The 2010 NFL season could be the last season for the foreseeable future.  The NFL Players Association and the NFL have been negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement for the past year without much headway.  If you ask way this is the case, each side will point to the other. 

One reason is the NFL’s want to extend the season.  The NFL has been planting the seed to expand to 18 games ever since Roger Goodell became the commissioner.  The proposal that most have heard about is shortening the preseason.  This will not elongate the season; though you would expect the training camp to open sooner.  The player’s union stance on this is that they would want the teams to increase the size of their rosters.  This is actually something that is probably needed.  The extension of a season could equate to more injuries. 

Another issue at the heart of a new CBA is the money the players from revenue sharing.  The NFL makes billions of dollars a year and the owners split a percentage of that with the player’s union.  The owners want to decrease that amount from 18%.  The amount that they are proposing hasn’t been widely published.  The player’s union stance is that they don’t know of what number the NFL is working.  Is it before the owners’ take or the total of the revenue sharing.  When it comes down to this, it is millionaires talking about billions of dollars. 

One of the final aspects of a new CBA is that of a rookie salary cap.  The NFLPA isn’t against limiting what a rookie can make when entering the league as an unproven league.  They suggested that they remove $200 billion from the rookie pool and split it between veteran and retired players.  This sound like a fine idea that you would think the NFL and owners would agree to; however, the player’s union also wanted rookie contracts to be 3 year contracts and, after the contract expires, the player would become an unrestricted free agent.  This proposal strips away one year from the current CBA that a player can’t become an unrestricted free agent until after 4 years. 

 When it comes down to negotiating, it sounds like they two sides are not very far apart.  But it was the owners that opted out of the current agreement after the union said it was fine with extending it.  Why would the owners do this?  Because they felt if the one side wanted to extend it, it must have been too one sided of a deal.  With this train of thought, the owners might throw their muscle around and expect the union to compromise more than them.