NFL Makes a Deal

Editor's note: This article was updated at 2:30 p.m.

The games will apparently go on for the most popular sports league in America.

The NFL Players Association and NFL owners have reached an agreement after a summer-long lockout. The deal was reached early this morning, and the NFL Players Association executive committee then signed off on it this afternoon, with DeMaurice Smith of the players association announcing, "Football is back." The executive committee voted unanimously in favor of the agreement.

At a press conference, players association president Kevin Mawae said, “I want to thank the fans, it’s been a roller-coaster ride.”

NFL.com reports that the parties negotiated until 3 a.m., and the players' executive committee went through the deal beginning at about 11 a.m., emerging around 2 p.m. to announce approval.

And if the full players' union votes, as expected, to end the 136-day lockout, the wheeling and dealing for free agents among various teams and the signing of rookies could begin as early as tomorrow. The league will have to compress the normal five months of dealing with players and among themselves and cram those actions into a few weeks before the beginning of the season, thanks to the months-long lockout.

Players and owners have been at odds over how to split the billions of dollars in revenue generated by the league, which is by far the most lucrative sports enterprise in the United States.

According to Forbes, it looks like each side got a little of what they wanted. Owners got a bigger share of the revenue pie. Players working for the league's minimum salary get a raise. There will be less hitting in training camp and preseason, reducing players’ injury risk. And the season will remain 16 games long through at least 2013, though owners had wanted a longer season.

It was clear throughout a spring and summer of negotiations that neither side wanted to see a canceled or truncated season, given the amount of money at stake. So today’s apparent deal isn’t a huge surprise. And it will be quite some time before there's another chance for NFL labor trouble. The deal runs for 10 years.

“Having a 10-year agreement is extraordinarily great,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said at the press conference.

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Kent Bernhard Jr. is News Editor of Portfolio.com