Upshaw Says Deal With Owners Off : NFL: Tentative agreement apparently falls through over conflicts on plan for free agency.

The NFL’s players and club owners, who have been at odds for more than five years, promised 10 days ago that they would make peace this week, but peace isn’t here yet. And in New York late Wednesday night, representatives of the players said the proposed agreement is off.

Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn., telephoned the Associated Press at midnight New York time and said:

“When it came time to face the reality of free agency, (the owners) backed out of the deal.”

Upshaw couldn’t be reached from the West Coast. Neither could NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who, along with Pittsburgh Steeler President Dan Rooney, was meeting with players’ attorneys long into the evening.

But an NFL spokesman said: “Everyone knows there have been some unresolved issues, but there won’t be any final decisions for a while.”

Both sides have been calling the media in recent weeks with charges and countercharges, trying the case in the press.

If Upshaw’s statement is part of such a campaign, it would come as no surprise to the other side.

The principal unresolved argument, lawyers for both groups have been saying all week, isn’t free agency--as Upshaw charged--but the length of time that new free agents will be allowed to negotiate with proposed employers.

The owners want a 60-day window--roughly from Feb. 1 to April 1--when NFL teams can bargain with players whose contracts have expired.

The players have been opposed to a calendar window of any duration, holding that a free agent is a free agent.

“If they can (bargain) all year, that would figure to disrupt training camps almost everywhere,” an owners’ representative said the other day.

Said a player representative: “Total free agency is the American way.”

The two sides have also been arguing over the duration of the annual college player draft, and Jim Quinn, a players’ attorney, said Wednesday night that the owners have reneged on an agreement to continue the draft for no more than another seven years.

“Apparently a number of hard-line owners are insisting on an increase in the number of years,” Quinn said in a telephone call to the Associated Press. “They wanted to added a year and then two more years on the draft, going beyond the terms of the agreement.”

The owners’ interest in this issue is vital to their long-range planning.

It is vital to the players only because they fear that, down the road, the owners won’t open new labor discussions with them so long as a draft is in place.

The two sides have another month to bargain, and may use all of it. The start/finish line for NFL contracts each year is Feb. 1.

If there isn’t a player-owner agreement by then, David Doty, the federal judge who has jurisdiction in the case, is expected to rule for or against on the 600 players who have filed for free agency as of that date.