Nfl Lockout

The National Football League (NFL) generates billions of dollars in revenue every year. This revenue is split between the team owners and the players by way of a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The last CBA, prior to 2012, was agreed upon in 1993 and was valid till 2000. In 1998 and then again in 2003 the CBA was extended till 2006. In 2006 it was requested that the CBA be extended until 2012 but there was a stipulation that the owners could opt out in 2008 and cut the length of time by two years. In 2008 the owners voted to exercise their opt-out clause and the CBA was then to expire 3 March 2011. The owners were concerned that their share of the revenue was not sufficient to upkeep the stadiums and pay for other capital improvements. (Knopp, 2011) Interestingly enough there was a provision in the CBA that stated the salary cap would no longer be in effect in the final year of the deal as well. The salary cap is a set amount of money that each team is allowed to spend on player salaries for the year. By not having a salary cap in place that meant the teams could spend any amount of money for their team for the 2011 season. The deal had been put into place to force both sides to come to an agreement prior to the expiration of the CBA. The players agreed to extend the current salary cap for one year but the owners rejected the proposal. .After several meetings between the owners and players, to include mediation, the two sides could not come to an agreement and the NFL lockout began March 12, 2011. (“2011 NFL Lockout Timeline, 2011)

In the book, “Negotiation” (Lewicki, Barry, &Saunders, 2010) there is a conflict diagnostic model that one could use to determine how difficult or easy the dispute between the two sides could be resolved. The first dimension in the model involved the issues in question. The issue in question could be easy to resolve as the revenue could easily be divided into small parts. However there was more than just money at stake....