FOX Sports’ Alex Marvez has some outstanding news for football fans, as he’s reporting that the NFLPA has entered negations with commissioner Roger Goodell and the two sides are entertaining a new six-year Collective Bargaining Agreement that would extend through the 2016 season.
There are still some hurdles that must be overcome before a new deal can be struck, however.
While stating some progress is being made, Smith remains adamant that the NFL provide detailed financial records for its teams before an agreement can be struck. Goodell has strongly resisted such requests and shows no sign of acquiescing.
Such information is especially important to the NFLPA because Smith claims the league is demanding an 18 percent reduction in player salaries. NFL executive vice president/legal counsel Jeff Pash has said Smith’s contention is a “misrepresentation” of the league’s proposal. Pash said the $1 billion generated by a new split of applied revenues between the two parties would be reinvested toward business stratagems designed to produce more money for both sides. Pash also said that player salaries wouldn’t necessarily be affected. The league generated roughly $9 billion in 2009 with a 52-to-48 percent overall revenue split between the NFLPA and NFL.
Click here to read the full article, including a more detailed explanation as to why Smith is demanding that the league shows the union its financial records.
The two sides are unlikely to come to terms on an agreement before some posturing takes place, but with the threat of a lockout coming in 2011, it’s highly encouraging that talks have already begun. Everyone stands to lose a substantial amount of money if there were no football next year, so chances are a deal will eventually get done.
Let’s hope both sides can come to an agreement soon.
Chad Jones, the rookie safety for the Giants who was seriously injured in a car wreck last week, has been transferred to the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center according to the New York Post.
Jones was accompanied on the flight by his girlfriend, Jade Newman. He is expected to require plastic surgery on his left leg and possibly additional orthopedic procedures.
Jones was only days away from attending the NFL’s rookie symposium in Carlsbad, Calif., when disaster struck. He was the driver in a serious accident early last Friday morning when his Range Rover slammed into a street-car pole in New Orleans.
The two passengers in the vehicle escaped with minor injuries but Jones suffered multiple fractures to his left leg and underwent eight hours of surgery to improve the blood flow in his left foot.
Jones won’t be able to play football this season and perhaps never again, although his agent, Rocky Arceneaux, has stated he believes Jones will be able to return to professional sports, if not football than perhaps baseball, where Jones was a left-handed pitcher on LSU’s 2009 national championship baseball team.
Here’s hoping Jones makes a full recovery and can one day play football again, whether that’s a year from now or longer down the road. But whether he laces up his cleats again is a moot point because he’s still breathing, and that’s the only thing that matters right now.
Here’s where I stop ruminating about rumors and pose a few predictions about what will happen in the NBA over the next couple of weeks. Let’s start with a near-sure thing and work our way around the league.
1. Dwyane Wade will re-sign with the Heat.
He has said all along that Miami is where he wants to be, and even if he strikes out on getting LeBron and/or Chris Bosh to join him, he won’t have a tough time recruiting a couple of other high-priced free agents to join him. Whether it’s Carlos Boozer, Amare Stoudemire, Joe Johnson or Rudy Gay, someone will want to play in sunny South Florida with a Top 5 player who has already proven he can take over an NBA Finals.
2. Chris Bosh will also sign with Miami.
I thought the Bulls might have inside track on Bosh, but if we’re to believe Dan LeBatard, a deal is already in place that would bring Bosh to Miami. Even if LeBron doesn’t join them, Bosh and Wade will make an excellent one-two punch.
3. LeBron and Carlos Boozer will sign with Chicago.
It’s the reunion that no one was expecting. I have no earthly idea what LeBron is going to do, but he says that winning is the most important thing, so if that’s true, he’ll either sign with the Bulls or join Wade and Bosh in Miami. With his ego, I think he’d rather play in Chicago in the shadow of Michael Jordan’s legacy than join ‘Wade’s team’ in South Florida. But who really knows? (Remember, I said these were sure-to-be-wrong predictions.) As for Boozer, if the Bulls strike out on Bosh, he’s the next-best fit at the four. The Bulls could take advantage of his strengths (low-post scoring, rebounding) while Joakim Noah could hide his weaknesses (post defense).
4. Joe Johnson will sign with the Clippers.
Think about it Knick fans — would you want to play under the NY microscope after the city missed out on the big-name free agents? Expectations are so high in the Big Apple and Johnson is a quiet guy that has proven in Atlanta that he doesn’t deal well with critical fans. He’s reportedly close with Clipper GM Neil Olshey and would be a nice fit there since he can play small forward alongside Eric Gordon on the wing.
5. Stoudemire will land in the Big Apple.
I almost wrote “land in New Jersey” but I didn’t want to send any Knick fans off the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge. If predictions #1-#4 come to fruition, the Knicks won’t be a very attractive place to play, but Stoudemire thrived under Mike D’Antoni in Phoenix and the Knicks will be sure to throw gobs of money to save face after pretty much striking out on the other top free agents. D’Antoni can run Stoudemire at the five and…
6. The Knicks will re-sign David Lee…
…to play the four. They’ll be defensively challenged, but that’s life. Then…
7. The Knicks will trade Eddy Curry for Gilbert Arenas…
…which will make them even more defensively challenged, but again, that’s life. At least the Knicks will be fun to watch.
8. The Grizzlies will match a max offer for Rudy Gay.
The Nets (and maybe the T-Wolves) will make a strong run at Rudy Gay, but the Grizzlies’ owner Michael Heisley has said all along that he’ll match any offer Gay gets in free agency.
9. Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce re-sign with the Mavs and C’s, respectively.
These guys aren’t going anywhere.
A woman used CPR after the boy was found floating about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, but he died at St. Rose Dominican Hospital, a police officer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“It appears that it’s just a complete tragedy,” Metro Lt. Dennis Flynn told Fox5. “It only takes a brief minute for someone to take their eye off the child.”
The boy was named Christian, and Cunningham, who became pastor of a church called Remnant Ministries after his NFL career, sometimes performed baptisms in that hot tub, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
It doesn’t sound as if the family was being negligent; it just sounds as if the situation was an accident.
Either way, it’s a tragedy and my heart goes out to Cunningham and his family.
Michael Vick and his attorney may have some explaining to do about the details surrounding the night Quanis Phillips was shot.
According to Vick’s lawyer, Larry Woodward, Phillips (a co-defendant in Vick’s dog fighting case) was an uninvited guest at the quarterback’s party. Woodward also states that Vick was “long gone” before Phillips was shot in the leg, but surveillance video suggests otherwise.
From the Philadelphia Daily News:
Allen Fabijan, a spokesman for the bar-restaurant, the Guadalajara, told the Daily Press, of the Newport News-Hampton area, that the video was turned over to Virginia Beach police yesterday morning. Fabijan told the newspaper that Vick “and his entourage” were in two cars that left the front of the restaurant at 2:07 a.m. He said shots rang out 3 minutes later.
“I’m not saying that Michael Vick did the shooting. But he did not leave [long] before,” Fabijan said.
Woodward, reached yesterday by the Daily Press, said: “I stand by what I said, that Michael was long gone before the shooting, does not know who did the shooting and had nothing to do with the shooting. Anyone who says any different better be very careful.”
The plot thickens.
Vick (or more specifically, his attorney) isn’t the only one on record saying that he was long gone before the shooting, as Falcons’ receiver Roddy White also supports those claims. Could this be a situation of mistaken identity or is Vick/Woodward lying about when the quarterback left the party?
Either way, it still doesn’t mean that Vick was involved in the shooting or knows who pulled the trigger. But if video surveillance disproves his story, then this could open up an entirely new can of worms.
He’s been saying all along that he doesn’t want to be a sidekick and thinks that a team should build around him. Yet there’s this feeling around the league that he’s going to go wherever LeBron goes. Some execs have even said that he’s attaching himself to LeBron, instead of LeBron attaching himself to Bosh. I’m sorry, but that’s not being ‘the man.’
If that’s the case, why is there this sense that Bosh will only sign a six-year deal (meaning that he’s going to force a sign-and-trade with the Raptors and his new team)? If he’s going to mess around with a sign-and-trade, his new team is going to have to give up something, and there’s no way around it — it’s going to hurt the team. Whether the Knicks trade David Lee, the Nets trade Derrick Favors, the Bulls trade Luol Deng or the Heat trade Michael Beasley, along with a draft pick or two, his new team will be a little worse off than it would have been if he had signed with the team outright.
In other words, if he forces a sign-and-trade, then winning is most definitely not his “only priority.” One of his priorities might be winning, but the top priority would be the extra cash and the extra year that only the Raptors can offer.
In fact, ‘winning’ and being ‘the man’ don’t fit together in this situation. How is a team that is built around Bosh better than a team (with Bosh) that is built around a better player, like LeBron? Wouldn’t a combination of LeBron/Wade/Bosh in Miami have a better shot to win more titles than a Knicks team built around Bosh?
Chris Bosh (or the Chris Bosh Situation) is really starting to confuse me. I’m glad free agency is only a few hours away.
Miami Herald sports columnist Dan LeBartard isreporting that Bosh-to-Miami is pretty much a done deal.
I hear bosh-miami is done ..bosh-wade shared agent avoids tampering…its why beasley, chalmers, anthony still here…raptors get them
This is unconfirmed and can’t become ‘official’ until midnight. He mentions Bosh’s agent, Henry Thomas. Thomas is also Wade’s agent, so it’s possible that this deal was worked out through him. But the Heat had to be involved at some point to know which players to hold on to.
If the report is true, it lends credence to the rumor that LeBron, Bosh and Wade are going to hook up in Miami. At the very least, Wade and Bosh would form a nice duo in South Florida.
While he’s a little late to the party, Warren Sapp is the latest media member to bash Albert Haynesworth about the way he has handled his contract situation with the Redskins this offseason.
From the Washington Post:
Let’s stop the BS, like we like to say,” Sapp told Vic Carucci and Howard Balzer on SiRIUS NFL Radio. “I mean, c’mon, son. You sat at the table. The people told you they had a very lovely check for you….Albert Haynesworth, you took the check, now show up to the job, son. It’s that simple. You take that kind of check. I mean, I’ll flip dogs for you. I mean, c’mon, what you want me to do, you want me to return punts? I mean, what? C’mon. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.”
Then Sapp was asked whether Haynesworth should be considered a dominant defensive tackle when he’s playing and healthy, possibly the best defensive player in the game.
“No. No. No,” Sapp said. “He’s not consistent enough. The numbers aren’t there. I mean, I saw the four plays in a row playing the Atlanta Falcons when he was on the goal line, he looks like a manchild. Some of those games he was running, him and [Kyle] Vanden Bosch, they really had that defense rolling. He was playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.
“But you can’t tell me that a man that has, what, [28] sacks in his life is one of the most dominant players to ever play this game. I mean, I don’t remember that game where he took it over, you know what I’m saying? I remember me and Brett Favre up in Green Bay going at it in the playoff game. I don’t have that signature game for Haynesworth. I don’t have that signature season. Don’t give me one. That’s a rule of ours, isn’t it? I mean, one’s a fluke. Two, you become consistent. Now three, you’ve arrived. I don’t think the man’s had a 10-sack season. I mean, Tony Dungy told me when I was playing the game, he said you want to be arrived in this game, you’ve got to get to 10 sacks. That’s what I tell all young defensive tackles, you want a name in this game, rush like an end, and then you get in the conversation.”
I agree that Haynesworth isn’t the most dominating defensive players to have ever played the game, but let’s not shortchange him because of his selfish attitude. While I think the Vikings’ Kevin Williams has been a better overall defensive tackle than Haynesworth over the last three years, Albert is still one of those rare DTs that can play the run and provide a solid pass rush. And while other players may outperform him in a given year (take the Falcons’ Jonathan Babineaux and the Ravens’ Kelly Gregg in 2009 for example), he’s still a dominating force when healthy.
While I think he’s shooting from the hip a bit with his comments, Sapp does have a point about Haynesworth not having a signature game to his credit. There hasn’t been one time where Haynesworth has completely taken over a game, unlike Sapp, who was outstanding for many years in Tampa.
