National Football League Players Association

The strike to end all strikes, it wasn't. No picketing. No violence. Not one raw chicken leg flung. But what the National Football League walkout and lockout of 1982 lacked in classic labor drama, it more than made up in ill will and in-fighting. For 57 days, as an NFL season wasted away, management and players stuck their tongues out at each other. The NFL Players Assn. demanded, among other things, that its members receive 55% of the league's gross revenues.

CUT OFF AT THE IMPASSE Disputes between players and management threaten the seasons of two premier U.S. pro sports enterprises The NFL is in full lockdown (or lockout) mode; the NBA might follow suit once the Finals are done and its labor agreement expires. Players and team owners in both sports say publicly they want an agreement, but the reality is any accord in either sport may be quite a way down the road. No one has indicated much willingness to give on major talking points, which could mean that for the first time, two major sports could be shut down by labor discord at the same time.

For the past three years, Marcus Allen has had to play for the Raiders without the salary raise that he and many others believe he has earned as a productive ballcarrier, pass receiver and blocker for Bo Jackson and others. The club has declined either to trade him or improve him financially since Allen's last contract expired in 1988. Instead, taking advantage of football law, it has made him play for the Raiders under the terms of his expired contract.

Three more years of labor peace, and the NFL will have gone a quarter-century without a work stoppage. But don't buy that anniversary cake just yet. A lockout could be looming. DeMaurice Smith, newly appointed executive director of the NFL Players Assn., said as much Monday in a visit to Indianapolis Colts training camp. He told reporters he expects team owners to lock out the players when the current collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2010 season. Tough talk?

CHICAGO -- Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman Kyle Turley, a nine-year NFL veteran, said Tuesday he has agreed to donate his paycheck for the Dec. 23 game against the Detroit Lions to an organization that is helping aging football retirees who are in dire medical and financial need.

The drug story that won't go away didn't. In fact, after Commissioner Paul Tagliabue's first Super Bowl news conference Friday, the speculation was that it will be Dr. Forest Tennant who goes away. Tennant, of West Covina, has been the chief adviser for the National Football League's drug-testing program since it began in 1986.

The NFL will have four more years of labor tranquillity stretching through the 2007 season after a deal was reached between the league and the NFL Players Assn. to extend the current collective bargaining agreement. The deal will extend the salary cap through the 2006 season with an uncapped year in 2007 as an incentive for the sides to extend the agreement again.

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue warned team owners Monday that negotiations on the collective-bargaining agreement had "exhausted themselves" and reached a "dead end." The annual league meetings opened on that ominous note, underscoring one of the NFL's priorities: extending the labor agreement beyond 2007. It has been the league's policy to renew the pact well in advance of its expiration.

Pushed to the brink of a labor crisis, one that could redefine pro football's competitive landscape, the NFL and its players' union agreed Sunday to extend their negotiating deadline by three days. The decision was announced less than an hour before the 9 p.m. PST start of free agency, when many NFL teams appeared poised to purge their roster of some high-salaried players to comply with the 2006 salary cap.

NFL owners, in hopes of preserving labor peace before the start of free agency, will convene in New York today for an emergency meeting to discuss how to proceed. The league and the players' union have been working toward an agreement that could add $10 million to $15 million to a 2006 salary cap that is projected to be about $95 million a team. Talks have reached an impasse.

Who's the boss? The NFL Players Assn. will decide today in Maui when its 32 player representatives -- one for each team -- vote in a new union head to replace the late Gene Upshaw. The process has been anything but tidy so far, with dissension and infighting marking a search process that one candidate has called "corrosive."

A federal jury in San Francisco on Monday ordered the NFL Players Assn. to pay $28.1 million in damages to retired players after determining that the union had ignored contracts covering reimbursement for use of their images in such things as video games and sports trading cards. The civil court award included $7.1 million in actual damages and $21 million in punitive damages.

ATLANTA -- NFL owners voted unanimously Tuesday to shorten their collective bargaining agreement with the players' union. That doesn't mean a work stoppage is in the offing -- that would come three seasons from now in the absence of a new deal. But what it does mean is that the 2010 season will be played without a salary cap if the sides cannot reach an agreement before then.

Retired football players who are struggling with medical and financial setbacks received welcome news Monday when the NFL and its players' union promised financial and medical assistance for those in need of costly joint-replacement surgery and recuperative care. Word of the new program came on the eve of a morning news conference in Minneapolis, during which an unknown number of current NFL players will announce that they are going to donate all or part of their Dec.

CHICAGO -- Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman Kyle Turley, a nine-year NFL veteran, said Tuesday he has agreed to donate his paycheck for the Dec. 23 game against the Detroit Lions to an organization that is helping aging football retirees who are in dire medical and financial need.

CHICAGO -- Former pro football players who have been waging an increasingly hostile battle over retiree disability benefits today will make public the names of current players who also fault the NFL and its players' union for failing to properly assist retired players with serious medical and financial problems.

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Friday that negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with the players' union are not going well, but his comments were not as extreme as those of the union leader, who earlier characterized the talks as "one step forward, five steps back." "I said a couple of weeks ago that it was one step forward, two steps back, so he stepped back further than I thought," said Tagliabue, referring to Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn.

As charges and counter-charges continued to swirl around the Reggie Bush case Friday, the head of the NFL Players Assn. spoke out on what he characterized as the "severe" challenge of policing agents, financial advisors and marketing representatives intent on wooing college football players. Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFLPA, made his statements by e-mail in response to questions from The Times.

WASHINGTON -- Gene Upshaw, head of the NFL Players Assn., sat in a meeting room at the union's headquarters Wednesday and explained why the names of four retired NFL players were buried in his testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee the day before. In that testimony, Upshaw had asked Congress to alter a seemingly arcane part of federal law governing pension and disability plans -- a change that would give the union control of the board instead of sharing it with the NFL.

WASHINGTON -- Responding to often-emotional testimony, several U.S. senators Tuesday threatened to step in and fix the NFL's pension and medical disability program if league and players' union officials don't quickly improve the system -- one that retirees increasingly describe as dysfunctional. The possibility of congressional oversight came during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in which NFL Players Assn.