DirecTV deal is lockout insurance

DANA POINT, Calif. -- In securing an incredible rights fee from DirecTV to air games on satellite TV -- $1 billion per year from 2011 through 2014 -- the league got something far more valuable than money alone. The NFL got lockout insurance.

Even if games are not played in 2011, the NFL's deal with DirecTV calls for the league to be paid the billion-dollar rights fee, a source close to the talks told SI.com here at the league meetings.

That certainly won't drive the league away from the bargaining table with new NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith when negotiations begin this spring, but it will give the owners a powerful strike fund of approximately $31 million per team in 2011.

The league's current deal with DirecTV runs through the 2010 season. By announcing the new satellite deal so far in advance of its effective date, and by quietly publicizing that the rights fees in a bad economy have grown from $700 million a year to $1 billion, the NFL is showing the players that it has a war chest and won't be pressured into making a deal it doesn't want just for the sake of avoiding a work stoppage in 2011.

This will be a huge factor in the looming negotiations, one that clearly will make the league not as desperate to resolve a simmering dispute with the players that began when owners opted out of the current collective bargaining agreement last year.

The NFL will have uninterrupted business as usual through the 2011 draft, 25 months from now. The next two seasons -- one with a salary cap this year, and one without a cap in 2010 -- will be held whether a new deal is struck or not. But without a new labor contract, the league presumably would lock the players out of training camp in 2011.

At these meetings, commissioner Roger Goodell has begun to lay out how advantageous it would be for players to get a deal done before the uncapped year in 2010. Veterans would have to have six years of credited service to be free agents instead of the current four; veterans with three to five years of experience would be restricted free agents. In addition, the top eight teams from the 2009 season would have significant free-agency restrictions; they'd be unable to sign free agents until they lost unsigned players of equal or higher value than the one they want to sign to another team.

DirecTV airs all Sunday afternoon games exclusively on satellite on its NFL Sunday Ticket package.

***

Now for your e-mail: