Mike Florio writes for profootballtalk.com, your best online source for football news except for robertwuhlshow.com. Mike joined Robert in Hour 1 to talk about another negotiation fail between the NFL owners and players. Podcast after the jump. 

Players can workout. Players can get their playbooks from coaches. And maybe veteran free agency activity next week. Holy smokes! Football may happen, after all.

Randy Cross is a 3-time Super Bowl Champion. He’s also going to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in July. Randy joined Robert in Hour 2 to talk about the latest developments in the NFL Labor soap opera. Podcast after the jump.

A judge’s decision has ended the NFL owners lockout of the players. Players are going to be allowed to show up to work today.
What a long, strange trip it’s been. And it may not be over.

The NFL is so confident they will play a 2011 season that they have decided to toy with the fragile emotions of the sports fan and release a regular season schedule.

Today, the owners and locked-out players hook up for the fourth day of court-ordered talks.

Ladies and gentlemen, the cart is in front of the horse.

Richard Sandomir is a sports media critic for the New York Times. He wrote an article on the unique journalistic challenges facing the NFL Network during the lockout. The NFL Network is – at its most basic function – a media mouthpiece for the league, and therefore the owners. Listen to the podcast with Richard and Charlie after the jump.

It’s a respectable decision. Locked out from the NFL, two actual professional NFL football players have signed on to play football for money somewhere else. The Arena Football League is nowhere near comparable to the NFL in the level of play or the level of pay. However, props must be given to individuals who decide their fate is their decision.

The entity formerly known as the NFL Players Association is advising college football stars to boycott the upcoming NFL Draft, according to published reports. This is a classic case of a good negotiation tactic being bad public relations.

UPDATE: NFL Players Association executive George Atallah says on Twitter that college players will attend the NFL Draft in New York.

Whichever side wins in the court of public opinion wins the NFL labor feud. It’s that simple. And this is the players fight to lose. They should be enjoying carte blanche support from Main Street football fans of America.

Frankly, the players are exploited by greedy owners who show blatant disregard for (in no particular order): player health, affordable ticket prices, and the tax-paying communities who subsidize their stadium construction cost. The owners are billionaire oligarchs who are programmed to keep growing their revenue above all else.

April 6th. Mark your calendars. On April 6th, the curtain rises on some of the finest millionaire-on-billionaire legal cannabalism in your lifetime.  

And…here we are again. The owners and players have no deal. The Collective Bargaining Agreement expires at midnight (Eastern) at the end of this day (Friday). We have twice endured extensions. We could see more, although it appears at this hour both sides are dug in, and bracing for a lockout.

New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees was among the group of players attending today’s meetings, hoping for face-to-face negotiations.

On his Twitter feed, Brees addressed fans directly.

“To our fans — I give you my word that we as players are doing everything we can to negotiate with the N.F.L. towards a fair deal,” Brees wrote. “The N.F.L. brought this fight to us — they want $1 billion back, we just want financial information to back up that request. They refuse to give that information to us. They think we should just trust them. Would you? We have a responsibility to our players — past, present, and future, to advance this league forward, not take three steps back.”
- New York Times