NFL Extends Draft Through 1993 : Pro football: Tagliabue announces unilateral move without consent of the players.

Although federal judges have held for years that it is unlawful for NFL teams to draft college players, they have allowed the draft to proceed each spring, because the league’s veteran players have authorized it.

That authorization ends this year. Next month’s draft is the last to get the consent of the players.

Now what?

Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced Monday that the NFL has decided to continue drafting college athletes in 1993.

“We’ve had it in its current form since 1977,” Tagliabue said. “We think it’s reasonable under any legal standards.”

On what legal underpinning?

“Because the players’ union agreed to this in 1977,” Tagliabue said.

His decision is bound to be opposed by the players, whose executive director, Gene Upshaw, was unavailable Monday, but who said last month: “This (year) is the end of the line for the draft, barring (a new collective bargaining agreement).”

The last such agreement expired four years ago. The 1977 authorization was granted by the players in return for a payroll-dues checkoff. The club owners abandoned the checkoff three years ago.

In Minneapolis, the courts will rule on the whole thing again this summer in another antitrust trial, the NFL’s 14th in 40 years. The league lost 12 of the first 13.

This time, lawyer Tagliabue’s position is that because the league made a few small changes in its draft procedures in 1977--chiefly, lowering the number of rounds to 12--it satisfied the demands of judges who ruled the draft is illegal.

The players disagree.

NFL Notes

The barrier to a new collective bargaining agreement is the number of years of NFL service club owners will require before granting players free agency. Nine of the 28 owners can block any important NFL action--and nine of them, mostly old-guard owners, reportedly are still lobbying against any number that would be agreeable to the players. . . . Asked if there will be a change at the Arizona meetings, Lamar Hunt of Kansas City said: “I doubt if our (offer to the players) will be greatly different (after this week).”

Four members of the seven-man competition committee are in favor of retaining instant replay officiating in approximately its present form. A year ago, the committee voted against it, but Bill Polian of Buffalo and Tom Flores of Seattle have changed sides. “It’s basically working,” Flores said. Another one-year instant-replay extension is likely, club executivessaid.

The league has scrapped plans to extend the 16-week regular season across 18 weeks, which would have meant two bye weeks for each club. The coaches are expecting another 17-week format.

Paul Tagliabue said there are two reasons the five TV networks have asked the NFL for a $196 million refund next year: “It’s grown out of the changes in the national economy and the changes in television--the (rise) of cable TV, and so on.”