NFL Capsules: Goodell, Smith back in Minnesota to negotiate

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith took their new buddy act on the road Wednesday, creating a buzz among rookies in Florida then returning to Minnesota for talks to try and end pro football's labor impasse.

The NFL commissioner and the players' boss took questions from rookies at an orientation symposium in Sarasota, Fla., where recent draft picks were glad — and relieved — to see their two surprise guests.

"Guys are hurting for money right now," said quarterback Christian Ponder, a first-round pick by the Minnesota Vikings. "It's a crazy time, especially with the uncertainty of when we're going to start and get some money in our pocket."

"It's big for them to come together. I thought that was pretty cool," he said. "It looks like they have a pretty good relationship."

Smith and Goodell certainly seem closer than when the lockout began in March. Whether that will translate into a new collective bargaining agreement is the big question. Training camps are scheduled to open in just over three weeks with the Hall of Fame game on Aug. 7.

The latest round of negotiations between the two sides — the fifth since they began hopping from city to city for clandestine meetings — kicked off Tuesday in Minneapolis with Goodell, Smith, their attorneys and staffs in the room but no owners or players. People familiar with the situation said owners and players planned to join Goodell and Smith for talks Thursday and Friday. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the discussion are not being released.

The location is significant because Minneapolis is where the players filed an antitrust suit against the owners and the sides tried and failed to strike an agreement through court-ordered mediation under U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan.

Smith invited Goodell to the orientation session for rookies — put on by the players' association after the NFL canceled the event — and the pair flew down to Florida on Tuesday night. After a joint breakfast Wednesday, they talked for an hour with 155 rookies.

"We felt it was important to be down here with the players," Goodell said. "This is an important few days. We're going to get back to work."

Owners and players are seeking a deal that would divide revenues for the $9 billion business — the biggest hurdle to clear — and guide league activities for years to come.

Goodell and Smith didn't have a direct answer when asked by the rookies when the impasse will end so they can meet their coaches and start their careers. Still, their joint appearance was seen as a positive sign.

"That's really the significance of this," NFL Players Association spokesman George Atallah said. "There's a lockout happening now, but we've got to look forward and consider the necessity to have a positive working relationship with the league."

Ponder said Goodell urged the rookies to be ready, whenever the lockout is lifted.

"The biggest thing he hammered home is we really have no idea when this thing is going to end," Ponder said. "But us rookies have to prepare for it. It's going to end at some point. As rookies it's our job to be prepared. Yeah, we've missed some practices, but we can't change that."

Smith said both sides are "continuing to work hard" to keep the 2011 season intact. He called the question-and-answer session with rookies "important to ensure our young men appreciated how important we think these few days are. I'm thrilled Roger could come down with us and talk to the rookies in a very good, direct way."

This spring, current players were joined in their legal fight against the league by a group of retirees led by Hall of Fame defensive end Carl Eller, who has been actively trying to organize and unite retired players in a quest to secure better benefits and medical care from the league.

Eller and his attorneys were part of the court-ordered mediation sessions — six days, in all — in Boylan's chambers in April and May, and Eller met with Goodell and some owners in Chicago earlier this month.

Shawn Stuckey, one of the attorneys for Eller's group, said the retirees, while trying to be patient, also have been disappointed to not be more involved, citing the ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson that the two cases be combined.

"We want football, and we want this to come to an amicable resolution," Stuckey said. "We don't want to be in the way of an agreement. We're well within our rights to object and say these mediation sessions are not consistent with what Judge Nelson ordered. However, we feel one of the best ways to get a resolution is to let the active players reach a resolution, and then we can reach a resolution on our issues."

Stuckey indicated, however, that Eller's group doesn't want to be left out.

"If the active players and the league are serious about getting football under way soon, they've got to start negotiating with the retirees. Even the slight chance that the season could be delayed should be sufficient enough to motivate those guys to work with the retirees, if they're serious about actually getting football played and getting it played fast."

NFL lockout already hurting fantasy companies

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The NFL lockout has led Bruce Taylor to take some painful steps: He has scrapped publication of a fantasy football magazine that sold 161,000 copies last year, laid off an employee and took out a home equity loan.

Although players and owners are still trying to figure out how to divide $9.3 billion in revenue and save the regular season, it’s already too late for some of those who make their living from the widely popular fantasy football industry.

Usually by now, thousands of the estimated 24 million people who play fantasy football each year have already begun preparing for their leagues of made-up teams, with fortunes resting on real-life individual performances of their favorite NFL stars.

But as NFL franchises and players skip offseason workouts and free agents go unsigned amid the labor unrest, companies that depend on fans poring over statistics and incremental personnel moves to form their fantasy teams have had to cope with the reality of lost revenue.

The fantasy football industry brings in about $800 million a year. While everyone involved hopes that most of that money will still be there if the NFL resolves its labor dispute, some — including magazines that help fantasy players select their teams — are already declaring 2011 a lost year.

"We’ll be lucky if we make one-third of what we make in a normal year," said Taylor, the 46-year-old co-owner of Seattle-based Fantasy Index Magazine, Inc., which is not publishing its Fantasy Football Index magazine for the first time in 25 years.

"It’s tough because we’ve had to lay somebody off — I’ve got another employee that I should lay off but I don’t have the heart. We’re a small company," Taylor told The Associated Press. "I try and be philosophical about it because when you hitch your wagon to somebody else’s horse, you’re going to take your lumps."

"It’s a lot of money — they should fight over it — but I wish they’d fight over it faster," he said.

About 32 million people in the United States and Canada play fantasy sports each year, a number that has grown 60 percent in the last four years, according to an Ipsos Public Affairs poll commissioned by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, the industry’s largest trade group.

In fantasy sports, participants assemble teams made up of real players and gauge success on how well those players perform in actual games, sometimes putting money on the line against their opponents. Football is by far the most popular fantasy sport, though players participate in leagues year-round for many sports.

The pastime’s popularity has become far more visible recently, with high profile players like Maurice Jones-Drew bragging about drafting themselves, a cable sitcom called "The League" that follows friends playing together, and an entire pregame show on ESPN dedicated to fantasy roster decisions.

Paul Charchian, the trade group’s president, said companies aren’t as jittery now as they will be in August without a resolution (although the NFL and its players are working this week to come to an agreement). Even now, Charchian says, they are already starting to see lost business.

"It’s still June, but normally right now, revenue is already starting for the football season," he said. "Once hockey and basketball end, a lot of people start turning their attention to football."

Charchian said his company, LeagueSafe, which lets fantasy owners pay league fees online, has seen less than half the revenue so far this year than it had collected at the same point last year.

Taylor said his company is down to the equivalent of four full-time employees from six last year, with one layoff and another unfilled vacancy.

To keep Fantasy Index operating, Taylor and his business partner took out home equity loans a few weeks ago, he said.

"If we crash the ship into the rocks, we can at least have lines of credit to get it afloat again," Taylor said.

Charchian said the industry has about 150 companies, including 15 publishers printing 25 magazines. Most are not printing this year, including those run by larger companies, including ESPN, he said.

CBSSports.com, an online arm of the CBS television network, has begun offering fans partial or full refunds depending on how many games are played this season.

One possible result of the lockout is that the NFL could play a shortened season. That would throw off fantasy leagues, which usually schedule playoffs that coincide with the final games of the NFL’s regular season.

The offer from CBS Sports promises players a prorated refund of league fees if games go unplayed, with a full refund if more than half the season is lost. A spokesman for CBS Sports declined comment.

Charchian said nearly all fantasy sports companies have been adjusting to try to keep players from hesitating to organize leagues.

"Companies don’t necessarily want to say, ‘Were not taking any money right now,"’ Charchian said. "They’d rather take the money and then offer a refund."

Chris Fargis, a 31-year-old options trader from New York who plays in about four fantasy leagues each year, said he’s not worried about the NFL lockout in terms of picking up fantasy winnings, but he’d hate to miss out on the games that bring him together with friends.

"Football season, and a big part of that being fantasy football, is a really fun thing that we all enjoy," Fargis said. "The social element of it is so big for me."

Taylor said Fantasy Index plans to release versions of its information through the company’s website, and he thinks most armchair players will come back to the magazine next year.

"I don’t care who wins or who loses" the lockout, he said. "As long as they get it resolved by next year — and hopefully by this year. Everybody wants football."

-- Oskar Garcia

NFL rookies anxious to collect first paycheck

BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — The NFL lockout has prevented Marcell Dareus from cashing in on turning pro, so he mows his godfather's lawn in exchange for a place to stay.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — When the manager of the Louisiana Superdome surveys the stadium’s latest and most extensive renovation project yet, he finds himself thinking more about his city’s hopeful future than its troubled recent past.

A six-year, $336 million, multiphase transformation of one of America’s best known sporting venues is nearly complete — enough so that spectators will get to see the latest changes in person when the dome reopens this weekend, for the first time since last football season, to host the Essence music festival.

"It doesn’t look like the same building it did in 2005, that’s for sure," said Doug Thornton, vice president of SMG, the company that manages the state-owned stadium.

During a recent stroll through a new, field-level bowl that now has most of its 24,500 seats in place, Thornton reflected on how much the Superdome had changed since Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005.

The storm tore open the roof and flooded surrounding streets, allowing mold to fester while tens of thousands of evacuees who had taken shelter there stewed in summer heat without air conditioning or working bathrooms. Most evacuees milled around field-level stands, which have been deconstructed, removed and rebuilt atop a new steel support system as part of $50 million in work performed during the last five months.

The changes to the field-level stands represent the latest of numerous upgrades since the restoration of the stadium began in late 2005. The initial phases included gutting and refinishing suites, corridors, concession stands and bathrooms throughout the stadium. New electrical, video and audio systems were installed. All seats were either cleaned or replaced, and four large club lounges with new windows offering views of downtown where built on the second level.

"You walk around now and you don’t see too many vestiges of the past," Thornton said. "Many of the bad memories of Katrina have been suppressed. ... It’s like a brand new building inside the old shell."

Even the outer shell looks new. Last year, the original aluminum siding, faded a dull gray by three-plus decades of Louisiana sun and dented by flying storm debris, was replaced. The new siding restored the hulking, downtown stadium to the original champagne color it had when it hosted its first Super Bowl in 1978.

The Superdome is scheduled to host its seventh Super Bowl in February 2013, capping a 13-month span in which it will also host college football’s BCS national championship next January and the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four the following spring.

"We’ve been working nonstop for, really, six years to reinvent the dome, and when you look around now, it does make you think about what’s going to happen," Thornton said.

Because the renovation is not entirely done, access to a few unfinished sections will be blocked for this weekend’s music festival, but concert spectators will sit in many of the new seats.

The New Orleans Saints’ home exhibition slate would begin Aug. 12 if it’s not delayed by the NFL lockout. By then, all lower bowl seats will have been installed in a changed configuration that hugs the rectangular shape of the football field, bringing many sideline spectators closer to the field than they were in the old, semi-oval layout.

Under the sideline sections are new, 7,000-square-foot lounges. Ticket-holders in those areas will be able to use an exclusive entrance to the stadium, passing through a set of glass doors, above which wide strips of cherry wood paneling follow the contour of the ceiling to a bar across the lounge.

The floors are a combination of polished granite and carpet, and white leather furniture, completes a look similar to a contemporary boutique hotel lobby.

The altered configuration has increased capacity from a little less than 70,000 to nearly 73,000 for Saints games, and the main concourse has been completely rebuilt. Footbridges that linked the old concourse to the seats are gone. The concourse is now about three-times wider with new tile flooring and brighter cove lighting overhead. Larger concession stands finished with stainless steel can handle up to 20 percent more customers at a time.

Rest rooms are all new and their capacity doubled. About 100 large flat screen TVs hang from the underside of the second deck, aimed at those sitting in the top portions of the lower bowl or walking along the concourse.

The newest work also included the widening of a ramp to one of the main entrances and the installation of a permanent staircase to a public outdoor plaza called Champion’s Square, which opened last year.

Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation director Jay Cicero said the winning bids he developed for the 2013 Super Bowl and 2012 Final Four would have gone nowhere if not for the transformation of the Superdome and the surrounding development it has spurred.

"It has been absolutely a key part of the whole process ... and will be a major feather for New Orleans’ next bids," Cicero said.

Next to the dome is an office high-rise that Saints owner Tom Benson bought as part of an agreement locking the Saints into the dome through 2025. The state will consolidate scattered New Orleans offices in the Benson Tower, leasing space at what critics say is higher than market rates. State officials have justified the deal as a way to reward Benson for keeping his NFL club in Louisiana long-term and putting a heavily damaged and long dormant downtown high-rise back into commerce.

Also nearby is a Hyatt hotel, which became a symbol of Katrina’s devastation when dozens of its floor-to-ceiling windows were blown out, leaving exposed curtains flapping in the wind. In October, it is finally expected to reopen after a $275 million renovation of 1,200 rooms and 200,000 square feet of exhibition and meeting space.

Hyatt general manager Michael Smith said the Superdome’s restoration was a main reason — particularly during a national recession — that financing went through for the hotel.

For several years, Thornton has referred to the Superdome as a symbol of the city’s recovery. His own home in a neighborhood near Lake Pontchartrain was flooded during Katrina. He hopes the pride he’s taken in the renovation of his home is similar to the feeling Louisiana residents will share in seeing the changes in the dome.

"People in this area kind of think of the Superdome as an extension of their home because they’ve spent a lot of their weekends here," Thornton said. "So I hope they’re proud of it when they come in."

-- Brett Martel

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