Sacked! and the clock runs out

Surprised? I am. Expired collective bargaining agreement, decertification and probable lockout. No disrespect to the tragedy in Japan, but this is a metaphorical tsunami that can well damage all concerned. I think going forward it will be very difficult for the owners in both a court of law and the court of public opinion. The NFL/NFLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement expired because the players would not agree to extend it unless the owners provided the financial information the players had requested. The big sticking point in the negotiations is the owners insistence their costs have risen necessitating taking a second billion off the top of the revenue pie. (The owners want to take $2 billion of the roughly $9 billion in annual revenue generated by the league, before splitting the rest under a formula that provides roughly 60% to player compensation.) Yet the owners are only offering to provide limited access to financial information. This sounds like the typical discovery dispute - one side provides documents requested by the other side and after the production, the requesting party says it needs more. The real issue is hard to assess. Irrespective of the merits of what was produced and whether it was sufficient, I think owners will have a difficult time convincing anyone they provided all the financials the union needed.