The NFL owners and players have decided to extend the deadline for the NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement until next Friday, March 11. They’ll take the weekend off and start talking again on Monday morning.
NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith came out of talks and sounded positive, “We look forward to a deal coming out of that,” he said.
“We are continuing to work hard, to identify solutions,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. “We believe that, as I’ve said many 
times before, that this will be solved through negotiations and that’s what we’re focused on.”
“We’ll continue to work hard, and we’ll be back next week.”
Goodell and the NFL owners want to continue talking so that players association does head to court to decertify the union and bring an anti-trust suit against the owners.
“Talking is better than litigating,” Goodell said.
Federal mediator George Cohen talked about how important it was that the comments and arguments that were made in the mediation process needed to be kept confidential. If the negotiators thought what they said would become public, they would be much more reluctant to talk about how they really felt about the issues.
Cohen stressed a blackout but Smith did take questions from the media and he said the trust which was broken by the owners who were planning on locking the players out, would be hard to bring back.
Smith also brought up the name of Dave Duerson, who played for the Bears and committed suicide a couple of weeks ago after texting family members and telling them to have his brain looked at. Clearly Smith was trying to win the public relations battle.
thats nice.. can someone please lower gas prices now!!!!
After one huge courtroom loss, it appears that the owners don’t look forward to another courtroom decision.
Judge Doty’s now on my Christmas list.
Yea if the Union decertifies the Owners are screwed. Mutually assured Destruction seems to be the reason behind the extensions.