Possible Lockout in the NFL?

By Scott Daniels, Esq., NFL Draft Bible

If you haven't realized yet, the National Football League is clearly the most dominant of the four major sports in America. Ratings prove it. Revenue proves it. The circus that surrounds the Superbowl proves it.

NFL players are signing monumental contracts and teams are raking in millions with the success of the league. While baseball is attempting to weather the steroid storm, hockey is still recovering from a lockout a few years ago. And finally, the National Basketball League is more concerned about globalization than popularizing the sport in the states.

Following what has been dubbed one of the greatest Superbowl's of all time, the NFL appears to be virtually incapable of failure, even with Spygate and the intermittent presence of a few bad apples.

Well, it seems appearance can be misleading.

The NFL may be in serious trouble.

As many of you are well aware, the body of law in the NFL is the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). It's essentially a long list of bylaws agreed upon by the owners and the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). It's like a constitution for professional football.

The current CBA is slated to expire in 2011. Interestingly enough, the player's association or the owners can opt out of this agreement on or before November 8, 2008. If that happens, 2009 will be a normal season and in 2010, the league will not have a salary cap.

With no working CBA in place, a lockout or player strike would be inevitable. Apparently, the owners and the players are very far apart at this point. The main dispute, as it was before the two sides came to an agreement to extend the current CBA in 2006, revolves around revenue sharing.

The owners feel that the players are receiving more than they deserve through the current revenue sharing program and some owners have began to quietly express their discern about this. In fact, Gene Upshaw, executive director of the Player's Association, is preparing for the owners to opt out of the current agreement.

The financial ramifications of a strike or lockout are huge. The National Hockey League suffered a huge decline in popularity and lost more than just money after their strike in 2004. Thousands of loyal fans simply became disinterested.

So, once again, as we've seen so many times in sports, the players and owners are at odds over dollars. With millions of dollars comes greed. Both sides will have to make concessions, or we could face the real possibility of a strike in the NFL.