Players and owners initial arguments were heard in the Minneapolis court at the beginning of April and have been under consideration ever since. In the interim the players and owners were to meet via federally sanctioned negotiations, apparently little progress was made during that time.

“I think fans want solution. I want solutions,” NFl Commissioner Roger Goodell said. “I think the players want solutions and I think the teams want solutions. That’s why we have to be working at it in negotiations and figuring out how to get to that point.”

Unfortunately, little was done in the way of solution while both sides met in Minnesota. Instead the sides will wait on the ruling of Judge Nelson and in the meantime everything is on old for at least another month.

“That is the judge’s decision,” Goodell said. “She will make that ruling when she is prepared to do it, and at that point in time we all will respect the ruling and we will get back to the point where we are negotiating.”

Until then, we’re all just in a state of NFL purgatory.

Things will get even more drawn out now as the honorable Judge Nelson has indicated that her ruling should take at least a couple of weeks, meaning that any hope of a quick ruling to lift the lockout and launch the NFL into off-season business as usual is no where close. I’ll have a more in depth write-up of the proceedings tonight but for now, my initial take from this is that there really isn’t going to be football until well into the summer.

The judge is going to take forever on this, then there will be a lengthy appeals process and none of it will really matter because at some point both sides will end up coming to their senses and just sitting back down to negotiate. In the meantime all we have to look forward to is draft coverage. So stick around while we finish our Big Board and issue our first mock draft this weekend. We’ll keep you posted on this CBA garbage too.

It's not often I agree with PFT, but this time I do.

It’s very rare that I agree with anything Mike Florio says. He seems like a nice enough guy and I both respect the path he took build a hugely successful blog and the work he puts into covering the NFL. That being said I think he’s a bit of a prig and for a guy with a law degree pays little to no mind to concept of innocent until proven guilty. In the court of Mike Florio, you are guilty (and go on the turd-watch list) as soon as the report comes across the news wire.

However, I do feel Florio is on point today in saying the NFLPA wants to much with regard to their requests for financial transparency. The league now seems to be doing more than enough to accommodate them, as Florio says, the key is the league’s willingness to confirm the information with a third party, independent firm. The league is giving more than sufficient information now on a team-by-team basis and seems to be open to pulling the curtain back even more. As Florio says:

And that’s all the union needs.  Detailed reports regarding team-specific expenses aren’t necessary, unless the union hopes to micromanage team-level business decisions — or to cause trouble by finding a way to leak certain aspects of the expense information to the media.

(more…)