Unified owners, NFLPA now on road to labor collision

"In addition," the statement said, "as we have explained to the union, the clubs must spend significant and growing amounts on stadium construction, operations and improvements to respond to the interests and demands of our fans.

"The current labor agreement does not adequately recognize the costs of generating the revenues of which the players receive the largest share; nor does the agreement recognize that those costs have increased substantially -- and at an ever increasing rate -- in recent years during a difficult economic climate in our country.

"As a result, under the terms of the current agreement, the clubs' incentive to invest in the game is threatened."

Two issues, in particular, seem to rankle league owners: 1) The inability of clubs to recoup bonuses to players who breach their contracts or refuse to perform, and 2) a pay scale that rewards unproven rookies with rich contracts substantially higher than those of most veterans.

"Our objective," said the league owners, "is to fix these problems in a new CBA, one that will provide adequate incentives to grow the game, ensure the unparalleled competitive balance that has sustained our fans' interests and afford the players fair and increasing compensation and benefits."

And if that doesn't happen? There's always the fall foliage in New England.

While owners pledge to "do our best to achieve a fair agreement," there's the question of what exactly is fair? Upshaw has made it clear he thinks that what the league has now hits just the right note, which is great except his partner just told us it disagrees so vehemently it wants out of the deal.

So now what?

As I said, nothing will happen immediately. There will be plenty of rhetoric from both sides -- probably a few threats, too -- but the game as you know it will not change this season or next.

Unfortunately, neither will the two positions.

"It means that, as they say during the draft, we're on the clock," Upshaw said Tuesday morning on Sirius NFL Radio. "That's basically what it means."

For the moment, the clock is everyone's friend. If there's one lesson we learned from the last experience it's that nothing gets done until it absolutely, positively must. In 2006 the NFL and the players association kept extending deadlines to resume collective-bargaining negotiations until they found common ground.

And that could happen again. But so could something else, and that's a rockier road to the finish. Because today's action signaled that this time league owners are unified, and that will make a compromise more difficult to achieve.