The owners claimed to have made a great number of concessions in their Friday offer, but the players claimed that those concessions weren't really concessions at all, and that the sides were too far apart for negotiations to continue.
The owners, though, want to keep negotiating immediately, and it's hard to believe that the players wouldn't be under intense public pressure to do exactly that.
The fans will surely be tough for the two parties to ignore as the lockout continues, as each side risks alienating the actual source of all of the money that they are arguing over.
That money, though, may be the biggest factor preventing negotiations from dragging out too long. The potential 9 billion dollars that the two sides would lose if the season doesn't happen would be a huge blow to the wallets of both parties — even if they are a bunch of billionaires and millionaires.
History too is on the side of a relatively short lockout. While games have been lost in the past, generally speaking, lockouts haven't lasted all that long, and in the era of 24-hour media and massive money figures, it's hard to believe that such would change.
When will the NFL labor dispute be resolved?customer surveys
