The NFL Talks--A Walkout Appears Unlikely This Time

At his retirement party last winter, Jeff Van Note, who had played center for the Atlanta Falcons in the National Football League for 18 years, was talking about what he called a glaring problem.

“It’s crazy, but rookies are better paid than veterans,” he said.

“This is the only industry in the country where young guys coming in at entry-level positions make substantially more money than people who have been doing the same work for years.”

This week, the NFL’s players and owners are trying to change all that, they say, jointly and sincerely.

At the same time, they are jointly, although maybe not so sincerely, trying to dodge a strike next month by changing some other things as well.

Most have said that a strike is unlikely this time around, and nobody expects any games to be canceled. Even so, some of the issues are bothersome.

The owners, for instance, hope to establish unscheduled drug testing.

And the players want, among other things, guaranteed contracts, better pensions and more free-agent movement.

In other words, this is fight year in the NFL. About the only thing the two sides agree on is Van Note’s premise: Henceforth, salaries for experienced veterans at least have to match the big payments that are being made again this year to immature kids.

But of course, they can’t agree on how to implement even that.

“It’s do-able, but . . . “ said the owners’ representative, Jack Donlan.

“The (players) want it, but . . . “ said the players’ man, Gene Upshaw.

The sticking point is whether to put the millions saved on rookie wages into player pensions or owners’ profits, or both, or wherever.

The antagonists have only 18 more shopping days until crisis time.

On or about Aug. 31, when pro football’s present five-year collective bargaining agreement ends, one of three things will happen:

--The parties will sign a new three-year contract, one matching the duration of the new TV contract.

--The players will agree to work for a while without an agreement, as they did for three years in the 1970s.

--Or they will call a strike, as they did in 1982, when a dispute over player demands for 55% of the league’s gross lasted 57 days into the regular season and shortened each team’s schedule from 16 games to 9.

“In retrospect, the owners would have been (financially) better off if they’d accepted that,” said Raider kicker Chris Bahr, a lawyer.

“But they weren’t going to let an employee group tell them how to run their business.”

And no matter how much it hurts them, they still aren’t.

The central questions:

(1) Is drug testing imminent?

The owners still say it has to be. The players still say there are better ways to wage the war on drugs.

If viable precedents have resulted from the several recent legal challenges to random testing, the proposed NFL program--which lacks a probable-cause premise--would be struck down by the courts anyway, in the view of the players, who say the NFL should install some other kind of comprehensive drug program that will stand up.

(2) Is a contract accord imminent?

No, both sides say, the agreement won’t be signed before Aug. 31.

“Negotiations of this kind never end before the (last-second) crunch,” Commissioner Pete Rozelle said.

Player-lawyer Bahr said: “It is the nature of a labor dispute to go into the 11th hour, at least.”

Dick Berthelsen, the players’ lawyer, said: “There are too many loose ends on too many (issues) to possibly tie them all up before Aug. 31.”

(3) Why is a strike unlikely?

One good reason is that there is nothing worth striking over this year.

NFL player prospects for unrestricted free agency--their main off-season goal--have been undercut by baseball’s club owners, who have stopped signing free agents although they are theoretically free to do so.

As an NFL club executive said, when the Dodgers decline to sign the one free agent who could have turned them into a winning team--Tim Raines--there isn’t much point in football going down the same road.

Nor, some say, is there much point in football embracing a drug-testing policy that has been strongly endorsed by NFL owners but not U.S. courts.

On these issues, compromises seem inevitable. And the other issues are plainly negotiable.

“I don’t know anyone who expects an NFL strike,” said former coach John Madden, now a network television broadcaster.

The owner of the Cleveland Browns, Art Modell, told Athlon’s Pro Football annual: “We can’t afford another strike. We’re still recovering from the last one.”

Donlan, who as executive director of the NFL Management Council is the owners’ negotiator said: “I don’t think there’s going to be (a strike). I’m persuaded that Gene Upshaw and the players don’t want one, and speaking for myself and the owners, we don’t want one.”

Upshaw, who negotiates for the athletes as executive director of the NFL Players Assn., understandably sounds less confident. “I just don’t know the answer to the (strike) question,” he said. “A lot of issues are still out there.”

But lawyer-agent Leigh Steinberg, a union adviser, seemed to be speaking for a lot of NFL people when he said: “There are some good reasons why you can count on the negotiators to reach a settlement soon:

--”The owners were pleasantly surprised when Rozelle brought in a TV contract paying them virtually what they got last year (about $17 million). This is a good economic era for the owners. They don’t want to rock the boat.

--”The negotiations aren’t as confrontational as they’ve been in other years. Gene Upshaw is a popular union head, an ex-player who knows how the players feel, and what they want. But the owners can also see that Upshaw is a reasonable guy who is dedicated to working this out without picket lines.

--”The public is sick of scandal, misconduct and other troubles on sports teams. A strike at this time would have a devastating effect on the fans, damaging the NFL for years.”

Donlan, Upshaw and their attorneys have only been meeting sporadically, however.

“We’ve had 13 (negotiating sessions) with Upshaw since April 20,” which was 110 days ago, said management spokesman John M. Jones. “There was also a week of subcommittee meetings. At some stage (soon), we’ll begin meeting daily through to Aug. 31. Negotiations have been held so far in Tampa, San Francisco and Washington.”

NFLPA spokesman Frank Woschitz said: “The purpose of a traveling (negotiators’) game is to get more privacy. The idea is to bargain without the media instead of in the media. There have been no public announcements ahead of (any meeting), and no news stories.”

The 1982 negotiations, by contrast, were covered extensively by reporters, who sought statements twice a day from both sides, and usually got them.

“This time, all the effort is going into the (bargaining at the) table,” said Berthelsen, the NFLPA’s chief counsel, who has sat in at all such meetings since 1974.

“You’ll remember that (formerly) we had other battles to fight at the same time. For example, in 1974 when we filed the Mackey suit (which ended the use of the perpetual option contract, the so-called Rozelle Rule), we spent as much time in the court room as the bargaining room.

“There was more of the same in 1982, when we had to go to the (National Labor Relations Board) to get the (NFL) information we needed.

“This year it’s been all business. That should help avert a strike.”

The most serious issue after free agency and drug testing?

“Pensions,” said Bahr. “Our understanding is that a tenured baseball player gets a pension of $75,000 a year. In football, as an 11-year veteran, I’d get $20,000--at age 55.

“That’s unacceptable. At 55 you’re reaching the life expectancy of a football player. Offensive linemen live to an average age of 52.”

On the other hand, since the 1982 strike, NFL player salaries have advanced from $90,000 a year to an average $205,000.

This is inhibiting public sympathy for the players.

It may also inhibit a strike.