The NFL and the players' union agreed to a 24-hour extension of the current collective bargaining agreement today so negotiations can continue. The CBA was set to expire at midnight, which would likely have prompted the first work stoppage since 1987 for a league that rakes in $9 billion a year. The main sticking point is how to divide that revenue, including what cut team owners should get up front to help cover certain costs, such as stadium construction.
Under the old deal, owners received about $1 billion off the top. They entered these negotiations seeking to add another $1 billion to that. As they try to work it out, President Obama said he's not planning to weigh in: He thinks "they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way and be true to their fans, who are the ones who obviously allow for all the money that they're making. So my expectation and hope is that they will resolve it without me intervening, because it turns out I've got a lot of other stuff to do." (More NFL stories.)