JUDGE HAS A WEIGHTY DECISION

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 3, 1993                   TAG: 9301030076
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO   
SOURCE: WILL MCDONOUGH BOSTON GLOBE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
JUDGE HAS A WEIGHTY DECISION
There are no games Tuesday, but it will be the biggest day in National Football League history for years to come.
In a little more than 48 hours, Judge David Doty will convene the key people on both sides of the 5-year-old labor dispute in his chambers at U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Doty will try to serve as the "tie-breaker" in the impasse between labor and management.
What happens will determine how the NFL operates for the rest of this decade and beyond.
Will there continue to be a college draft? Will there be expansion? Will there be total free agency? Will there be a system for player movement?
All of these questions go to the heart of the way the NFL has operated over the years and, when Doty steps into the middle Tuesday, he will have a large say on what the future is going to be.
Last Wednesday night, when many thought the labor war was about to end, the talks collapsed, sending attorneys for both sides - Jim Quinn for the players and Frank Rothman for the owners - back to the phone to consult with Doty, who has been sitting on this dispute for the past five years.
Rothman reportedly told Doty the owners felt a deal still could be done because only one issue separated the sides. Quinn felt the sides were further apart, but nevertheless he is acceding to Doty's wish to gather all the key people in his chambers.
The key area of dispute at this time is the so-called "calendar" issue.
In the past, when a player became a free agent, he reverted back to his old team if he did not sign with a new team within 90 days.
The owners want that to continue, claiming that otherwise there would be chaos, with players holding out of training camp.
The players say that once a player is a free agent, he should not belong to anyone - he should be free.
"That's what the owners don't seem to get," Quinn said. "They talk about a player coming back home if he can't make a deal in a certain period of time, and we say no. There is no more home. He is free as long as he wants to be free."
The league said in a statement that the owners felt they had made a deal with the players weeks ago whereby a free agent would revert back to his old team if he was unable to make another deal within a certain period of time. The players say this never happened.
Doty, who is expected to listen to both sides on the issues left open and make recommendations, has another time bomb on his hands. He has yet to reveal his findings in the McNeil Case, having deliberately held off to give the sides a chance to settle the dispute without the court stepping in.
The players are risking the loss of $195 million the owners want to give them to settle all of the lawsuits and pay their attorneys. They also risk losing the McNeil Case - which they won in Doty's court three months ago - on appeal.
What the owners have at risk is their complete system of player movement, the college draft, and a hold-up in expansion plans and a new network television deal.
The players' attitude is that they did not fight all of these court battles for five years to win free agency, only to give it back under the "calendar" issue. The owners' attitude is that they are not paying $195 million and guaranteeing the players up to 67 percent of defined gross revenues in the league over the next seven years without having some kind of control over player movement.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB