Deadline Looms For NFL, Players

Upshaw and Tagliabue skipped the Pro Bowl in Hawaii last week to return to the East Coast after the Super Bowl and resume the labor deliberations, but Upshaw said there has been no progress.

A letter written by union attorney James Quinn, delivered by e-mail Friday to Tagliabue and Harold Henderson, the league's chief labor executive, said that "we are rapidly approaching the next league year and our ability to get a deal done in this short time frame seems doubtful. Gene, Jeff [Kessler, another union attorney] and I are particularly concerned that so little progress has been made on the core economic issues that we have been discussing for nearly two years."

In the e-mail, Quinn identified the "three bedrock issues" in the negotiations as the salary cap, revenue sharing and the stadium loan program. He wrote that "in order for us to continue any form of salary cap, the players must obtain a significant increase (both in dollars and percentage) in our overall share of total league revenues." On the revenue-sharing issue, Quinn said that the union has "repeatedly made clear that we will not agree to any form of salary cap that does not deal with the 'free-rider effect' which unfairly benefits a handful of high-revenue clubs."

Upshaw has said that some owners of the league's wealthiest franchises aren't devoting a fair portion of their revenues to players' salaries. He has exempted the Redskins' Daniel Snyder, whose team generates the league's highest revenues but also usually has one of the NFL's heftiest player payrolls.

The teams share their national revenues equally, but the success of the Redskins and some other clubs in increasing streams of unshared local revenues has led to a fractious internal debate in which the less-prosperous franchises are seeking to have more of those revenues shared.

"There's a lot of infighting on their side," Upshaw said. "They don't believe they're going to have to do this, but that's the only way the low-revenue clubs can afford their commitment to us. My understanding is that there's a group of nine [wealthy teams] that's saying, 'If you force us into more revenue sharing, we'll sue you.' "

Of the stadium loan program, Quinn wrote that "the players are prepared to continue the . . . program in a form that makes sense to both sides" but it must come within the context of a bolstered revenue-sharing deal. Upshaw said the union will not contribute to any future stadium projects if there aren't labor and revenue-sharing deals in place. An NFL spokesman said yesterday the league had no response.

All of the uncertainty is creating extra work and additional worries for those people in charge of running teams.

"Right now we're operating with a Plan A and a Plan B," Baltimore Ravens General Manager Ozzie Newsome said. "We have both of them ready to go. That's all you can do. We've never faced a year like this since I've been on this side of the fence. We've never been where it went down to the 11th hour like this not knowing what the system is going to be."