After four straight days of negotiations, the Owners and NFLPA have ended talks for the week, and will meet again after the July 4th Weekend.
After getting about 6 hours of sleep, both of the sides met again today, but by late morning, had left the office building they were negotiating in. Apparently, the issue of how to divide the $9.3 billion that the NFL made last year is still being fought over. In fact, both sides had to repair a rift that almost broke-down all the talks entirely.
According to Yahoo! Sports' Michael Silver, "One side is speaking Russian, the other Japanese, and that sense of mutual optimism once enjoyed by the NFL commissioner and NFL Players Association executive director has been lost in translation."
Michael Silver goes on to say that the players and Owners are still fighting over how to split the money, and who deserves most of the blame. But, luckily for us, after reading articles that were written more recently today, it appears that the talks are still moving forward.
From the Washington Post, "But negotiators for the league and players, along with Boylan, stayed at it and put the negotiations back on course, according to people who are not involved in the talks but are familiar with them".
Time is starting to become a factor in the talks. If a deal is not met soon, it will cut into pre-season games. The NFL makes about $200 million every week during Pre-season. Hopefully, this will be enough to push the Owners and players to keep negotiating, because as we know, money is a big reason we're still in this lockout.
But, of course, a little optimism: The talks haven't broken down completely, which means they're serious about getting a deal done. Also, according to the Washington Post, the Owners and players had not planned to meet Friday if they weren't making progress in the talks, and at midday Thursday, it appeared the talks were on the verge of breaking off. This shows us something, at least.
So basically, let's all just hope that when they meet again next week, they get right back to work, and by the end of next week, they have a hand-shake deal to work around.
And, worse comes to worse, we have the NBA to watch. Oh, wait...God, please help.