By Breanna Jacobs
On Saturday July 24, the NFL Player’s Association and league owners reached a deal that will bring the lock-out to a close. Now that both sides have ironed out the 10 year labor agreement, a timeline has been set to get teams ready to begin the fast approaching pre-season.
The timeline is as follows:
Monday, July 25: Teams can go to a 90-man roster and free agent lists will be released.
Tuesday, July 26: Agreements may be made with rookies and undrafted free agents. Also, existing team members can start to report to team facilities.
Wednesday, July 27: Teams will begin reporting to training camps. Ten teams will report on Wednesday, ten on Thursday, and ten on Friday, based on when their first pre-season game is scheduled. The two leftover teams, the New York Jets and the Houston Texans, will report to camp on Sunday.
Thursday, July 28: Teams can begin cutting players.
Friday, July 29: Transactions can start to be filed to league offices.
Thursday, August 4: CBA must be ratified and recertified by the players on this date.
The 32 player representatives have yet to vote on the “approved” deal. It is suspected that once all the final wording is set and the deal is presented to the players, they will vote to put the new CBA into place.
The NFLPA is expected to hold a press conference later today.
Watch ESPN for live and continued coverage of the latest NFL lock-out news.
Has all of this exposure actually helped the NFL? Already the USA’s most popular game, they made fans realize just how much this product means to them. Life without football was a nightmare that seemed possible. With the lockout dominating sports shows, the NFL has been the topic of interest more so this summer than I can ever recall. Losing the HOF game is something we can live with, and I am thinking that the NFL not only returns to the success they had last year, but actually improve as a result of this lockout.
I completely agree.
After all this disagreement and hard work that they put in to come to a compromise, it would surely be a shame if the NFL wasn’t as, or even more, successful than it has always been.
I think this is going to not only strengthen individual NFL franchises, but I think it’s going to strengthen the league as a whole.
Well I’ll disagree. I’m not a big football fan to begin with, and the promise of a missed season would have been interesting. If the owners have taken some sort of cut financially, look for them to make up that money somehow, either by increasing ticket prices, increasing merchandise prices, or whatever. I think the fans will suffer in the long run, either in small ways like blacked out games or charges for pay packages on tee vee, or something else.