FanHouse Nfl Players Union

NFL owners and players met Tuesday in Washington for three hours for their second round of collective bargaining negotiations. Nothing was accomplished (the union was upset, actually, that commissioner Roger Goodell was not in attendance), and no date is set for the next round of negotiations. But just as he did the day after the first negotiating session, union chief DeMaurice Smith is heading Wednesday to Capitol Hill.

Smith will bring 17 active players from 15 different NFL teams, including Kansas City's Mike Vrabel, Tennessee's Kevin Mawae and Baltimore's Domonique Foxworth, plus three retired players with him for meetings with congressional leaders. The point of the meetings is to stay on the attack. As he first told FanHouse last month, Smith believes the owners are planning to lock out the players in 2011, and both sides are working against a March deadline after which the 2010 season would be played without a salary cap and a 2011 lockout would be more difficult to prevent. So Smith is remaining in contact with Congress because it can help him with two specific threats against the league.

After a delay of more than a month, the NFL and its players will meet Tuesday for their second collective bargaining session. There are many issues to discuss as the sides work to avoid an uncapped 2010 season and a 2011 lockout of players by the owners. But according to sources close to the situation, one issue the players plan to raise during these negotiations is their desire to have some say in an NFL discipline policy currently controlled 100 percent by commissioner Roger Goodell.

FanHouse's Stephanie Stradley wrote in-depth about this issue a couple of weeks ago, and it's an issue that came up earlier this month when players union head DeMaurice Smith met with player reps from the 32 teams to plot strategy in advance of the next round of negotiations. According to a source familiar with that meeting, players are very upset over the idea of the commissioner as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to the league's personal conduct policy, and have expressed to union leadership a desire to seek some changes to the system.

What the union hasn't decided, however, is what form those changes should take.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- We didn't get a lot of time with new NFLPA boss DeMaurice Smith as he raced from his meeting with NFL owners to catch a plane. But while he took questions in the elevator, the lobby and the Ritz-Carlton driveway, Smith reiterated his belief that the key to a successful CBA negotiation will be the NFL owners' willingness to disclose more financial information to the players.

"Can we start talking? Yes. But the first thing I would like to talk about is the process of negotiation," Smith said. "It seems to me that the right place to start is a place where the players understand why the owners opted out of the current agreement."