NFL TALKS END NEW LABOR DEAL POSSIBLY IN LIMBO.

Byline: Billy Witz Staff Writer

Just as several owners expressed hope that an agreement on a new labor deal was imminent, talks between the NFL and the players' union broke off Tuesday with no plans for the negotiations to resume before the league's free-agent season begins Friday.

``We're deadlocked. There's nowhere to go,'' NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw said after spending the past three days meeting with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. ``There's no reason to continue meeting.''

Tagliabue, who had set today as a deadline for reaching an agreement, notified clubs after the negotiations broke down that a special league meeting would be held Thursday in New York to explain where the two sides are apart.

The breakdown could further slow the NFL's efforts to return to Los Angeles. The league, which is considering sites at the Coliseum and in Anaheim, had hoped officials at the two sites would make detailed presentations - including lease agreements - to the owners at their annual meeting, March 26-30, in Orlando, Fla.

Without a labor deal, such a presentation is less likely for two reasons. First, until a CBA agreement is reached, NFL owners are unlikely to devote attention to other matters, such as Los Angeles.

Also, the numbers in a new deal - the salary cap and shared revenues, for example - will be plugged into the lease agreements for the L.A. sites. Without knowing those figures, owners won't have a firm handle on expected revenues and expenses for the two sites.

While the current agreement doesn't expire until 2008, if there is not an agreement by next March, the salary cap would be abolished for the 2007 season. That possibility has led the owners to discuss contingencies that include a lockout, and the players to counter by decertifying the union.

While that may be a doomsday scenario, there will be significant, if less dramatic, consequences should a deal not be reached by midnight Thursday.

A large number of teams could be forced to release prominent players in order to fit under a more restrictive salary cap than a new deal would allow. Those restrictions would also mean fewer big money deals - and more one-year contracts - for those players on the open market.

Such disincentives have left some to interpret the breakdown in talks as last-minute posturing.

``There is a historical tendency in football contractual talks for everything to happen at the end,'' agent Leigh Steinberg said. ``What is critically important happens at the 11th hour. While I was initially pessimistic, I wouldn't read enormous importance into any negotiation statements.''

One possibility that has been broached is pushing back the start of free-agent season in order to give the parties more time to reach an agreement, but both the NFLPA and the league said Tuesday there are no plans to do so.

Instead, there to main issues separate the two sides. One is the percentage of revenues allocated for salaries - the union is asking for 60 percent and the NFL's most recent offer is 56.2 percent.

The bigger matter is how those revenues are calculated. Under the current agreement, authored in 1994, the salary cap was calculated based on a percentage of ``designated gross revenues'' - mostly television revenues and ticket sales, which are shared by teams.

Since then, there has been a boom in unshared revenues, such as stadium naming rights, luxury suites, and local sponsorships that have been generated by all the new stadium construction. The union wants those monies, referred to as ``total gross revenues,'' to be included in calculating the salary cap.