NFL Players came within 5 minutes of decertifying last Thursday

Peter King and Jim Trotter have an excellent "behind-the-scenes" perspective on SI on what happened in last week's negotiation. Jim includes this passage:

With only five minutes to go before the union's deadline to decertify last Thursday -- a move that might have obliterated the NFL as we know it today -- a player walked into the negotiating room that included commissioner Roger Goodell, league attorney Jeff Pash, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith and union president Kevin Mawae and declared: "We're done! We're decertifying."

To read the rest, click here. It is great read.