their nuclear options, waiting around for the courts to let them know when they can sit down in earnest to discuss how to split a piece of $9-plus billion that will continue to make most everybody rich.

Meanwhile the players who were drafted into a blaze of euphoria two weeks ago – in the little piece of football we were handed for three days – have been left in limbo. Those excited phone calls that came from their new coaches on draft night are a distant memory now, followed up with silence. Eventually there will be football again. Eventually there will be a frenzy of free-agent signings and trades and the building of clubs will begin again.

But it won’t happen until the final gavel falls in yet another courtroom, in yet another wasted week of a spring that everyone will look back upon and shake their heads. For now we are left with empty negotiations that mean nothing and resolve even less. Nobody in the NFL is ready for an agreement yet. Time ticks away. A season draws near. Fans wonder who will be their favorite team’s quarterback, its top wide receiver, the big run-stopper on defense.

Might as well start waiting longer. No one’s interested in settling this anytime soon.

 

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