Texans Bullpen Bulletin: Day 125 NFL Lockout Update

Day 125 of the lockout and much is going on in regards to the NFL Lockout. Now all of a sudden it seems as if both sides are on a fast track to resolve the lockout. Whay now? It’s not as if they haven’t had 125 days along with all of last year to get a deal done.

Oh, wait! everyone is about to lose money if the entire preseason should  get cancelled, the league could be forfeiting as much as $1 billion. But let me digress and revert back to our main point.

All morning long both the NFLPA* and the league have been fast tracking a resolution to the lockout by as early as Friday morning. A memo has been sent to all 32 teams in reference to the NFL owners meetings being held this upcoming Thursday in Atlanta.

ESPN is reporting that the memo went out to league executives this morning directing them to attend Thursdays meeting in Atlanta. What this means is the NFL wants full participation in Atlanta. The league wants executives representing every club to be ready to vote on a ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement if the two sides can make the progress they hope to make this week.

The league wants everyone in place and prepared. Prepared to an extent that salary cap officials for each club will be in attendance as well. All rules will need to be explained in the event that the deal gets done and free agency gets underway once the deal is completed.

Three hours into today, lawyers from both sides are meeting in New York, members of the NFLPA* executive commitee are meeting in Washington D.C., and what is being reported is that a global settlement is being worked on that will remove all outstanding legal issues and get them into a single agreement.

Why is this being done? Well lets see. There’s the CBA that needs to be done, The Brady versus NFL lawsuit, the Doty television damages lawsuit, the players retiree lawsuit and finally the collusion suit all together makes for a whole lot of lawsuits and issues that seem left to be resolved.

What the NFL and NFLPA* are hoping to do is to reach a settlement and drop all these case in one single swoop tied to a single global settlement. This will allow events to be expedited, it will allow both sides to vote and ratify a new CBA if they can tie up these lose ends by Thursday.

It’s being reported that as long as lawyers for both sides stay on point and work into the evening that the NFLPA* executive commitee  will meet on Tuesday to go over any  last minute details that need to be addressed before once again meeting on Wednesday in order to HOPEFULLY vote on a  ratification of the agreement before it goes to the owners in Atlanta on Thursday.

With more mediation scheduled for tomorrow it is optimistic to assume players will vote on Wednesday followed by the owners voting on Thursday all in an attempt to ratify the new CBA.

If all goes well teams will have a 72 hour window starting friday to resign their own players with free agency likely to begin Monday morning at 12:01 AM.