CBA: Judge wants players, owners talking again

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Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Posted 9:52 p.m.

By John Mullin
CSNChicago.com

NFL owners and players presented their cases, literally and figuratively, to U.S. District Court Judge Susan Nelson in Minnesota on Wednesday. And while Judge Nelson said that it would be a couple of weeks before she expects to render a decision on an injunction aimed at ending the owners lockout, she does not appear to want the two sides to simply sit around and wait.

It seems to me that both sides are at risk, Nelson said, and now is a good time to come back to the table.

Players and owners should indeed have some time. Besides the weeks Nelson uses for deliberations, an expected appeal by the loser in the process would drag out the situation into mid-June, according to general estimates.

But Nelson offered to facilitate further negotiations toward a settlement, with the effect that whichever side balks now will likely incur some ill feelings from the jurist.

Representatives of both player and owners predictably indicated a willingness to get back to negotiations and pointed to the other side as the problem. Nothing was decided Wednesday and wont be for some time, but if Judge Nelson can get the two sides talking substantively again, that will be more progress than the last several weeks have seen.

John "Moon" Mullin is CSNChicago.com's Bears Insider, and appears regularly on Bears Postgame Live and Chicago Tribune Live. Follow Moon on Twitter for up-to-the-minute Bears information.

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