The NFL Players Association has filed a Special Master proceeding regarding the NFL Management Council’s interpretation of Article XII, Section 7(d)(1) of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. 

The union has asked for expedited resolution of the issue, so that the issue won’t prevent rookies from signing their contracts before training camps opened.  It appears to be an issue that will affect first-round and second-round picks only.

As NFLPA General Counsel Richard Berthelsen has explained it to us, the issue arises from the reallocation of guaranteed money to be paid in uncapped years to capped years.

“It is coming into play this year,” Berthelsen told us via e-mail, “because future years’ guarantees are being used to get drafted rookies up to the level of guaranteed money that would be expected.  The provision in question says that the future guaranteed money is to be reallocated to ‘Team Salary.’ 

“The problem, though, comes from an example which follows the provision, which states that the future guaranteed money is to be reallocated to Salary (capital S, meaning the player’s cap number) and Team Salary.  If it is reallocated to the former, it causes a violation of the 25% rule on rookie contracts.  Our argument is that the text of the provision itself controls over the text of the example, so that the reallocation should only be to Team Salary, and not to capital S salary.”

Don’t feel bad if none of this makes sense to you, because it doesn’t make sense to us, either.

We’re kidding, sort of.  If we understand the situation, the problem is that the use of guaranteed salaries in 2010 and beyond requires the money to count against the salary cap before 2010, since 2010 is now scheduled to be uncapped.  But if those amounts also count as the player’s ”Salary” for the purposes of first-year earnings under the rookie pool and the rule that the player’s pay in future years may increase only by 25 percent of that first-year “Salary,” the players necessarily will earn less money because there will be no way to shoehorn guaranteed money from uncapped years into the 2008 “Salary” and the 25-percent increase in that number for 2009.

The irony here seems to be that the league’s position will create a de facto limit on the money paid to rookies selected in the upper tier of the draft. 

We’ll be posting again on this after we acquire more information, and after the handful of Advil we just swallowed kicks in.