...NFL

The lockout is over. After 4 1/2 months and a possible threat to the regular NFL season the NFL is back. As a fan I am happy, and I know millions more across the nation are as well. I am giving this a Digit Up Below is a breakdown of what the new CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) consist of and what to look forward to.






1. Familiar free agency is back: Free agency returns to the way it was done from 1993 through 2009. A player needs four years of experience to become an unrestricted free agent. In the uncapped year of 2010, players needed six years of experience to hit the open market. That puts 448 players on the market, starting July 28. Owners tried and failed to slow the potentially hot market by asking for right-of-first-refusals on three players, but players vetoed that notion, complaining that 236 budding unrestricted free agents in 2010 were relegated to restricted free-agent status. Restricted free agency is limited to players with three years of experience.

2. Cap stands at $120.375 million: The salary cap is $120.375 million, but each team has the option of using a $3 million exemption this year on a signed player to free up some room. Next year, teams will have the option of designating three player exemptions at $1.5 million each. These are used to transition into a salary cap that decreased from $128 million in 2009. There is also a mandatory cash minimum payroll for each team at 89 percent of the cap, which translates into $107.1 million per team.

3. Rookie wage scale 2.0: In 1993, owners thought they had a hard, unbreakable rookie wage system, but agents broke it by negotiating option bonuses, escalator clauses and one-time bonuses. The new rookie wage scale is supposed to cut top rookie contracts by more than 50 percent. First-round picks get four-year deals in which the club holds a fifth-year option. There are slotted four-year deals from Rounds 2 through 7. Here's the discount. Cam Newton, the first pick in this year's draft, would be eligible for a four-year, $22.03 million contract. If the Panthers keep him for a fifth year, his salary would be at the average of the top 10 salaries of other quarterbacks. One unique part about the new system is it should prevent long holdouts. At some point in August, unsigned draft choices lose their leverage if they aren't signed. There is another clause that prevents draft picks from holding out after they sign. If he holds out during the deal, he is prohibited from renegotiating his contract. There is a limit to the amount of money given to rookies. The max total in 2011 is $874 million.

4. Minimum salaries going up: One of the selling points for the players is an increase in the minimum salaries. Owners have agreed to a 10-12 percent increase in the minimum salary structure. Rookies, for example, would go from $330,000 to $375,000. The increases go to $450,000 for second-year players, $525,000 for third-year players, $600,000 for fourth-year players, $685,000 for players with five-to-seven years of experience, $810,000 for players with eight-to-10 years of experience and $910,000 for players with more than 10 years of experience.

5. Franchise tags: Although this was one of the last big issues being contested by the players, there will be no change in a team's ability to annually place a franchise or transition tag on a top player to retain his rights. Players were pushing for a system in which players could be franchised only once. That would free up Drew Brees of the Saints for free agency next year and stop the Colts from franchising Peyton Manning next year. Owners voted to move ahead with the deal without that change.

WINNERS

• The owners and the players. Call it a tie. Each got a little something they wanted, and most important, each will get a lot of money. The owners now will keep 52 percent of the revenues, not the 47 percent from the previous collective bargaining agreement that so rankled them, but they also will have to operate with a $120 million salary cap, with an additional approximately $20 million for benefits, and have a guaranteed spend. That guaranteed spend was important to the players, and they got it. In the end, the owners and players are splitting more than $9 billion. No one is losing.

• Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith. Sure, both men took hits, and the rhetoric, at times, was ugly. But the two men were able to keep their constituents together. Neither had massive factions develop, and Smith put together a sharp executive committee to negotiate.

Although they probably never will have the close, collegial relationship Paul Tagliabue and Gene Upshaw enjoyed, Goodell and Smith worked together to close the deal and keep the owners and players from losing games. That was the ultimate goal.

• The lawyers. Goodell was right when he kept hammering home the point that a new collective bargaining agreement would not be negotiated in the courts, it would be negotiated at the table. The various court cases created leverage for each side, but ultimately it only benefitted the lawyers, who earned hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees.

• Veteran players. Life just got a little easier for them.

Minimum salaries will be increased, so that is a win. Also, the offseason got five weeks shorter, and easier. Coaches cannot make players report to team facilities until late April. There will be four fewer organized team activities, fewer full-contact practices in the preseason and regular season and a lower limit to the amount of practice time and contact.

These will be welcome changes, particularly to the older players. Coaches like practices in full pads. Players, not so much.

• The city of Indianapolis. All that was at stake for Indy was the projected $400 million economic boost from hosting Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5 at Lucas Oil Stadium. The league had asked the city to keep two weeks open, in the event they had to push back the date for the Super Bowl. Now, the city can welcome upward of 150,000 cash-carrying people who will descend upon Indianapolis, stay in its hotels, eat in its restaurants, drink in its bars and ride in its cabs.


LOSERS

• The plaintiffs in Brady v. the NFL, particularly Logan Mankins and Vincent Jackson. They got nothing for putting their name on the lawsuit filed against their employer, not money nor leverage nor freedom. To hear Mankins' agent tell it, they did not even get clear communication from the union's lawyers, particularly Jeff Kessler.

Mankins and Jackson have been portrayed as greedy, asking for a cash settlement for their efforts. Frank Bauer, Mankins' agent, told ESPN senior NFL analyst Chris Mortensen that Mankins has not made monetary demands.

"We haven't talked to Jeff Kessler," Bauer said. "There has been no communication, but it's irresponsible to report Logan has made monetary demands. Are we disappointed there has been no communication? Hugely. He trusted the union and Kessler to fight for Logan Mankins and the other players."

• The first-round draft picks. Oh, to be Sam Bradford, the last No. 1 overall pick to land the monster first contract. Last year, without ever having thrown a pass for the St. Louis Rams, Bradford got a six-year, $78 million contract with $50 million guaranteed. Cam Newton, this year's No. 1 overall pick, will make roughly half that in his first contract with the Carolina Panthers.

The first-round picks will not really cash in until their fifth year, when the teams will have the option to extend the first-rounder's contract at what the league called "agreed-upon tender amounts." That is not Bradford or Matthew Stafford money, not even close.

• As a result, the agents. Because the rookie contracts will be significantly less, so too will be the agents' haul. Also, the new deal will reduce agent fees for rookie contracts from a maximum of 3 percent to a maximum of 2 percent beginning in 2012.

So not only will the agents be taking a percentage of a smaller contract than they had in the past, that percentage will be even smaller. For agents, this is very, very bad news.

• The Hall of Fame game. It has been canceled. Good news for the Chicago Bears and St. Louis Rams, who will not have to rush to get ready for the Aug. 7 game, bad news for the city of Canton and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Now all 32 teams will play four preseason games apiece, not five, as the Bears and Rams would have done had the game been played.

It is only fair, after an irregular offseason, that the teams open training camps at the same time and play the same number of games.

• The fans. Yes, there will be football in the fall, but the fans had to listen to all of this nonsense for more than four months.

The draft was not as fun because no trades involving players could happen. There were no practices or signings or depth charts, no look at how the draft picks will fit in.

In essence, the NFL has been the No Fun League.