National Football League club owners have rejected...

National Football League club owners have rejected the latest contract proposal made by the players’ union, and the owners’ chief negotiator said in New York that the two sides are “farther apart than ever before.”

Jack Donlan, executive director of the NFL Management Council, was responding to a union proposal made earlier in the week in the dispute, which has gone on for two seasons.

The union proposal included a free-agent plan similar to those in the National Basketball Assn. and major league baseball. An unsigned veteran with 6 or more years of service would become an unrestricted free agent, and the number of years required for unrestricted free agency would be reduced in the subsequent years of the contract, down to 3 years by Feb. 1, 1992.