It's over.
After four and a half months, the NFL lockout came to an end on Monday, with the player representatives and NFLPA executive committee agreeing to a settlement of a new collective bargaining deal, the terms of which the owners had approved last week.
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"It’s been a long time coming, and football’s back, and that’s the great news for everybody," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a joint news conference outside the players’ association offices in Washington, D.C. "Having a 10-year agreement is extraordinarily great for our game, but most importantly our fans. I think this agreement is going to make our game better.”
Although the players have been locked out for most of the 2011 offseason getting the deal done in late July ensures training camps, remaining exhibition games and the regular season will go on as scheduled.
Basically, the NFL will rush back to business. On Tuesday, teams can sign drafted and undrafted rookies. They can also negotiate with all free agents, both their own, and free agents from other teams. However, teams cannot sign free agents to contracts until Friday, when free agency will officially begin.
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NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith gave the official word that the lockout had ended Monday afternoon. A few minutes later, Patriots owner Robert Kraft was joined by Goodell, and two other NFL owners — John Mara of the Giants and Jerry Richardson of the Panthers.
"Our guys stood together when nobody thought we would," Smith said. "And football is back because of it."
Colts player representative Jeff Saturday gave special mention to Kraft, whose wife, Myra, died of cancer last week.
"Without him (Kraft), this deal doesn't get done," said Saturday, who hugged Kraft.
Kraft offered an apology to fans.
"For the last five or six months, we've been talking about the business of football," Kraft said. "But the end result is, we’ve been able to have an agreement that I think is going to allow this sport to flourish over the next decade."
Although the rookie wage scale (passed) and the league's desire to expand to a 18-game schedule (not passed) were among the issues that turned into obstacles, in the end, both sides eventually saw eye to eye on the most important one: How to fairly share an estimated $9.3 billion in annual revenue generated by the league. The deal is good through the 2020 season, ensuring labor peace for the long haul.
Last Thursday, the league's 32 owners met in Atlanta for a meeting lasted all day and ended with a 31-0 vote (Raiders abstention) to ratify a new, 10-year CBA. The players were once expected to vote on that CBA in a conference call that evening, but needed the weekend to review and digest the terms before approval. Their vote to ratify and match the owners in passing the resolution happened on Monday.
In the same owners meeting it was decided that the preseason opener, the scheduled Hall of Fame game between the Bears and Rams on August 7, would be canceled. It turns it will be the only game-action casualty to come from the delay in the players and owners mutually signing off on a new CBA.
The battle initially started in the courts, but ultimately, a truce was struck between the owners and the decertified NFL players association after a series of clandestine cross-country meetings and long negotiating sessions over the past month.
Starting with a small, powerful group of owner and player representatives and ending with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith getting involved, a deal was methodically hammered out with help from lawyers representing both sides.
The owners' Thursday approval was initially met with player frustration because of new language about supplemental review. Upon further review, cooler heads prevailed and
With the ratification now behind the approximate 1,900 NFL players after Monday's vote, the process of recertification of the union is expected to be a formality.
The next order of business is the signing, trading and releasing of players over a short window between now and the time players are required to report to their respective training camps. The labor negotiations may have dragged out over the summer, but teams making their desired acquisitions will be a swift process.
Fans and reporters have been inundated with legal facts and figures, but it's now finally time to go back to the NFL business that has made it such a lucrative, popular sport: The Xs and Os.