NFL players join the PR game of spinners and losers

IF THE NFL OWNERS and players had put as much effort into negotiating a labor deal as they seem to be in trying to win the hearts and minds of America's football fans, everything would be sweetness and light and I'd be writing about which free agents the Eagles might be interested in signing rather than fun stuff like decertifications and lockouts and preliminary injunctions.

Both sides seem to be oblivious to the fact that most football fans hate their guts right now after they failed miserably last week to figure out a way to divvy up $9.3 billion in annual revenue.

No sooner had talks collapsed than owners who usually can't be bothered to say anything more to their fans than "your PSL payment is late," were issuing statements left and right blaming the players for the fact that you might not have football to watch next fall. Accused them of leaving a wonderful deal on the table. Accused them of preferring to settle their differences in court rather than at the bargaining table.

Yesterday, it was the players' turn. The union - oops, I'm sorry - the trade association formerly known as the union, held a 45-minute conference call with reporters to set the record straight and let you know that the real bad guys in this whole mess isn't them, it's those greedy billionaire owners.

"We're here to tell you what really happened," said NFLPA assistant executive director George Atallah. "We're not going to allow the league to let 36 hours of a media PR blitz erase what has been planned and prepared for almost 3 years now."

We should be so lucky.

Atallah is referring, of course, to the owners' Friday-night decision to lock out the players, which was preceded 7 hours earlier by the players association informing the league that it was filing for decertification so that it could strip the league of its antitrust protection and sue, baby, sue.

To borrow NFLPA executive director De Smith's favorite verb, I dig courtroom drama.

Smith was not on yesterday's conference call. That Saturday basketball game of his daughter's that he was coaching in must have gone into triple overtime. Atallah was joined on the conference call by NFLPA president Kevin Mawae, Colts center Jeff Saturday and Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who is one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit the players filed against the league right after it imposed the lockout. And if you're having trouble working up a good cry for quarterbacks with eight-figure salaries who are suing their bosses, well, join the crowd.

"The reason I'm one of the lead plaintiffs is because it's important to me," Brees said. "By doing this, I represent not only the 1,900 players in the league now, but also the guys who played before us and the guys who will come after us. That's why I put my name on it."

Whether the players' lawsuit ever makes it to the courtroom remains to be seen. There's no principle involved this time like there was in the late 1980s when the players sued to get free agency. This is just about a big obscene pile of money and how to split it. It's still possible that both sides eventually will come to their senses and realize there's plenty for everybody, and a lot, lot more on the way.

But for the moment, they'd rather give each other the finger and call each other names. Mawae, who hasn't even played since 2009, called the league's claim that the union walked away from the negotiating table last week, "a complete fabrication and lie."

"When you say you've done everything you can [to get a deal done] and ask for a caucus that lasts just 3 1/2 hours and then you take off for dinner at the end of the day, that's not negotiating and that's not the players walking away from a deal," he said.

"They've been putting things out there that have been complete falsehoods and complete lies. It's frustrating to have sat in that [bargaining] room and know that a paid attorney [NFL executive vice president of labor Jeff Pash] is lying, not just to us, but to the entire public and fans of the NFL about what happened over the last 14 days."

The owners, claiming the old collective bargaining agreement was unbalanced and tilted too much toward the players, initially asked for an additional $1 billion in cost credits on top of the $1 billion they already were getting. By late Friday, they had come significantly off that number, but continued to balk at the players' request to see audited team-by-team financial statements.

"It's nearly impossible to negotiate a fair deal when you have no idea what the [cost] numbers are on the other side," Brees said. "Considering what they were demanding back from us, we needed proof. We needed financial information to back that up. And it was never provided.

"It was all a front. It was a show. There was no real intent to get a deal done."

When the owners and players eventually settle their differences, whether it's in court or at a bargaining table, Mawae said there is one thing you can absolutely, positively count on: The players never will agree to the owners' request to expand the regular season to 18 games.

"I'm going to tell everybody right now who's on this call," Mawae said in his best teamster voice. "Eighteen games is not going to happen. We cannot justify it for the safety and health of our players.

"Eighteen games was taken off the table the first time the owners proposed it, and it wasn't part of the proposal last time we gave it to them, and it never will be."

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