The National Football League owners are meeting in Chicago today to discuss a potential Collective Bargaining Agreement with the National Football League players. ESPN has gotten a hold of some of the particulars that are being pitched to the owners, and it looks like some significant concessions have been made.
Among the things that ESPN is hearing:
- The percentage of the revenues that the players would receive is at 48%, without the $1 billion off of the top that the owners had been taking in the previous agreement. Also, the percentage of revenue that would go to the players would never drop below 46.5% according to the formula being pitched.
- Teams would be required to spend somewhere between 90% and 93% of the salary cap.
- A rookie wage scale is part of the deal, but is apparently being "tweaked" at this point in time.
- An 18-game regular season is not part of the deal. It is designated as a negotiable item but at no point becomes mandated.
- There will be a new 16-game Thursday night package starting in 2012, replacing the 8-game package that we have on Thursday nights. It will also, apparently, not be on the NFL Network, but it will be up for grabs instead.
- Owners will still get some sort of credit in order to help them fund new stadiums (good news for fans of the Minnesota Vikings, among others).
- Players with four, five, and six years of service in the NFL are expected to become free agents (per Adam Schefter via Twitter).
Hopefully, something will be worked out on the labor front soon, allowing teams to have a full pre-season to get themselves ready for 2011.